OnTrack Technology Blog

Update on Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:55:00 +0000

Yes, I know that I have not updated he blog for quite some time. Mostly that is because I have stopped thinking. Thats not actually the case, but I have been using a more Authentic medium for "journaling". its something that many of you may have read about, or heard your parents talk about. Generally we refer to these legacy tools as "Pen" and "Paper". you can find the definitions on Wiki. Unforunately my Scribe has carpel tunnel syndrome, and consequently my most recent scibblings are only available in my analogue "blog", which is actually a stack of notebooks in my office. but please, have a look at my my recent postings, you will find then listed below because this blogging tool insists on conforming to traditional "string theory" when recording postings. Its a challenge for me because most of what I conceptualize actually happens at the same time, and you, as readers, are only able to observe this quantum state after is has completely decohered. But, that is the reality of reality. Sorry about that.....

Cognitve Time Shares - The Paradox of: Scarcity, Commodity, Land Grab

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:53:00 +0000

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch -- we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive. To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.
many designers of information systems incorrectly represented their design problem as information scarcity rather than attention scarcity, and as a result they built systems that excelled at providing more and more information to people, when what was really needed were systems that excelled at filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information

Some have even speculated that "attention transactions" will replace financial transactions as the focus of our economic system (Goldhaber 1997, Franck 1999). Information systems researchers have also adopted the idea, and are beginning to investigate mechanism designs which build on the idea of creating property rights in attention

"Attention economics" today is primarily concerned with the problem of getting consumers to consume advertising. Traditional media advertisers followed a model that suggested consumers went through a linear process they called AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention is therefore a major and the first stage in the process of converting non-consumers. Since the cost to transmit advertising to consumers is now sufficiently low that more ads can be transmitted to a consumer than the consumer can process, the consumer's attention becomes the scarce resource to be allocated.

Key Definitions

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:42:00 +0000

Flawed Anachronistic Innovation Citation(FAIC)
- Manipulation of technological history to create a perception that a previously existing instance of something was the predecessor to a fundamentally new concept

Perceptually Anachronistic Communications Paradox(PACP)
- when a collective of people agree in a current state that a concept was derived at an earlier point in time, when in fact it was not conceived, manifested, or otherise communicated prior to current state

Generationally out-of-phase communications Protocols(GOOP)
- i think this one explains itself

Cognitive UGC

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:41:00 +0000

I will argue that “cognitively perceived” UGC is at least equally, if not more important than “sensory perceived” UGC. Eg. A virtual chair is sensory, a virtual discussion or thought, induced from VR-based activity is cognitive. The true objective of course is to leverage the combination of cognitive and sensory perception to yield something that is greater than the simple sum of the parts. i.e. if 2 users sit immersed in a virtual room in 2 virtual chairs and have a discussion concerning the virtual model that they are seeing(and interacting with), do we suppose that the yield from this immersive experience(sensory + cognitive) might be greater than if the discussion took place via Webex? In this scenario of immersion-based collaboration, what are the 3 examples of UGC?

The Paradox of Studying the Modern Erosion of Attention

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:08:00 +0000

If I am concurrently reading 3 books on the modern erosion of our ability to focus on singular topics, does the commonality of the books subject matter provide focus, or provide proof that i am unable to focus?

Attention as an Organ System

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:05:00 +0000

if we consider the concept proposed by Michael posner, that "Attention is an Organ System", does the benefit of being able to think about concentration is pure physiological terms assist us in any way? is long term attention to something the same thing as Persistence? can we enable our attention to function as subconsiously as our liver, or heart?

Concentration as Cognitive Wave Form Collapse

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:02:00 +0000

A reduction of all possibilities to a single reality based on the singularity of observation, and the ability to focus on that singularity, yields wave form collapse

Synthetically Induced Emotional Needs Fulfillment: Denying the boundaries of Real vs Manufactured Life Necessities

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:05:00 +0000

Synthetically Induced Emotional Needs Fulfillment: Denying the boundaries of Real vs Manufactured Life Necessities - How the forthcoming generations will derive social consciousness from non-traditional-faith-based intangibles, and the impending obfuscation of societal bindings: is this socio-psychological evolution? or the irreversible decay of mankind as a corporally relevant entity?

Who should we believe: Mr. Dunbar, or Mr. Ning? a social network for the connection of everyone? or the acceptance of that fact that our "tiny" brains cannot viably manage more than 150 "meaningful" relationships?

Think of social media as if it were a virus sent to earth by space aliens to gradually decay the historical underpinnings of society....its a very clever "sleeper agent strategy" that creeps up on you the way grass grows - you wake up one day and "suddenly" your world is different…..

Anyone see the Movie Avatar? What was the difference between the Tree of Life and the Floating Mountains? I'll leave that one with you all for a moment....

The history of mankind's social evolution was something like:
1. we were migratory nomads without fixed roots "tweeting" and "writing on face book walls" as we drew cave paintings and left rock cairns
2. after awhile, we settled down and joined communities based on common cultures, and socialized amongst ourselves. It was like "medieval Ning".
a. as this happened, we formalized portions of our culture to form a sort of glue. the recipe of this glue was primary based on a unifying concept of "faith in something or someone"
3. after awhile, more advanced social networks attacked our Ning villages and rode off with our prized possessions and people: we saw this happen with the migration from MySpace/Friendster/Jdate to Face book.
4. then, because we now had the ability to travel freely, and obtains sustenance at every stop along the way, we decided that while we still "wanted" to maintain a "home" of some sort, it was more important to keep moving, and keep increasing our social networks.
5. But we maintained "our faith in something" and returned to homes to reunite with "special relationships"
6. but over time, we found new tools that no longer required that we "return home". we found ways to remain connected to our homes without actually being there, and we realized that we did not need to spend nearly as much time at home as we had once thought
7. Social aggregation made our tools even "better" - RSS feeds, retweets, etc. Now, not only could I get "messages from home", I could get messages from anywhere.
8. information and messaging became the umbilical cord that provided our source of emotional nutrition.
9. Our basic needs fulfillment shifted from co-located procurement, to crowd-sourcing
10. we began living in the digital Mall, rather than visiting the Mall and then returning home. and why not? the Mall has everything we need: People, food, and most importantly, enough sensory stimulation that we are cognitively saturated
11. and now, we "thrive" because we are "aware" of everything, all at the same time. we are omni-present - thinking, seeing, and communicating with our entire world(" I see you")
12. and like a universal donor, hyper-connectivity binds itself to the "instinctual synapsis" that once were bridged by physically co-located contacts
13. but we don't mind, in fact we "like it". digital sustenance is soooo much easier to obtain then "the real thing". we don't notice that like a pharmacological opiate, our social synapsis our now bridged by a synthetic substitute
14. our needs, our motivation to find "what is missing", our desire to belong, our longing to connect and be comforted? all have been satiated through our new synthetic "social binder"
15. and what of the faith that was the earliest glue(and dissolvent!) of society? Faith as we once knew it has been replaced in the same way that checks displaced gold coins. we have faith that this bit of paper is just as good and useful as the "authentic original". and most of the time it is....
16. Faith2.0 is ineffable, at least for most people. Why? because they are so immersed in it that they cannot see the forest for the trees. But when will Faith2.0 come into focus....?
17. when it begins to fracture society with a force of passion - the way Faith always has. but there is a difference now!
18. our "emotional homes" are now Floating Mountains....so where do we run to when the factions of Faith2.0 begin raiding our new homes "built on foundations of digitally aggregated connectivity"....
19. we regress to a life before digital needs-fulfillment was as comforting "as mom"
20. we return to "core values" and whole foods.....but wait! a generation or 2 has transpired since we became a digital culture, synthetic is real! Grape Jolly Ranchers are "real grape" - my Face book friends are my "real friends"
21. you are in pain. you are suffering emotional distress. you are trying to feed your craving for hyper connectivity but you can't possibly supply enough stimulation when all you've got is "outdated physical life tools". you are withdrawing, but to what? you are of an age when you never ate a "real" grape. movies stars? synthetic, real? is there a difference? they all look the same on the screen. so what?
22. but the pain is so bad. your synthetic needs fulfillment, your emotional binders are gone....
23. "there is no God!!!!" what does that mean? your faith is entrusted in the "fact" that when you send an IM, you get an immediate response. your questions about life(and death) are just a few short "crowd-sourced" moments away. your need to understand your place in life is easily explained to you by your "friends" on face book.
24. the space aliens have blown apart society simply by unplugging the "faith generator" that fueled a couple of generations. you and all of your friends, who merrily bobbed along "high on hyper-connectivity" are now huddled in the corner waiting for the nightmare to end.
25. but it will never end....because to "end" is to suggest that things might go back to the way they were. but what was the "way things were?". what was that exactly? I mean - take a moment to articulate exactly what you thought you knew?
26. what was a dream, and what was a nightmare? are you awake or are you sleeping? is it night or day? is Bob your friend or enemy?
27. but now there is a something in the horizon. you see it in the distance....getting closer...like the sun coming up at daybreak. you feel the warmth as the glowing rays first hit you. it surrounds you like an embrace. you begin to feel hope. you begin to feel "like everything is going to be ok" YES! I feel good. the nightmare is over! I am feeling a new sense of well being and "life"
28. you do not question the source of this new, all consuming glow of "wellness". it is too good. and everyone else feels it to. the masses emerge from the dark corners of their psyches where they have been denying their dis-connectivity. they emerge squinting, and emotionally pasty-faced. there is laughter and merriment
29. people gather to talk about their ordeals, and how they are so relieved that "things are back to normal"- no one ever ponders the source of this new found sense of well-being.
30. but there is a source of this wellbeing. there always is. and even when we ask about things we cannot see or feel, we often accept explanations that are based on "trust" or "faith". so why should it be any different this time? who cares. I feel great!!!!
31. And the cycle begins anew. But you are not starting from the beginning of mankind. These cycles are iterative.
32. Quantum Consciousness is your new source of multiple realities – but the paradox is that you never decohere. You can’t. because you are not at a fixed point such that you are capable of making an observation of yourself relative to your own awareness.
33. Multiple Realities or All realities at the same time? this has nothing to do with “endless possibilities” and everything to do with your inability to focus your awareness on a single instance, such that you can derive and therefore articulate a single conscious reality.
34. You are not “mentally ill” at least as long as we might define Ill as something other than the common norm.
35. The irreconcilable paradox of human evolution is that our desire to evolve our cognitive perceptibility is driven by our ability for meta-cognition, but that yields the subsequent consequence that we believe that we have become something that we are not.
36. Only extremely impactful and highly focused jolts of agony or joy seem capable of bringing so degree of focus too our otherwise(and our unknowing) state of bewilderment.
37. Are you really lost if everyone is lost with you?
38. Are you “lost” if there is no purpose, destination or objective?
39. Untethered consciousnesses are not specifically ripe for Faith(as it has been historically considered)
40. Untethered consciousness will accept the first universal donor that produces the desired effect within us.

Augmented Diorality Deception(ADD)

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:07:00 +0000

Augmented Diorality Deception(ADD)– When a dioramic scene is used to create a backdrop for a superimposed user interface designed to aggregate an assortment of pre-existing functionality

Dunbar’s Number vs. Ning: How big is your brain?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:14:00 +0000

Sure you can fit 1,000,000 people into your Ning network, but don’t expect them to fit in your head, even if you do look like that little kid on Family Guy. Your cognitive reality, is that all these “relationships” just don’t fit into your brain. So the question becomes: in order to make way for an exponential number of relationships, do we:
1. Create a definition of “friend” or “acquaintance” that vastly reduces the amount of cognitive resource required to maintain the definition of friend across absurd numbers of people?
2. Do we accept that each peep-node in our network is not actually significant?
3. Do we rank our peep-nodes to enable an allocation of brain-sustenance based on personal importance?

Or possibly none of the above. I maintain that people are not nearly as good at being social as pop-social media would like us to believe. I further maintain(and I’ve said this plenty of times) that the dynamic personal value of an increasingly large relationship-network actually trends downward, rather than upward the diluting effect of Dunbar’s Number begins to erode the quality of individual peep-nodes. That is unless we can hold constant the Dunbar Cognitive Plateau, while at the same increasing the number of peep-nodes that we connect to. So how is this possible? As follows:

Peep-Node = Sum(a,b,c,d………n)
Dunbars Number = 150
Cognitive Plateau = 150(Peep Node)

If a Peep-Node in our relationship network is comprised of N number of variables, lets say 10(name, birthday, sex, favorite color, etc), then our Cognitive Plateau equals 150 multiplied by N., or in this case: 150 x 10 = 1500.

We can therefore say that we socially saturated when we are required to maintain fluency in 1500 pieces of data regarding our social network.

But let say that we were willing to forego all 10 pieces of information about each peep-node. And that we were more interested in simply remembering each person’s first name. it would follow that we could then increase our number of viable peep-nodes from 150 to 1500, but of course nothing comes for free. We have not made our brains bigger, we have simply filtered our cognitive database. And for sure, there are lots of good reasons to know lots of names, at the sacrifice of knowing lots of names + favorite color.

Take for example the Office Manager with 150 employees. Is he perceived as a better or worse manager if he knows all 150 first names? Or if he knows 50 first names + dog’s name + shoe size? It’s a bit of a downer for the 100 people who did not make the Top 50 list.

Taken to another level, and moving beyond the personal/social aspects of a human network, what if we were more interested in maintaining stable relationships with only people who’s favorite candy bar is Snickers? This is more to the point of Ning, but it is a trap!! Great! We have the Snicker-Lover network. Chat with global Snicker-files everywhere. Chat about what? You’re bumping up against the Dunbar Plateau constantly. There are 1500 Snicker-groupies in the network, and you can’t possible know anything about them except how they get their sugar fix……But wait, since they are in the network, can’t I just stop thinking about Snickers, and use that brain-space for something else? Cool. They wouldn’t be here unless they liked Snickers right? Now I can learn their names. See, this really is a stable network of relationships. I learned the names of “snicker2000”, “snixnosher”, and “DJ ReSnix”. I knew this network was powerful……

The bottom line is this: there is no evidence that suggests that we can derive personal relationship value from a multitude of bloated social networks. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that much smaller personal relationship networks are the only ones that are viable. So is the answer for all of us to simple reduce the size of our networks? Of course not. We simply need tools. Tools that can help us glue these oversized networks together by socializing on our behalf, and reminding us of all the things that we have forgotten, or never had the time to learn in the first place. So hey, wouldn’t it be great if an analytical tool came along that could autonomously discover, and then notify us of all the cool things that we had in common with lots of other people? That’s the ticket: Relationship Outsourcing. We outsource our math. Why should be remember long division any more than we should remember what kind of candy bar Brad Pitt likes. There’s an App for that!

Next Up: Brian’s Number – the maximum number of digital tools that an individual can maintain fluency in concurrently. (but don’t worry, we will find a way to aggregate tools before there is some sort of social-real relationship Armageddon)

The Forbidden Decision: Balancing the Luminance of Opponent Concepts in Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:13:00 +0000

“Things that do not fit the existing paradigm are hard to think about”

But if we can bypass the hardwired opponency, we can access a perceptual filling-in mechanism that will yield the Forbidden Decision…

We should not be able to see yellowish-blue, or reddish-green. We are hardwired perceptually to attempt to amalgamate these colors to produce a singular hue that can be simplified. Ie. Our perception + cognition attempts to render a swift and simple conclusion that satisfies our need to understand what we are seeing. The resulting conclusion is generally accepted by ourselves because it is largely the result of our own rationalized conditioning.

Things that do not fit the existing paradigm are hard to think about….

But under the right condition, we can induce the “Forbidden Conclusion”. Perceptually, we can create a color palette such that a viewer will in fact see opponent colors flowing together(Scientific American, Feb 2010, pg 75). Thereby rendering a perception of what should in fact be incomprehensible. It presents a challenge to the viewer because it is something that has never been encountered, and can lead to momentary confusion, but importantly, the perception is not rejected.

In the color experiments, the “forbidden colors” were perceived only when the opponent colors were represented with identical luminance. Luminance is essentially “brightness”, and the inducement of forbidden-perception requires that the luminance be identical. It has been determined that by mirroring the luminance, the flickering effect of changing opponent colors is minimized, thereby making the transition between opponencies as transparent as possible. i.e the transition is less “startling” and therefore leaves a smaller cognitive disintermediation footprint.

So, how does this apply to innovation in the workplace?
1. Change is often capable of being defined as set of opponent concepts.
a. Just as Red vs Green are opponent colors, some may perceive that:
i. Casual and Business are opponent
ii. Distance and Intimacy are opponent
iii. Games and Work are opponent
iv. Service Quality and “face-face alternatives” are opponent
2. As with colors, our a priori hard-wired perceptions can be defeated if we are precise in our presentation of the opponent pairings. With colors, this is luminance. So what is the equivalent of Luminance in the context of business?
3. Contextual Change Opponency in Business
a. As with opponent color-swapping, the reduction of flickering when 2 opponent colors are rapidly alternated was the means by which forbidden colors were perceived. The brightness of the colors needed to be massaged such that the luminance was identical
b. The concept is: hold as many variables as possible constant, such that the cognitive-sensory disruption is tightly focused on a precise variable.
4. Organizationally, it might present as:
a. Face-Face vs 3D Immersive meeting spaces
b. The context, and variability between the 2 concepts must be contained, such that only the target variable is perceived as changing, and not the entire universe of variables
i. Therefore, if we consider *only*: face-face images, vs Avatar-Avatar images, we can contain the spectrum of sensory-cognitive change parameters
5. How to neutralize the luminance of face-face and avatar-avatar?
a. Take a Point-of-View photograph of 1-1 meeting in a real meeting room
b. Render a photo-realistic head from a photograph
c. Swap the Avatar head onto the 1-1 meeting counterparty.
d. Rapidly alternate between real-real, and real-avatar.
e. Additionally, create a POV photograph in which the viewer is meeting 1-2(eg. Viewer is meeting with 2 people)
i. Swap an Avatar head onto a single counterparty, and rapidly alternate between Real-real-real, and Real-real-avatar.
6. In this example, the luminance is perceptually defined as a combination of contextual visualization parameters
a. Contrast, color, shading – must remain precise
b. Avatar head must be of extreme quality(no goofy hair)
c. While this is a “photoshop” experiment, the avatar head must be expertly pasted into the photograph to appear seamless

The purpose of this exercise is simple: to advance a tiny step towards overcoming a common condition of hardwired opponency in business that conditions decision makers away from accepting that Virtual can be a “good enough” approximation of reality. The defeating of this perception is results in the “Forbidden Decision” that VR can be effective in the workplace.

Next steps include the one-by-one introduction of virtual elements into the photograph flip book. By Balancing the Luminance of Opponent Concepts, we are able to minimize cognitive disintermediation(i.e. we are not startling) and are able to tightly focus our audience on a single, discrete change variable, without incurring a rapid retreat to a more comfortable hard-wired opponent reaction(i.e. it will never work).

"Avatar" the movie, vs Quantum Darwinism

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:19:00 +0000

In Viral Loop, Adam Penenburg does a nice job of describing a few people(who are representative of 1000’s more) who have made a conscious decision to lives their lives as much as possible online. These folks stalk Wifi hot-spots like predators seeking prey(or maybe more like Vegans seeking whole grains?). They feel incomplete unless they are jacked-in to their digital counter-world. It is suggested by Penenburg that for these types of people, digital-only experiences, including music and relationships, have displaced “live” encounters as that person’s “new reality”. Or in my words “Preferred Reality”. So is the sign of things to come? Will the human race rapidly become “avatar like” with a perfect system of digital connectedness closing the gap between everyone and everything? Will augmented reality + Ning + Google + Twitter et all form the digitized neural-net that will forever bind us all together into an inseparable and unionized collective of assimilated consciousness? Mmmm, probably not.
I could now talk about things like Quantum Darwinism, but seems that I can get in trouble when I mention how biology tends to drive sociology, and that reality is formed via long strings of probabilities and decision trees. My point is this: sure the movie Avatar looks cool. Tron and the Matrix were cool too. “1984” was also cool. So, raise your hand if you believe that information/communication aggregation as manifested in today’s social media/devices is the beginning of an avatar-like existence…I see a lot of hands out there. So let me ask you this: Pick an example from human history that provides evidence of the indelible evolution of our social consciousness. Great, Everybody have an example? Now ask yourself this: In your example, does this example of “social consciousness evolution” require active administration by the person, or has it become reflexive/instinctually “programmed such that this evolutionary example could not be rapidly reversed by an event that happens to the person? What happened to your example?
Why should be care? In the same way that humans are able to construct technology that could cause our complete physical destruction, we are also able to construct technology that presents itself as Faux Evolution, or Fauvolution. What the heck is that? It’s a thin veneer of human-produced advancement that from 50,000 feet makes it appear that we have evolved ourselves as a race of humans. Trouble is, our social consciousness has not evolved(in the hard-wired sense) in any discernable way for an awfully long time. Take a human, put them in adverse conditions, and you will see social regression in effect like a freight train until we are once again “nasty, brutish, and short”.
The concept of an Avatar-like neural net scares me more than the Google phone. Why? Because we mistakenly believe that total connectedness is what we want. Where in fact, we need disconnectedness in the same way that we need sleep. Why have we not figured this out yet? Because no one has enabled scalable and sustainable “immersive connectedness”.
Avatar presents as just another probabilistic outcome of our social evolution, which in my opinion, would require a few thousand(million?) more years to become an indelible(as in irreversible) part of human nature. And before that happens, we will continue to do what we have always done….

Quantum vs Classical Consciousness: How our Metaphysical Existence drives Wave Function Collapse to form Personalized Versions of Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:47:00 +0000

Quantum vs Classical Consciousness: How our Metaphysical Existence drives Wave Function Collapse to form Personalized Versions of Reality

It is our consciousness that creates the environment in which pure quantum systems become classical. This suggests that it is our perceptions that represent the microscopic systems that irreversibly pinpoint boundless “pure quantum systems”. The Result: our reality is a direct result of Wave Function Collapse triggered by our inability to exist in an environment without irreversibly altering it. The irreversibility of our reality suggests entropy, which is essentially a transformation of order to chaos. It would seem fair to say then that: unique perceptions ensure unique realities.

Quantum Darwinism: Sociology to Social Media
Quantum Darwinism will help us explain pure metaphysical consciousness[quantum consciousness] transformations from the environmentally unrestricted set of possible reality states to the greatly reduced set of manifested reality states as a selection process, “einselection”, imposed on the quantum system through its continuous interactions with the environment.

All quantum interactions, including interactions with the environment such as with discrete sets of information and activity[eg. Social Media] in which our “quantum consciousness” can become immersed, lead to “decoherence” or the manifestation of the quantum consciousness in a particular reality dictated by the nature of the interaction in which the quantum consciousness is immersed or otherwise impactfully engaged.
It can be successfully argued that the preferred reality into which a quantum consciousness will decohere is the “pointer” reality that makes any sort of predictability of human behavior possible.
It is in this sense that the pointer realities are selected from quantum reality and exist in the macroscopic realm in a state able to undergo further evolution. In other words, because people are the context in which “reality happens”, the environmental collisions that our consciousness has over time, will invariably force the evolution of our realities. While this seems obvious, what we really mean is that: we do not have “reality done to us”. It is in fact the complete opposite: our consciousness as an additive “environment” is what reduces the boundless possibilities of quantum reality down to a single instance of classical reality, or simply: Personalized Wave Function Collapse.

Quantum Darwinism conforms neatly to the simplicity of “evolutionary Darwinism:

· Large numbers of people represent a population of similar Realities
· Realities evolve continuously in an iterative manner, in which each successive manifestation inherit “personality” from prior manifestations.
· Realities, being shaped by consciousness, which in turn is impacted by our interactions with our environment, continue to evolve, and those realities that survive will show to
conform to the predictions of classical physics[metaphysical] within the macroscopic world.

From this view Quantum Darwinism provides a Darwinian explanation at the basis of our reality, explaining the unfolding or evolution of our classical macroscopic world. It is perhaps surprising that this same mechanism operating at the emergence of classical reality from quantum reality is also seen by scientific theories to be operating at the emergence of Social Media from Sociology.

Now, because humans are equipped with self-awareness, and varying degrees of meta-cognition, Realities can be “steered” to a certain extent towards interactions with environments that are desirable. But, just as Quantum to Classical Transformations tell us: the observation of Wave Function Collapse does not tell us why, only when and where, and the prediction of collapse is a function of probability, not certainty.

Next Up: Using Quantum Mechanics to Understand Social Media

Using Quantum Mechanics to Understand Social Media?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:45:00 +0000

Eg. When we measure or otherwise observe the behavior of a crowd-based system for the sake of definition and positioning, do we inherently destroy the randomness, or destroy the probability of uncertain outcomes? Wave Function Collapse essentially tells us that if we define behavior at a point in time, we have restricted the possibilities of definition, although we may not have accurately defined with all probability the precise{sentimental] positioning of the crowd based system. It would seem, that despite our best efforts in defining[what we believe] to be accurate descriptions of crowd based behavior, that what our definitions tell us about people is not always correct. If it were correct, we should be able to simply predict or forecast with 100% accuracy, the next time/space location of the crowd. Are we able to do this? No.
Quantum decoherence suggests that when quantum systems[people] interact with their environment, we should be able to observe probabilistic, and therefore extrapolatable patterns. It appears however that what we really see, is simply the tangible manifestation of a fraction of the quantum system[people], while the vast majority of the information required to truly understand behavior remains obscured and otherwise undefined. What ends up happening is that our crowd-based system is observed through an environmental touch point which has been introduced to the environment, and has subsequently made a fundamental impact to the state of the system, in an arguably[and temporary] way. This is essential to understand in order to avoid mis-perception of behavior. When we observe our system in an environment, we are simply seeing an artificial snapshot of the system as it has been constrained to manifestation within the environment. Further, due to the constraints of any such manifestation, we are 1) artificially attempting to contain the system 2) we are incorrectly assuming that we have defined the system based on tiny[relative] amounts of information about the system. This does not in any way suggest that we should attempt to gather infinite amounts of information about the system from other mechanisms, because any observation or mechanism for measurement could at best be probabilistic, and crowd-systems are super chaotic mechanical system which are averse to being fully defined[largely due to the impossibility of having perfect information]. Where that leaves us, if we are to attempt to make meaningful use out of crowd-based system “personalities” for the sake of crafting tangible environments is this: we must understand that Decoherence will not yield precise measurements, but does help to explain the “environmental observations” that we are perceiving to be valid definitions of determinate behavior. If we consider the collective non-tangible elements of a crowd[sentiment, etc], and consider this collective to be a pure quantum system, what we can readily observe[via interactions of the pure state with the environment] is the dissipation of the pure state information across a universe of microscopic systems. Theoretically it would appear that the gathering up of information lost along a series of collisions of the macroscopic system with microscopic systems should complete our set of “perfect information” regarding the crowd-based system that we concerned with. However, these serialized collisions alter, irreversibly the state of our subject system such that information gathered from observations will no longer be able to completely define the continuously evolving state of our system.

The bottom line is: if we could gather perfect information regarding the pure state of a crowd, we could, with all certainty, predict precisely when/where[time/space] our system[of people] would converge in the future. If we could do this, we could with all certainty construct the next “most popular” social-media destination, or other means of crowd attraction and retention.

A Trojan Pig does/ not a Horse make. So sayeth/ “Trojan Horse Maker”

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:03:00 +0000

Yes that is a Haiku, but it also neatly articulates the wisdom of the Trojans. I think the folks at Monty Python picked up on the necessity of appealing to the wants/needs of the target audience, and then spoofed it with the Trojan Rabbit. Quite funny.

More to the point: serious applications of social media and social-gaming are possible, desirable, and potentially innovative. BUT, never forget the tastes of your target demographic. If your audience wants a horse, you must give them a horse before you can do anything else. Give them a rabbit first, and you may not get the desired uptake.

Virtual is not Real

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:37:00 +0000

It is easy to be seduced by the similarities between Virtual and Real economies. The idea of having perfect manufacturing and consumption data on which all types of economic models can be created is somewhat intoxicating i suppose to a theoretical economist. BUT, virtual economies are NOT "real"! and a guy playing Guiter Hero is not a "real" musician. and what I mean by "Real" is quite simple: I will argue that the first medium-based manifestation of an entity is the "real" version, and that when the entity becomes manifested in a second medium, it can no longer be described as "real" or even "the same as the first" manifestation. by "medium" I am referring to a "generalized platform definition". but this is not just a game of semantics. the importance is that just because 2 things appear quite similiar, it does not mean that we extrapolate on that to rationalize or validate all kinds of other observations. and we know this to be true of just about any entity we can think of..In Virual Economies, the only real laws that the site is bound by having nothing to do with money(ie. Pornography,etc). Rulers of VE's, can and do:1. revalue currencies at will2. discriminate3. subject4. create inflation, stagnation, etc5. create scarcity and excess in milliseconds6. create and destroy vast "wealth" in milliseconds
I do believe that as time goes by, Virtual Economies will have to trend towards rules, laws, and other conventions that keep "real" economies "trust worthy". but in the meantime, do not give in to a false sense of security that comes from working through "real" models that seem to apply well to virtual economies......it does make me think however, if you could limit a model to a single Virtual World/Economy, and define all of events that could occur in VW, that could not occur in Real LIfe, and you were able to assign a probability to each of these events, you could I suppose factor in the sum of these probabilities into your real model. think of it as a Virtualized Wiener Process....
the image that just popped into my head is the TV commercial that shows an office worker strolling the photocopier to get his copy. I can model that task pretty simply(basic modal model stuff). but in teh commercial, out of nowhere, at a fantastic speed, comes a fully padded football player and absolutely levels the officeworker. That is precisely the way we need to think about Virtual Economies. Until someone guarantees that Linebackers will not be loose in the offioe, we cannot trust in real world models to describe or forecast Virtual Economies

ShamWow vs Healthcare

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:29:00 +0000

I asked a Psychiatrist the other day 3 questions:1. How do you define reality?2. Can someone have more than one reality?3. What does it mean to have a Passion for something?
Questions 1 and 2 are relevant to other work that I do, but question 3 is relevant to the current topic in this forum
the conversation went something like this:Me: what does it mean to have a passion for something?her: Well, you could have a passion for dancing.Me: is it the act of dancing, or the way dancing makes you feel? Like dancing may make somenone feel good..Her: dancing would be your passion because it makes you feel good.Me: so its not really that you have a passion for dancing, its that you have a passion for feeling good, so dancing could just as easiliy be skiing, or surfing?Her: yes, that is correctMe: do most people just say "I have a possion fo dancing" and leave it that? or do they analyze to the core components like I do?Her: most people don't analyze.
ok. so. I just bought a ShamWow on QVC and I feel awesome. I don't really care about a yellow towel, but I got a rush from spending money with the skinny guy who wears a fake microphone. Hmmm, is there some other way I could get the same rush? maybe this is the key to Health and Wellness. How can we deliver to someone the same ShamWow feeling when they take their medication as directed? there is an anwser to this question, and its not silly. Our first mistake is to ever assume that we can reprogram people. Our first step towards success will be in understanding what motivates different sorts of people top act

Can't Teach an old dog new tricks......

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:19:00 +0000

So, just checking the daily news alerts to see what's up. Found this:

"Essentially, the feds are asking EMRs to be social. And this is what the best one looks like:
Ha. Good luck. If Google can’t do it in a meaningful way, I guarantee the Health IT world won’t come close" http://blog.bradybouchard.ca/2009/10/when-it-starts-in-silos-it-will-never-go-social/

Fortunately the author has identified the certainty of failure for all those entering the space, saving everyone time, money and public humiliation.

For sure if "Google" can't do it, no one can. Maybe this is a satirical blog posting from that author, I'm just not sure.

It actually seems Google would be the least likely to succeed. Google has trouble seeing past their #1 ranking in Alexa. Google's entry into Health is based on a search engine foundation. Sure, many people need a good solid search engine, but many people also ride the subway. It should follow that a subway car is a fantastic place for health services: captive audience, in-line with daily life-flow, so what's the issue? Is a restroom a good place to sell shoes? How about reading the news in the shower. health services from a search engine? maybe we just need to be more patient, and open our minds to the essence of material things. Maybe Google isn't really a search engine. After all, can something really be defined based simply on how some people use it? I quite often use my cat as a doorstop. At what point is my cat more doorstop than cat? does it depend on how you look at it? what if I use my desk as a "ladder" to change a lightbulb? is it a desk, or a ladder? search engine or health services provider? when it matters is when you make assumptions about how many people will use their cat as a doorstop simply because you have marketed the idea....

Popular Adherence: Long Haul Stickiness

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:43:00 +0000

Ok, so I've really been thinking alot about Adherence, which is case you aren't familiar, is really just a name for a combination of Compliance and Persistence. Adherence is a common word when we talk about medications, but what I thinbk alot of people don't consider is that Adherence is a process that is applicable to just about everything in our lives. And I don't mean obvious things like "adhering to a diet". I mean: teenage use of texting could be described in Adherence language. A drug addicts' use of drugs could be desrcibed as Adherence, taking the car for maintenance, getting your nails done. These all consist of protocols that are easily followed or not, and the length of time for which they are followed can be considered in terms of persistence. How about Religion? your job? same basic formula. There is a protocol that describes the methods that needs to be followed to maintain the prescription, and there is a length of time over which the protocol is followed. For almost every activity, adherence will wax and wane. This is true for drug addicts, teenage texters, religious folk, and everyone else. Which is interesting because when we talk about adherence, the conversation is almost always dominated by "negative adjustments" that must be adhered to. fine, we understand. people who don;t like to exercise, or who need to eat less junk food, need to make what they perceive as "negattive adjustments" to their lives. or in otherwords, they level of pleasurable activity they are accustomed to is being curtailed, and the perception of this requirement is "negative but necessary". But, lets now consider activities which are inherently pleasurable, and should not need to be curtailed(due to adverse effects) but demonstrate waxing and waning adherence. I just discovered Mafia Wars on Face Book. It failed to engage me, but it has succeeded with 5 million other people. These folks comply with the protocol: they press the buttons, do the jobs, make the money, etc. click, click, click. that site is stiiiiiiicky. And they persist. everyday, lots of times everyday....make the money, do the job, click, click. I could get into what motivates people to Adhere to this game, but that is a whole post on its own(extremely relevant and essential, but needs to wait). so now we have 5m people clicking away daily. all pleasure. they are not gaining weight, cholesterol is not going up, etc. but........after awhile.......game players stop playing. if this were not true, everyone today would still be obsessed with Pac Man. so what happens? why stop adhering to such an awesome protocol? boredom, popularity shift, competing games, who knows. What is important is tha even the most purely pleasurable activities see Adherence wax and wane. So, why should we be so shocked when negatively perceived activities have fluctuating adherence. Well you say, "health should always be the priority. for some its a matter of life and death. how can you not adhere to a protocol that will save your life?" I would wager that if you told a kid that me must follow a protocol daily that resulted in a daily ice cream cone, you would see adherence wane over time. How can this be? Well we need to know exactly why this is, in order to understand why Uncle Fred stopped taking his cholesterol meds(all things being equal such as ability to pay, negative sides, etc). Where we end up: Adherence Profiles. these can be constructed by gathering data that describes a patients lifelong performance in regards to a miriad of activities: from brushing teeth, to watching football, to mowing the lawn, religion, etc. The point is: we must accept that there are unique profiles that describe a persons track record to adhering to anything. Through the definition and analysis of this profile, we can then construct an Adherence program that will best suite the patient. In many ways, the programs can be exactly the same, BUT, we apply an "Engagement Skin", which is an overlay on top of a common infrastructure, designed to get all sort of people engaged in performing what is essentially exactly the same activity.(Ilearned this trick from the MafiaWars/Sorority Life folks). Stay stuned for more on Life Adherence Profiles

Immersion: What we know about Casinos and Hypnotists

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I think the formulas exist already, no need to reinvent them. We will use Contextual Innovation to derive our Immersion formulas. I present two examples: Casinos and Hypnosis.
Casinos are all about immersion, further, they are also very much interested in “Sticky Immersion”. So lets show a couple of casino formulas:

Casino Immersion = Multi-sensory environment + elimination of “outside world” reminders + attentive needs fulfillment + “make me feel important”

Casino Sticky Immersion = Casino Immersion + Effective ability to meet expectations + Surpassment of expectations in an impactful way + delivery of services better than the next-best provider

Hypnosis is a blunt form of demonstrating Federated Reality(your awareness/mind are detached, but still in partnership with your body). Hypnosis may have its own goals, but the first objective is to shift patient awareness away from physical stimulation.

Hypnotic Immersion = patient willingness + effective tool(i.e. therapist)

VR must deliver the best of a Casino, and the willingness of a Hypnosis patient

VR Immersion = Union of(Casino Immersion + Hypnotic Immersion)
VR Sticky Immersion = Union of(Casino Sticky Immersion + Hypnotic Immersion)

Innovation in Education? Contradictory Terms?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:32:00 +0000

In reading a post just now regarding the lackof innovation in education, there were a couple of examples provided, and this sparked a couple of my own observations from first hand experiences:
From the Article:
1. Great innovation coming out of universities is accomplished despite the university(Shawn Fanning/Napster is the example)
- I think this is a fair point, and we quite often see precisely the same thing happening in major corporations. A corporate employee who has a fantastic idea, will quite often leave the company to pursue the idea. Maybe this is for IP reasons, but it is also due to the lack of support within the organization for innovation. In many large companies, certain people on certain teams are the "designated innovators". If you are not part of that club, you are on your own.
2. Educators are focused on content, not mediums & methods
- I see this in universities as well as corporations. In each scenario, curriculum designers(sometimes overseen by compliance/audit) need to ensure that specific information is relayed to the student. Especially in corporations, the burden is to to ensure that you can document the fact that the student saw the content, and passed a quiz on the content. Sometimes as much as 80% of the educational effort is in tracking course completion, rather than ensuring the learner comprehended and can therefore deploy the knowledge
From my own Experience:
1. Education-lifers(those that studied to become teachers, and are currently teachers), tend to have a very different take on teaching methods then those current teachers who may have spent a career in Business, and then decided to become a professor.
- I will admit that almost all of my contact with educators is either at Universities or Corporations. I can generally tell almost immediately if an instructor was educated to teach, or whether the educator is teaching based on life/work experience. In my opinion, educators with a history of work experience inherently ensure that the information they are communicating is done so in such a way the learners are involved in understanding the implications for "knowledge execution". If you have lived/breathed knowledge-execution for 2 decades, you will almost certainly focus your teaching style on the end-objectives of having/using this knowledge. And in many cases, these educators will seek the best methods possible for communicating information. (don't get me started on the Pedagogy/Andragogy debate)
2. Quite often, education does not employ the same tools as business
- In my consulting practice it is not unusual to see a corporation using one set of tools to train employees, then see another set of tools given to the employees to do their job. We would not train car mechanics this way, why do we train corporate professionals this way?
3. Very often, educational software providers do not focus on what their customers(and the customers students) are asking for.
- This is my favorite so I saved it for last. I am presenting at an upcoming educational conference and the gist of what I am going to say is: we must educate the workforce of tomorrow(and today), using the tools that they will be using on the job. Now, depending on the industry, these tools will certainly be more innovative then asynchronous text messaging and powerpoint in a browser. I work with curriculum designers at Universities and corporations helping them understand what tools are available - and not just what their approved vendor has told them their product can do. There is a massive difference. I also have spoken to major LMS providers(for Universities and Corporate), and these folks have told me(and they believe what they say) that their customers only want what the vendor is currently providing. Hmmm, maybe the vendor only talks to procurement or IT? Because I get a very, very different message when I talk to professors and students. To the LMS vendor, the "customer" is the Payer. Who writes the checks? An LMS vendor must ensure that the check-writer is happy. And we should not assume that the check-writer is constantly communicating with the professor, or that the professor is always taking the pulse of student likes/dislikes. I suppose we could also argue that people won't want what they don't know exists. This however does not equal contentment. Students and Professors know what they like/dislike, regardless of whether they know about choices. Awareness of alternatives will however change how people respond to what they like/dislike(hope for improvement may spark action).

Big Pharma must go Deep, and Maybe not so wide

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:13:00 +0000

Pharma has changed considerably in the last decade. The days of Star-drugs mass marketed with an eye on volume seem to have come and gone. The holy grail now are super-premium drugs that treat special-case illnesses. They are expensive for sure, but if they work, they will be purchased. Pharma has always cared about patient outcomes, but now they must care even more. Adherence is the new mantra. Adherence to a drug that is effective has no choice but to boost Outcomes. A drug with the highest ranking Outcomes, will be the winner. So, if Adherence = Compliance + Persistence, investment must be in not only Promotion, but Compliance as well..

VR has its place, and its place is not Everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:56:00 +0000

I was just checking out the following Survey conducted by Forbes Magazine. How frustrating.

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=65560894&gid=1391417&srchCat=WOTC&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2E3dtlc%2Enet%2F2009%2F09%2Fforbes-survey-concludes-against-virtual-meetings%2Ehtml&urlhash=drEr

I really don't think that Forbes needed an elaborate study to demonstrate that executives prefer face-face meetings. I'm not sure that anyone with a solid understanding of business operations would even consider challeging this truism. I believe that Forbe's could have provided significantly more value to the tech industry by asking more informed questions, such as:1. when a face-face meeting is not possible due to time, money, etc. what do you feel would be the next best alternative?2. Of the face-face alternatives currently in your "Toolbox", which do prefer, and why> How could these tools be improved?3. We all understand that many people don't fully engage themselves on conference calls, webex's, etc. Assuming that face-face is not always viable, how could current state technologies be improved to increase participant engagement?
In my daily work, I have to handle "results" and objections that are consistent with the Forbes conclusion. I have been lecturing for the past year about a "Toolbox" approcah to business. In your Toolbox for example, would be: Telephone, Email, IM, Webex/Live Meeting, Video Conference, Virtual Reality, and Face-Face. Given all the variables in play when a task needs to be completed, the business user should select the most appropriate technology. "Appropriate" considers: time, money, priority, logistics, etc. We cannot/should not try to force a round peg into a square hole. Instead, we need users to understand the pros/cons of each tool in their Toolbox, and select the appropriate tool for the task. Its really a waste of everyone's time to talk about how "VR will replace Face-Face". The RIGHT word to use instead of replace, is "Augment". VR can Augment the business toolbox. A business user will likely select the tool that can best accomplish the task, assuming it is easy to use and stable. And just like we saw 10 years ago with the flight to the internet: the good ideas that have survived a decade are those that can accomplish a task better(faster, better, cheaper) than an exsiting tool, or can provide a service that is simply not possible in the real world. The same is tru of VR: it is a massive blunder to target uses of VR that are better accomplished using another means. The correct strategy is to focus on scenarios in which there is no "better alternative". leverage VR for its unique abilities: accomplish this task and you have become an essential tool, not just a nice to have tool

What is Virtual Reality?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:37:00 +0000

•According to Winifred Gallagher, author of the recently published “Rapt”, we constantly make decisions determining what we are going to pay attention to. Any events, experiences, and activities not within the scope of our chosen interest will not exist to us as we immerse ourselves in our selected targets of concentration and focus. What we choose to concentrate on defines our state of consciousness and becomes our Reality.

• The fact that our mind and body may be “in two different places at the same time” is not a unique characteristic of Virtual Reality, and does not therefore create the need to refer to this immersive technology as “Virtual Reality”
–If we are deep within our own thoughts, and no longer mindful of our physical surroundings, are we in “virtual reality” ?
–If we are reading a news article on a website, and are so engrossed that we forget that we are late for a meeting, do we say that “virtual reality” interfered with “physical reality”?

•The power of “Virtual Reality” software is in its ability to emancipate the mind from the body, making physical “reality” a minor element of our Federated Reality.
–Federated Reality has two parts:
•Consciousness
•Physical Existence
–For our purposes, we will always need to address the requirements of Physical Existence and Consciousness. However, it is our objective to relegate Physical Existence to nothing more than a set of requirements for accessing a medium that will manipulate the Consciousness away from Physical Existence

•In other words, people have bodies: eyes, hands, etc. We must build software that provides convenient physical access. But after t hat, the vast majority of our attention will be turned to capturing the full attention of the user
–We use “federated” to mean that the two parts of Reality have a partnership, but are not so close as to be synonymous. They are individualy self-sustaining.

•At Étape Partners we believe that there is only one relevant reality, and it is defined as:
– A context of stimulation that acutely focuses awareness and defines our state of consciousness.

Data Visualization

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Bauer, OnTrack Technology, Inc) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:36:00 +0000

How do we use immersive, multisensory technology to create interactive representations of information that go beyond adding another dimension to a well established format of information display?
I agree that immersive 3D helps with visualization, but I believe that we have not yet cracked the code on how best to use VR to provide the human brain with the most efficient exposure to data/problem solving.

and to continue my thought, I see VR misused in many different ways: creating a conference room in which you display a powerpoint presentation, creating a library filled with books, allowing web searches that float the pages returns in space, etc. there are many examples of how the multi-sensory dimensionality possibilities of VR are not used,in favor of simply extending a well establish model(eg, adding a 3rd dimension to a chart).much of what we have established in 2D modeling was done so because there were no other variables to leverage(not including time).What I am puzzled by is what I refer to as the “can’t find my shoes dilemma”. When I am at home, and I cannot find my shoes, I do not visualize a spreadsheet with a line item for all the possible locations of my shoes. What I do, is visualize my entire house, with subconcsious prioritization of the the most likely locations. and look at that – my shoes are sitting right by the door where I left them. in this case, adding a 3rd dimension to a spreadsheet will not help me much. BUT, providing a 3D representation of the “universe” of possible outcomes, with some baked in prioritization, this is how my brain works, and this is possible in VR.