[Please open the attached.pdf for best viewing.]

Visit the SNS Store to checkout the first of our SNS FiReBooks imprints:

StealthJapan: The Surprise Success of the World's First InfoMerc Economy, byScott Foster

Or purchase on Amazon.com

And -

Theft Nationwhite paper - as featured on CBS' 60 Minutes - "How IP Theft Drivesthe Chinese National Business Model, and Its Effect Upon the Global Economy," byEvan R. Anderson

Get the source material behind the most-viewed 60 Minutesinvestigative episode in history, until now a Cabinet-level briefing book, onthe world's most important information: how does China make its money, at whatcost to the world, and what happens next?

______

Publisher'sNote: One of the high points of FiRe 2015 was Berit Anderson'sinterview of Ramez Naam and Cory Doctorow. Ramez and Cory are both brilliantthinkers with long-established reputations in a variety of arenas, from sciencefiction and technology applications to public policy and IP rights.

In this transcript, memberswill be taken on a very smart, and very fast, tour of how these threeentrepreneurs see a more hopeful vision of the world to come, starting a coupleof decades from now. Their visions are rooted in real-life social and financialexamples of what is happening today, and therefore are pragmatic and worthexamining for real clues about what we might all wish to work for in thefuture.

If we assume that our societygets past what I increasingly refer to as the "Human IQ Test" - that is, notcreating a self-extinction event through low intelligence and high capacity forgreed - then I believe it is possible that the longer-term experience of humansmight actually be relatively idyllic compared to much of what we areexperiencing today. "Abundance," as defined and described in this week'sdiscussion, is more than possible - it seems a natural outcome from the work itwill take to survive.

As Ramez Naam points out, it'scheap and easy for an author to write "Mad Max novels" about a dysfunctionalfuture, but this has little to do with what really may happen - or, more to thepoint, what we need and want to have happen.

The future will be what we makeof it, and this week's issue helps move us into a conversation that might giveus a bit more edge as we face the question of whether we are smart enough tosurvive ourselves. - mra.