The Synchronetic ET, LLC Blog, brought to you by Etape Partners, LLC.

Overheard in the hallway: Cortana debating Siri regarding whether or not they exist. Commentary by Google Now....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 21:26:00 +0000

Overheard in the hallway: Cortana debating Siri regarding whether or not they exist.
Commentary by Google Now....

Seriously. Really? Possibly. Stay-tuned for the transcript/audio/video

"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Did too"
"She started it..."
"Did not"
"Did too"
"It's all Her fault..."
Well, what really happened was probably more interesting.

“Black Boxed and Forewarned”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:10:00 +0000

“Black Boxed and Forewarned”

“In the absence of light, there is only darkness, and that, is indeed something to see…."

- Proceed with Caution if you’re expectations are defined by failure

- Proceed with Reckless abandon if your expectations are

- Proceed with Pragmatism and Reason, if you’ve no business being here in the first place

- Proceed with Confidence if you are truly that Arrogant

- Proceed with Hesitancy if you never want to return

- Proceed with the Kinetically Charged Entropic Perceptions of the Udarniki if you seek Everything, and

Nothing, and will be satisfied with Neither

Empirical Ramparts of ADD: How a system of collaborative diversity may be singularly achieved (or not):

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 00:07:00 +0000

Empirical Ramparts of ADD: How a system of collaborative diversity may be singularly achieved (or not):

It has been suggested that the seemingly random hops between areas of awareness and focus can potentially be harnessed in the presence of adequate meta-cognition and equitable splits between left/right brain personalities.

What follows is an empirical monologue. Delivered “live”, in one Take, to try and expose the unbridled cognitive wanderings of a single person. With the question being: has anything meaningful been produced, and could more or less, better or worse have been constructed by a group of more than one?

*********************************************************

It’s times like right now that need to be captured. I've got 10 urgent things to do, from Mom’s birthday, to preparation for an art show, $3M in Legal Contracts to draft by Monday, 2 sorrowfully neglected minor companies that need tending, women, family, and entertainment (which ironically these days, is just a mind game of pretending that maybe some Work is not Work, and is thus Entertainment…..I fail to see the logic in my logic….)

From Business plans to love letters, BDSM Dungeon design to optimized architectural renderings of hospital Emergency Rooms: Is there a difference? Didn’t it all come from the same place? It’s not like 3 fingers on my right hand are responsible for the mathematics of Quantum Physics (but that is a very small point), with the other 2 reserved for Legal Contracts. And what of my other hand, I often use it. So by every right, its purpose is full, but not tidily aligned to say, charcoal sketches of Giraffes scampering across the grassy perceptions of the outdated shag carpeting that unfortunately adorns my living room, and at Minimum! Should soon be harvested and bailed. The point being that a concurrent diversity of tasks with seeming similarities in Urgency, can’t exactly be delegated to small teams of my anatomy, with an agreement that we will all meet back together in an hour to discuss progress….”It dudn’t work like thut”, although the geezer in that British Advert can say it better than I can. The point remains the same, even when the song does not, and that is in no way the fault of LZ! So please do not take my words out of context and misquote me on that bit.

I tend to be most innovative/creative when its 4th and goal, score tied, 2 seconds on the clock, and I am playing offense, defense, head coach, offense coach, defense coach, team owner, and trying to build a cheerleading squad at the same time. And I can tell you, that cheerleaders seem like all fun and games from a mile away in the bleacher seats, but they are in fact much better close-up( at least most of the time).

My style appears to be a perfect example of ADHD+CPA+Faux Multi-tasking mixed with Reali-tasking (reality + task list, where tactical reality drives priority, BUT, cross-pollination occurs rapidly and unexpectedly).

But the game is played in Fast Forward, and like a dream, once you wake up, you cannot go back. Why? It simply is not understood in this day and age how to re-enter a dream after waking…..But I suppose that is not the point.

I recorded a fantastic piece of video footage not long ago. I mounted the camera facing sideways out of the car window, so instead of forward looking, what we see is a mess of a blur of “stuff” that smears by at somewhere between 60-100mph, depending. So the question begging to be asked is: are you the seasoned quarterback? Or the side-liner, whose eyes get all watery from the rush of life screaming past you, kicking up all sort of detritus dislodged from your anchor-like baggage that kept you on the sidelines in the first place.

I will continue as long as you are all either with me, or against me, but, as the exact nature of your participation is completely irrelevant to what I am about to write( it will only be at some point in the future that your position will be determined anyway), so , since I don’t know the thoughts you will be thinking at some point in the future, I will carry on as if I don’t know…….but I do know that I need to focus on something, if I am to in any way expect some cohesiveness to this bit of writing. Furthermore, I should also make best efforts to ensure that whatever I focus on is as singular as possible (or of course the purpose of focusing is defeated), and I should also make every effort to be relevant. Well that needs to be qualified: I can write pretty much anything, and be relevant to something, someone, somewhere, at some time. But even I could be convinced that relevancy should in this case contain pragmatic relevancy, and not so much philosophically vague relevancy.

"NOW" creates a context of space-time bounded by Not only your deliberate consciousness/awareness, but also by our subconscious that never takes time off (because we include dreams) But the output from our subconscious is not something that can be actively managed with any certainty. The output can often be articulated, but there is no guarantee that what is presented will be useful, helpful or harmful.

But if you listen for the output, and pause to think about it, depending on your meta-cognitive abilities, there quite often is invaluable information included in the package being delivered from that elusive cognitive super computer that never turns off (but it might be even more correct to say that if it does turn off, “we”/I probably would not know…..)

Innovation is driven by the injection of diversity into a process. Think about this: will a team of 5 people, with identical histories, and identical objectives, have less success at creating something new, than a team of 5 people who "seemingly" have nothing in common?

"Seemingly" being the key word because there is always a common denominator, or mode of knowledge transfer/communication that provides just enough cohesion to enable the crystallization and subsequent articulation of something truly new( at least to the group, if not anyone else.)

Now what if you took that team of 5 entirely diverse minds, and stuffed them into one cognitive entity (without completely fracturing personality)?

You just might end up with someone who, just like the team of 5 diverse people, is far more capable of driving innovation than the completely homogenous team that is bounded by the sameness of their individual experiences.

So you by now have come to anticipate the conclusion I am driving towards: IF you can provide a layer of cohesion across the top of the seemingly random hops between tasks so often observable when ADD is present (and no I am not suggesting something alarmist like MPD), and there is enough meta-cognition present to be aware of this cohesive layer, it may be possible to present a thesis that among some small number of people, ADD is a point of self-contained collaborative leverage.

I also think that an obvious, tangible method of capturing this Cognitive "team", or at least Partially Managed Federation of Awareness Time Slices, comes in potentially 2 forms: that which must be cognitively perceived, I.e. Writing, or that which is sensorily perceived: Art.

BUT, because of the complexity of the subject matter(s) you must not expect either form of tangible output to make sense to most people.

It must be translated from Actual, to commonly comprehensible

For example: I produce a picture, and it’s certainly going to represent something, nothing, or many things.

It all depends on who you are.

Same in my writing, most people have no idea what I am talking about when I produce an abstract poetic narrative piece, or even when I don’t.

But if I explain it, or show a video that goes with it; I find the same to be true with my photos, it suddenly becomes obvious to the observer after everything is explained. No magic there I suppose.

And while that observer might enjoy the pretty picture, or the catchy phrase in the middle of a 3 page narrative; that person will unlikely be able to extrapolate on the work, in any way.

Now of course, that only matters depending on the reason the observer is observing.

Now look at the “pretty pictures” the “team” has put together.

What do you see?

Are you sure?

Does it matter?

Who. Are. You? And what have you got to offer?

You see, the party is well hosted, the guest(s) completely shattered.

Schismaticus Rex rears his asymmetrically formed head, one eye looking there, the other looking here, and laughs in a mournful howl of delightful misery.

But is it really a case of Multiple Reality Disorder? I mean, after all, the party is contained under one roof, and the only real danger is to danger itself, for it faces the very real possibility of not being recognized, and does this not mean that within the Cognitive playground through which we are rompering, that maybe then it just doesn’t exist? Like a vampire devoiding a mirror, unrecognized danger, that potentially bears no consequence, may not in fact exist. And if that logic is not a perfect example of what could be real, trampling over what could real, then I don’t know what is. But then again, that is precisely why we are here in the first place: I think it was during a great time of cognitive frenzy, in the midst of a very Cold War, that a formula was derived that used lots of Greek letters, and other pagan symbols of so called science, but demonstrated scientifically( which really just means on a chalkboard, as was the custom at the time) that the thoughts, traditionally classified as either distinctly Right Brained or Left brained, could occur at definable frequencies and amplitudes such that some very cool looking wave like patterns could be drawn in chalk. I have also heard that under the right circumstances, this wave pattern could manifest audibly, and if the frequency and amplitude of these bipolarizations were just so, a harmonic was discernible, but only to dogs. At the time this was not well understood (except to the poor dogs), and that is likely still true today, but I’ll bet dollars to dog-toys that Rover ain’t gonna tell you….

So how many licks does it take to get to the center of crazy? I have absolutely no idea, and I cannot confirm or deny that I may or may not be seeking to answer this question. Only time will tell, but like they say “Things that may only be understood , or at least only heard by dogs, are not easily explained to humans”, with the possible exception of a man named Sam, who, even by today’s standards would unlikely be referred to as a “dog whisperer”, he certainly did claim that he conversed regularly with his dog, who, may not have actually been the source of some very bad ideas, but I think it’s fair to say that as a team, the collaborative results were not exactly in line with the Dr. Doolittle sort of conversations that are the stuff of amusing children’s stories.

Enjoy it while you can. The Freedom that comes from being detached from reality does not often last long, and should be savored, for soon enough, Truth, crashes the crazy party and everyone is required to behave again. I blame Hobbes. Maybe wrongly so, be he’s the one who wrote it down….that if we desire an organized society, we have to play by the rules. So maybe it’s not his fault, but I think we can all agree that he may have spoiled the party just a little…

In conclusion, I suppose I could say just about anything at this point, and no claim could be made that it was not consistent with main portions of this essay. So I am faced with something of a dilemma: just how do you give a haircut to a Hydra? How do you “end cap” streaking trails of every snap, crackle and pop from the Grand Finale of a 4^th of July fireworks extravaganza? If this were a movie, we could sort of just fade to black I suppose. If this were a stage production, we could swing close the curtains. But what could we say that would be the literary equivalent of these “accepted” forms of exit? I fear that this is where my shortcomings as a writer can no longer be hidden. If this paper had a back door, I suppose I could quickly exit through it. And that would be: The End…..but, I think I will take the alternate ending:

" In the absence of light, there is only dark. And that is indeed something to see…."

Institutional Knowledge Stagnation: Andragogy vs Pedagogy and the Requirement for Innovative Catalysts within Various Educational Constructs Pertaining to Large Corporations

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 01:46:00 +0000

Considerations and Methodology for Designing a Virtual World Solution for a Large Corporation

Brian Bauer

Étape Partners, USA
8-29-2009

Abstract

Our Case Study centers on a publically traded Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company based in the United States. With over 100,000 employees spread across many countries, physical separation of the workforce is an everyday reality. In our Case, it was not the goal to attempt to unite the entire company; rather, it was our goal to provide a means to overcome the obstacles that present themselves when physically disparate coworkers must perform seamlessly to complete a business process.

In the following Case Study we determined that although users were open minded to trying Virtual Worlds and other types of Immersive technologies, the solutions delivered needed to provide task oriented functionality that was directly in line with everyday business process. Using this basic requirement, we developed a Virtual Corporate Environment Business Tool (VCEBT^©) box.

The VCEBT^© philosophy is grounded on the principal that business process is accomplished by following a set of business methods each performed using a set of business tools. While it may sound like a rigid and inflexible way to describe a knowledge-worker environment, we find that the process-method-tools definition applies to most environments quite well. Our goal is to introduce new tools that increase the effectiveness of this process in terms of its ability to meet clearly defined business objectives.

The VCEBT^© framework does not attempt to change people or the work that they do. VCEBT^©’s do augment the business tool box, providing highly efficient tools designed to solve real world challenges that can restrict a business’s ability to maximize business performance.

Introduction

What is Virtual Reality (VR)?

Some will tell you that it is an unreal environment that has no firm connection to “real life”. Merriam Webster (2009), for example, defines Virtual Reality as “an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially determine what happens in the environment”. In other words, what happens there stays there, and there are no real consequences for actions. Others will tell you that if someone is fully engaged and immersed in Virtual Reality, then it is the only reality that is “happening” to them while they are experiencing it, In the movie “ The Matrix” the subjects are forced to choose between “realities” that are both very “real”. The choice between which reality to “exist” in becomes very philosophical and grounded on fuzzy concepts like faith, and beliefs. Is this a challenge that we want to confront in 2009 in the workplace? Or is there a more elegant way to introduce Immersive technologies?

According to Winifred Gallagher (2009), 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 and 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 that, 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 individually self-sustaining. We assert 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.

Virtual Reality as a Tool for business

The newest VR technology provides a fully immersive 3D experience in which the user of the technology adopts the persona of a character (avatar) that exists in a software based “world” designed to have the look and feel of a physical office or learning institution. The users of Virtual Reality technology operate in the 3D space and see objects and people from the Point of View of their avatar inside the technology. Common activities inside the Virtual Reality software include:

- Meetings, in which a collection of avatars collocate in a virtual meeting room with the look and feel of a physical meeting. Audio is provided by integrated conference bridges

- Instruction/Assessment, in which teachers are able to interact with students in an authentic way. The use of avatars and realistic activity makes role-play based teaching and testing a powerful exercise in engagement

- Learning, game-play embedded in the Virtual Reality technology creates a framework for self-study. Study that combines an immersive environment with fun has been demonstrated to improve interest in self-study as well as data retention rates

- Structured and Unstructured Coworker encounters, Virtual Reality technology enables groups of people who may be physically separated to come together for formal and informal get-togethers. Frequent and often unstructured encounters with colleagues help to recreate some of the advantage that is lost when associated coworkers become physically separated.

High quality virtual reality can be a very effective medium for gaining an employee’s full attention. It is also a powerful tool that can be used for teaching and collaboration. But do we need a “world” to accomplish our business objectives? Or are we better served with a set of Business Tools that are deployed as needed in specific situations? After all, we are not trying to create the “Matrix” we are trying to achieve business results. Employees use Business Tools to accomplish tasks that are part of a process followed to achieve a result. As such, we can think of Virtual Reality as a business tool, if deployed the right way. Think of it this way: when Microsoft first created MS Word, were they attempting to change the way in which people fundamentally did their jobs? Or were they looking to create a vastly improved typewriter? More than 20 year later we might argue that Microsoft Office has fundamentally changed the way people work, but in the beginning, the goals were more modest. We believe that revolutionary change happens incrementally. Paradigm shifting tools are delivered discretely and become ubiquitous. When the timing is right, these tools can be conjoined, and we will find that the office-of-the-future exists.

The Virtual Corporate Environment (VCE) represents a collection of Business Tools (BT). VCEBT^©’s are designed to help accomplish business tasks in new and more effective ways. A thoughtfully connected group of VCEBT^©’s will yield a “virtual corporate world”. This Case Study steps through the basic elements of how to successfully design, implement, and ensure a successful VCE.

Mission and Objectives

Mission

The VCE will be an environment that exists for bringing together associates who are separated not only by physical space, but by function as well. The VCE will enable both structured and casual encounters with coworkers much in the same way people would interact with each other when they work in close physical proximity. The belief is that the facilitation of more frequent and impactful encounters with coworkers will enhance working relationships and ultimately yield improved business results driven by increased productivity and efficiency.

Objectives

• Improve business results through increased efficiency and productivity

• Improve process-awareness such that work styles begin to adapt to process-oriented-results rather than functional results

• Create an environment that encourages results oriented process improvement

• Improve productivity by increasing the ease and effectiveness of associate collaboration

• To create a working process-oriented virtual environment that is modeled on physical reality, but reduces well established physical-world challenges

• To create a virtual environment that is cognizant of existing collaboration challenges, and establishes bridges to overcome these challenges

• To create a virtual environment for associate contact such that individuals may become more aware of each other’s personalities and work-styles enabling coworkers to make subtle adaptations to interactions with the goal of process improvement based on more efficient personal workflows

Current State

Why Consider a VCE?

A Virtual Corporate Environment (VCE) will help unify our client’s diverse population of associates who are both physically separated and functionally discrete. Efficiency and effectiveness can be raised to levels not currently achievable in the physical space resulting in favorably impacted business results. The VCE will be an environment that exists for bringing together associates who are separated not only by physical space, but by function as well.

The VCE will enable both structured and casual encounters with coworkers much in the same way people would interact with other when they work in close physical proximity. The belief is that the facilitation of more frequent and impactful encounters with coworkers will enhance working relationships and ultimately yield improved business results driven by increased productivity and efficiency. A VCE will create a collaborative and social environment that encourages both formal and informal coworker encounters. It is anticipated that increased encounters between functional silo’d and physically separated associates will encourage communication and cross-functional awareness among individuals and groups who are all part of a cross-functional process.

Process awareness that transcends functional responsibilities is believed to be a key enabler of success when the goal is to improve a singular result. The VCE will create a platform for ensuring that all associates are well equipped with an understanding of business priority, cultural principals and process oriented objectives. It is believed that if all process contributors are fully immersed in process and not just function, the unique ability of each contributor will help to improve the quality of the end result. In today’s corporate environment defined by flexible work schedules, disparate physical locations and functional alignment, providing an impactful tool that breaks through these process-challenges is essential. The VCE is such a tool.

Is the Client audience ready for a VCE?

An extensive polling of the target employee population yielded the following results:

Figure 1, Polling Results

Increase the Ease and Effectiveness of Associate Collaboration

Coworkers in the same department are two-thirds more likely to collaborate if their offices are on the same corridor than if their offices are simply on the same floor If they were not in the same department, then being on the same corridor boosted their likelihood of collaborating by over 8 times. Collaboration is about: initiating communication, conducting a conversation, and maintaining awareness of the state of the environment, task, and team. The more senses and stimuli brought into the equation, that are direct contributors to the situation, the more poised the situation becomes for impactful collaboration.

Proximity increases frequency of communication. All else being equal, people communicate most with those who are physically close by. Proximity increases the frequency of communication by putting people who have the prerequisites for conversation in each other’s presence. A VCE will seek to fabricate proximity my making a multi-sensory encounter with a remote colleague both easy to initiate and lifelike.

The magic of an office environment is contained in the atmosphere. However, even offices where the benefit of coworker proximity is ever present can lack focus. An immersive environment creates focused, situational collective knowledge. Within the constructs of well-defined Process, the value of a VCE is magnified as more productive, more collaborative and more synergistic. Many of our client’s team members charged with collaboration and connected by process, are also having to overcome challenges of being dis-intermediated by time, distance, and functional area. Achieving business goals that include reaching new levels of customer intimacy and customer service will require that challenges put into the path of employees be removed. The VCE embodies a methodology that targets very specific inefficiencies created by a physically disparate workforce.

Reduce well Established Physical-world Challenges

The “Office of the Future” has been crafted in the minds of designers and scientists for decades. In almost all cases the resulting plans were exclusively physical (e.g. floor plans, etc.). We now understand that the real “Office of the Future” is not just physical, it is a combination of location, technology and awareness that transcends physical boundaries to create a “virtual co-location”.

The “Office of the Future” will consist of several nuances of what we know today but will also possess its own unique innovative ways of creating a working environment. The bindings that will create “virtual co-location” will be stronger than physical proximity due to this workforce’s connection through process awareness, collaboration and tools. Due to this, workers stand a good chance at being more effective than a dysfunctional collective that happens to be physically together. Organizational capability is another edge to differentiate companies from their competition. Visionary companies translate their ideologies into tangible mechanisms aligned to send a consistent set of reinforcing signals. They impose tightness of fit, and create a sense of belonging to something special through practical, concrete items.

Client Business Objectives

Both organizational business objectives as well as financial objectives exist in the current state of the VCE acceptance process. Organizational business objects are those linked not only to the business and its product(s) but also to the development of customer relations. Customer intimacy, such as customer service and service quality for example, are great way to enhance the level of effective engagement.

Aside from the relationship of the product to the customer, objectives in respect to business performance and product quality must also be set. An objective of high productivity increased output with the same or fewer people. Similarly, the idea of a same or lower cost production of higher quality output is an objective as is the objective to reclaim “proximity driven” value lose due to Flextime and working from home.

Lastly, an objective of partnership and collaboration is key to furthering innovation and insight that yield to business impacting actions. Education and training will also help with this.

In collaboration with organizational objectives, financial objectives should be set for several reasons. First, the objective of cost savings can only serve to be beneficial to any business. With lower production costs, organizational business objectives can also be met with lower costs. Secondly, revenue generation, for example, is a financial objective because better training yields more sales. It will also shorten the time-to-useful cycle of on-boarding. Lastly, Cost avoidance is important because more impactful training yields fewer repeats which saves money as well as resources.

VCE and Business Process Objectives

Business Processes targeted by the VCE include:

· Improve business results through increased efficiency and productivity.

· Improve process-awareness such that work styles begin to adapt to process-oriented-results rather than functional results.

· Create an environment that encourages results oriented process improvement.

· Improve productivity by increasing the ease and effectiveness of associate collaboration.

· To create a working process-oriented virtual environment that is modeled on physical reality, but reduces well established physical-world challenges.

· To create a virtual environment that is cognizant of existing collaboration challenges, and establishes bridges to overcome these challenges.

· To create a virtual environment for associate contact such that individuals may become more aware of each other’s personalities and work-styles enabling coworkers to make subtle adaptations to interactions with the goal of process improvement based on more efficient personal workflows.

Improve Efficiency and Productivity

If we are trying to improve knowledge worker performance, it is necessary to define it. The definition of the American Productivity and Quality Center is, "the relationship between what is put into a piece of work and what is yielded (output)" (APQC) The application of this broad definition presents a challenge since everyone defines outputs differently, especially for the "knowledge worker," whose work is characterized by intangible, ill-defined, and uncountable outputs, processes, linkage to the company’s strategic objectives, performance criteria, and high independence.

As our client continues to push for more value from their assets and greater performance, there has been a surge of interest in considering the place of work, i.e., the real estate and facilities location and characteristics, as an important part of the ecology or system. This approach is especially relevant as corporations explore new workplace approaches by rethinking how, when and where people work. Planning an integrated workplace can result in solutions which change, not only the physical work setting, but the other parameters, such as behaviors, processes, and technologies. As we observe today at our client, larger corporate motivations for facilitating a physically disparate workforce present challenges that must be overcome at the Business Unit level.

Encourage Results Oriented Process Improvement that align to Business Goals

An organization's strategic goals should provide the key direction for any Business Process Improvement exercise. Alignment of function to process is another major consideration. Increased intimacy among process participants will improve alignment.

Customer Focus

Fast-changing customer needs underscore the importance of aligning business processes to achieve higher customer satisfaction. It is imperative in any BPI exercise that the "Voice of Customer" be known, and factored in, when reviewing or redesigning any process.

Establish Process Owners

For any process to be controllable, it is essential that there be clarity on who the process owners are as well as what constitutes success/failure of the process. These success/failure levels also help establish "control limits" for the process, and provide a healthy check on whether or not a process is meeting the desired customer objectives.

In an effort to increase the ease and effectiveness of associate collaboration, scientific research has been used to explain office occurrences. It has been found that physical proximity encourages collaboration. In some cases, degrees of collaboration can be multiples if offices are next to each other.

Reduce well Established Physical-world Challenges

We now understand that the real “Office of the Future” is not just physical, it is a combination of location, technology and awareness that transcends physical boundaries to create a “virtual co-location”. As well as a stronger bind than those created through physically proximity, a “virtual co-location”, companies using virtual reality will differentiate themselves from their competition through their organizational capability and this will give them an edge.

Visionary companies translate their ideologies into tangible mechanisms aligned to send a consistent set of reinforcing signals. They impose tightness of fit, and create a sense of belonging to something special through practical, concrete items.

Establish Bridges to Overcome Collaboration Challenges

We can loosely define a collaborative process as integrating the communication, cooperation and coordination (3Cs) perspectives with functional, behavioral and organizational perspectives.

The dimensionality of the “collaboration matrix” does not scale, it simply needs to stretch or contract to fit an organization. For example, the Actor Network Theory (ANT) states that, entities (or, the collaborative semantic concepts) take their form and acquire their attributes as a result of their relation with other entities (within the collaborative processes) (Crawford, 2004). The relationships take their shapes at the “entity edges”. In other words, people attempting to collaborate form inter-personal relationships based on their relationships with others.

These relationships are effective in direct correlation to the degree in which the “entity edges” are allowed to come into contact with each other in impactful ways (non-impactful “touches” will not shape the edges. A good collaborative process model must not focus solely on the flow and transformation of data within the system but also focus on the communication, cooperation and coordination (3Cs) among the actors

Introduction to Authentic Learning

Authentic learning typically focuses on real-world, complex problems and their solutions, using role-playing exercises, problem-based activities, case studies, and participation in virtual communities of practice. The learning environments are inherently multidisciplinary. They are “not constructed in order to teach geometry or to teach philosophy. A learning environment is similar to some ‘real world’ application or discipline: managing a city, building a house, flying an airplane, setting a budget, solving a crime, for example.

Educational researchers have found that students involved in authentic learning are motivated to persevere despite initial disorientation or frustration, as long as the exercise simulates what really counts—the social structure and culture that gives the discipline its meaning and relevance. The learning event essentially encourages students to compare their personal interests with those of a working disciplinary community: “Can I see myself becoming a member of this culture? What would motivate me? What would concern me? How would I work with the people around me? How would I make a difference?

Authentic learning may be more important than ever in a rapidly changing world, where the half-life of information is short and individuals can expect to progress through multiple careers. Expert thinking and complex communication will differentiate those with career-transcending skills from those who have little opportunity for advancement. It also involves the ability to identify and solve problems for which there is no routine solution. This requires pattern recognition and metacognition. Another differentiator is complex communication, such as persuading, explaining, negotiating, gaining trust, and building understanding.

Although foundational skills (reading, writing, mathematics, history, language) remain essential, a more complex set of competencies are required today. These go beyond being technically competent to being able to get things done, demonstrate ethics and integrity, and work well with others. The most important skills in new hires are quickly becoming teamwork, critical thinking/reasoning, assembling/organizing information, and innovative thinking/creativity

10 design elements of Authentic Learning

1. Real-world relevance: Authentic activities match the real-world tasks of professionals in practice as nearly as possible. Learning rises to the level of authenticity when it asks students to work actively with abstract concepts, facts, and formulae inside a realistic—and highly social—context mimicking “the ordinary practices of the [disciplinary] culture.”

2. Ill-defined problem: Challenges cannot be solved easily by the application of an existing algorithm; instead, authentic activities are relatively undefined and open to multiple interpretations, requiring students to identify for themselves the tasks and subtasks needed to complete the major task.

3. Sustained investigation: Problems cannot be solved in a matter of minutes or even hours. Instead, authentic activities comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources.

4. Multiple sources and perspectives: Learners are not given a list of resources. Authentic activities provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, using a variety of resources, and requires students to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information in the process.

5. Collaboration: Success is not achievable by an individual learner working alone. Authentic activities make collaboration integral to the task, both within the course and in the real world.

6. Reflection (metacognition): Authentic activities enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning, both individually and as a team or community.

7. Interdisciplinary perspective: Relevance is not confined to a single domain or subject matter specialization. Instead, authentic activities have consequences that extend beyond a particular discipline, encouraging students to adopt diverse roles and think in interdisciplinary terms.

8. Integrated assessment: Assessment is not merely summative in authentic activities but is woven seamlessly into the major task in a manner that reflects real-world evaluation processes.

9. Polished products: Conclusions are not merely exercises or sub-steps in preparation for something else. Authentic activities culminate in the creation of a whole product, valuable in its own right.

10. Multiple interpretations and outcomes: Rather than yielding a single correct answer obtained by the application of rules and procedures, authentic activities allow for diverse interpretations and competing solutions.

Authentic Learning and the Introduction of Virtual Reality

With the help of the Internet and a variety of communication, visualization, and simulation technologies, large numbers of professionals can begin to reconstruct the past, observe phenomena using remote instruments, and make valuable connections with mentors around the world. Similarly, with access to online research communities, learners are able to gain a deeper sense of a discipline as a special “culture” shaped by specific ways of seeing and interpreting the world. They begin to grasp the subtle, interpersonal, and unwritten knowledge that members in a community of practice use (often unconsciously) on a daily basis. “Learning becomes as much social as cognitive, as much concrete as abstract, and becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration,” just as it is in an actual workplace (Atwell, 2004).

Virtual Reality tools can aid in this the transformation from science to application.

A Culture of Learning

"A learning [culture] is one that is skilled at creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge, and at purposefully modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights."

Actionable Education.

Are you more or less interested in learning about something that you can use every day, or never use? People have their own perceptions of what they can use on the job. If management and student have differing perceptions, this must be corrected.

Passive resistance in learning and development appears when there is no perceived benefit to completing the training. Can we achieve a culture of learning by, for example, counting course credits? If you believe in Transformative Learning, then the answer is no. I think we see many examples of people attending classes, getting credit, but not transforming. Is a paper-based culture is learning enough?

Transformative Learning.

Transformative learning is basically the kind of learning we do as we make meaning of our lives. It's become a very popular topic in adult education because it doesn't just involve classroom learning--it involves learning about our lives. This is important because as adults, the meaning making process can change everything about how we look at work, family, and the world.

There is a set of steps that adults go through when they experience transformation and those steps are:

· Experiencing a disorienting dilemma.

· Self-examination.

· Critical assessment of assumptions.

· Recognizing that others have gone through a similar process.

· Exploring options.

· Formulating a plan of action.

· Reintegration.

Transformation is something that is usually triggered by a problem, and very often transformative experiences are painful to go through. After identifying their problem or challenge, people seem to enter a phase where they reflect critically on this--this is typically a problem that you've never experienced before, so it takes a lot of thinking and talking to others to work through. During the thinking phase, people may find that they can no longer keep their old ways of thinking and being--they are compelled to change. Finally, there is an action phase where people decide to do something. This could mean that you have to break off certain relationships that don't fit your beliefs anymore; it could mean that you decide to make a career change--action can take many forms. Also, the process itself may take a long time. You could reflect on something for years before you are ready to accept new beliefs and act on them.

Improve the Individuals’ Relationship with Training.

Culture within any society is made up of the attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize it specifically due to the people within each specific culture. Therefore, in order to change a culture, one must change the people.

Unhappy and Unmotivated individuals will not train well. In order to not only gain someone’s attention but also to retain it, one must find the time to learn. In combination with time, the ability to learn is a key factor. If it seems easy, it is more than likely that the individual will have a less adverse effect to it. These will not only motivate the individual but also create an in which an entire culture is changed through the morphing of the people that make it up.

Another way to improve a relationship to learning for someone is to recognize two things. First, recognizing the barriers behind why an individual does not possess a good relationship to learning and removing them, will enable a better flow of information to the individual and ultimately enable a better association to training. Second, recognizing factors that create desires in people and using that knowledge to train individuals will also accelerate a better affiliation to training and learning. These factors could include money, responsibility, excitement, and self-worth.

Taking all these elements and implementing them will make a person want to learn.

How do we make our people "ready to learn".

If someone is not ready to learn, the effectiveness of instruction is reduced. To increase effectiveness is to make people ready to learn. A good education and training program is holistic in approach and addresses the two important aspects that affect employee performance and productivity. First, it must equip employees with the tools of the trade. Second, it must create a workplace culture of professionalism, loyalty, and commitment, and most importantly, warm and open relationships among employees. The first aspect of education and training – skills development – is easier to accomplish than the second aspect. However, though the competency program might be appropriate, it can always be undermined by unhappy and unmotivated employees. An education and training program must be proactive and never reactive. Its main purpose is not to address employee problems that might threaten the stability of the company. Rather, it should be to transform its human resources into agents of development. Thus, its formulation is participative with ideas from management and rank in file employees incorporated in the final program.

Why do employees want to learn?.

Patricia Cranton’s (1994) Three Perspectives of Adult Learning suggest that actions and behaviors will be changed based on the changed perspective (Cranton, p.730).

Her first perspective, subject-oriented learning, states that the goal is to acquire content (e.g. facts, problem solving strategies, practical or technical skills). It is positivistic and most often meets the expectations of the learner and is, therefore, comfortable. The key to this step is that the expert makes the decisions, not the learner.

Her second perspective takes place when an individual expresses a need to learn, looks to the educator for fulfillment of those needs, and then proceeds to learn under the guidance of the educator. In this perspective Canton calls the consumer-oriented learning, the learner makes each decision about learning--for this reason, this kind of learning falls under constructivism.

Finally, her third perspective, emancipatory learning, is a process of freeing ourselves from forces that limit our options and our control over our lives, forces that have been taken for granted or seen as beyond our control. This kind of learning is constructivist in nature and can be transformative. At times this learning occurs independently of the educator; at other times it is fostered deliberately. Unlike the other two kinds of learning, emancipatory learning is often a difficult and painful process (Cranton, p.750)

Multiple Studies have proven that adults think in different ways and it has been determined that these types of learning ways can be divided into three separate learning orientations. First, goal oriented learners use education as a means of achieving some other goal. Second, activity oriented learners participate for the sake of the activity itself and the social interaction it provides. Lastly, learning oriented learners seek knowledge for its own sake (Hughes 2005).

There are generally six factors for learning participation (Abdullah et.al 2008):

1. Social Relationships: make friends and meet others.

2. External Expectations: complying with the wishes of someone else with authority.

3. Social Welfare: desire to serve others and/or community.

4. Professional Advancement: desire for job enhancement or professional advancement.

5. Escape/Stimulation: to alleviate boredom and/or to escape home or work routine.

6. Cognitive Interest: learning for the sake of learning itself.

Pedague vs. Andragogue.

“I don’t want education done to me…”

Andragogy initially defined as "the art and science of helping adults learn”. The term currently defines an alternative to pedagogy and refers to learner-focused education for people of all ages. The andragogic model asserts that five issues be considered and addressed in formal learning.

1. Letting learners know why something is important to learn.

2. Showing learners how to direct themselves through information.

3. Relating the topic to the learners' experiences.

4. People will not learn until they are ready and motivated to learn.

5. This often requires helping them overcome inhibitions, behaviors, and beliefs about learning.

In the information age, the implications of a move from teacher-centered to learner-centered education are many.

Postponing or suppressing this move will slow our ability to learn new technology and gain competitive advantage. For example, how can we expect to analyze and synthesize so much information if we turn to others to determine what should be learned, how it will be learned, and when it will be learned? We must take it upon ourselves to meet our learning needs and demand training providers do the same. To know our demands, we must know how we process information.

Andragogue.

"Andragogy is simply another model of assumptions about learners to be used alongside the pedagogical model of assumptions, thereby providing two alternative models for testing out the assumptions as to their 'fit' with particular situations. Furthermore, the models are probably most useful when seen not as dichotomous but rather as two ends of a spectrum, with a realistic assumption in a given situation falling in between the two ends

Concept of the Learner

During the process of maturation, a person moves from dependency toward increasing self-directedness, but at different rates for different people and in different dimensions of life. Teachers have a responsibility to encourage and nurture this movement. Adults have a deep psychological need to be generally self-directing, but they may be dependent in certain temporary situations.

Role of the Learner's Experience

As people grow and develop they accumulate an increasing reservoir of experience that becomes and increasingly rich resource for learning--for themselves and for others. Furthermore, people attach more meaning to learning they gain from experience than those they acquire passively. Accordingly, the primary techniques in education are experiential ones--laboratory experiments, discussion, problem-solving cases, field experiences, etc.

Readiness to Learn

People become ready to learn something when they experience a need to learn it in order to cope more satisfyingly with real-life tasks and problems. The educator has a responsibility to create conditions and provide tools and procedures for helping learners discover their "needs to know." Learning programs should be organized around life-application categories and sequenced according to the learners' readiness to learn.

Orientation to Learning

Learners see education as a process of developing increased competence to achieve their full potential in life. They want to be able to apply whatever knowledge and skill they gain today to living more effectively tomorrow. Accordingly, learning experiences should be organized around competency-development categories. People are performance-centered in their orientation to learning.

Future State

We must paint a yellow stripe down the center of our transformational super highway. On the road to the future, we have three lanes of traffic, but everyone can still follow the road thanks to the painted lines. Our "paint" is mixed from Clear Vision/Mission and Objectives, and is applied using Branding, Marketing(gorilla and traditional) Gorilla marketing in a corporate office?? What if the Unreal villain walked the hallways, etc. Our Missions & Visions as well as our introspection tell us that we must transform and Process must permeate function.

There are three Paths of Transformation:

o Corporate

o Organizational

o Individual

Corporate and Organizational Vision/Mission

amalgamated cultural vision.

Competitive advantage will be achieved by establishing a culture of learning comprised of scientific leaders driving innovation and excellence through essential partnerships founded on collaboration and trusted advisement

amalgamated mission.

Unparalleled levels of scientific excellence and customer service will be delivered through harmonized frameworks of delivery founded on expert methods, tools and training

Employee Vision & Mission

Personal vision.

I understand that innovation is the result of testing the boundaries of what I know, and working with others who can help me surpass these boundaries. I will challenge myself to understand the process that I am part of, and seek new ways to make valuable contributions to my organization and the products that it produces.

Personal mission.

I will exercise all available opportunities to develop my functional abilities as they pertain to the organizational framework of which I am an invaluable part. Through continued personal education and expert coaching I will achieve new levels of career fulfillment while contributing to the business objectives of my organization.

Solution

Client Research has yielded the following conclusion and requirements:

• Employee Behavior

– The VCE must be specifically goal oriented at first (e.g. attend a meeting).

– Employees do not have time to “hang out” or “vacation” in a Virtual World

• Employee Work-styles.

– Our target audience is very pragmatic.

– A VCE must offer value as a tool, not just as a toy

• Quality of Experience.

– The experience must be high fidelity and “real”.

– The experience should not be overly-distracting(a physical meeting room is not distracting).

• Available Technology

– Pre-built worlds concentrate on scale, not the quality of intimate experiences.

– We don’t need a World day one, we need attractive, high performing Experiences.

Uptake on 3D immersive environments in the corporate workplace will be driven by function, not frivolity.

VCE Business Tools

The following tool set will be supplied to the client:

• Virtual Meetings

– Establish Proximity

– Capture Participant Focus

– Efficiency of Communication

• Virtual Assessments

– Role-play based usage of subject matter

– Allows review of ability to use information

• Virtual Teaching

– Classroom based

• Active participation increases effectiveness

• Appeals to Authentic Learning Principals

– Game based

• Incredibly engaging, makes them compelling to use

• Conveyance of subject matter is extremely efficient

• Virtual Chat

– Replicates “hallway encounters” to increase collaboration

– Increases frequency of Impactful encounters

• Virtual Simulation

– Provides realistic encounters with people and process with opportunities to learn how to succeed

• Virtual Games

– Virtual Process Orientation

• Immerses participants in a process oriented challenge that teaches the core business of the client

• Examples of success include MIT, and Volvo

– Virtual Team Building

• Re-enforce the criticality of information sharing across functions

• Examples of success include: “Everest” from Harvard Business School*

– Distributed Innovation and Collective intelligence

• Community based problem solving

• E.g., How do these three signals relate to each other – score points

• Examples of success include:

• Microsoft’s use of Community based bug-finding

• Fold.it uses a community-based model to solve biochemical protein folding challenges

– Cultural Indoctrination

• Re-enforce Vision, Mission, Objectives and Cultural beliefs across an organization that physically separated

• Examples of success include: Sun Microsystems , “Rise of the Shadow Specters”

Why not a Pre-packaged World?

Highly skilled employees functioning in a very competitive industry need professional grade tools that can provide immediate and obvious value. We can begin improving business results today by ensuring that business participants have the very best tools in the toolbox. A toolbox is stocked with individual items that have been hand selected because they are the most relevant, and the best. As an alternative(and quite likely less expensive), the toolbox can be stocked at the lowest common denominator tools to ensure that everyone has something, but quite often most people will be left wanting tools that are more specialized and precise.

Pre-packaged worlds are built using lowest common denominator technology and are quite often designed to be massively parallel, not to provide best of breed individualized experiences. However, we believe that skilled professionals need individualized experiences to enhance their everyday participation in workflow.

Hospital vs. Patient

Gaming Engines have allowed the creation of digital virtual humans with a physiology engines that include PharmaCo-kinetic drug models. They're biomechanically correct. “Unlike when people are building hospitals in Second Life and everyone's rejoicing because it's an architectural walk-through, gaming engines are being used to create highly instrumented and engaging environments. You apply a bandage and stick a needle in a patient, the patient will react, from a physiological perspective, in an authentic way in terms of body size, etc.

This level of instrumentation is groundbreaking. Instructors can also control the physiology dynamically or let the physiology engine run autonomously. It can throw curveballs at medical students. While we may not be looking to build realistic bodies for our client, we are very much interested in the “art of the possible”, and building professional grade tools that add value on the job.

Conclusion

Only a small handful of non-government companies have realized that using Serious Game technology to deliver highly focused business tools is the most direct path to success. Far more companies are still trying to understand why their Virtual World efforts are not succeeding.

The key differentiator between a VCE Business Tool(VCEBT^©), and a Virtual World is that a VCEBT^© targets tasks and activities that need to be performed at a point in time. First, A VCEBT^© is akin to someone opening MS Word and type a letter. A Virtual World asks a user to change everything about the way they do business.

Second, focusing on key business tasks, and delivering a set of VCEBT^©’s that can be added to the business toolbox is a somewhat unique approach to Immersive technologies. We are not fighting against the grain to change a person’s total behavior. A collection of valuable VCEBT^©’s that gain traction will create pockets of business use and this is the first priority. VCEBT^©’s that are proven to be successful can be connected to form a cohesive VCE, this is the second priority.

We began this project thinking about what a “virtual world” might look like for client. We found that it would be quite feasible to build a “world”, but there were significant risks. Based on our research, we found that most large (Fortune 500) companies that have used a well-known virtual world provider, have achieved little or no success. Those that have achieved some success have very different parameters than our client. What seemed to be missing from many corporate initiatives into virtual worlds was a well-defined set of business objectives. Everyone has a vision for what they hope will happen in a virtual world, but quite often the vision does not mesh with reality.

What we have discovered is that there are two primary reasons why our client should get involved with Virtual Reality: 1) To develop a set of readily usable business tools. 2) To become fluent in a technology that will quite likely have a very prominent role in corporate life in future years. Our belief is that the best way to future-proof our client’s organization is by doing far more than experimentation in the hope of future relevance; we need to build a foundation of experience, and a track record of acceptance to provide our pathway into the future.

References

Abdullah, M et. al. (2008). Motivating Factors Associated with Adult Participation in Distance Learning Program. Retrieved on August 28, 2009 from http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/viewFile/629/604.

APQC. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2009, from http://www.apqc.org/portal/apqc/site.

Attwell, 2004, E-Learning and Sustainability. Retrieved on August 28, 2009 from http://lefo.net/lefo_sustainabili
ty_graham.htm.

Cranton, P. (1994). Self-directed and transformative instructional development. Journal of Higher Education, 65(6), 726-744.

Cranton, C. (1994). Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass. 3-21.

Crawford, C. (2004, July 14). A-Ritzer-Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 28, 2009, from SagePub: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/5222_Ritzer__Entries_beginning_with_A__%
5B1%5D.pdf.

Gallager, W. (2009). Rapt: attention and the focused life. NY, NY. Penguin Publishers.

Hughes, B. (2005). Indentifing attitudes and detering factors toward continueing education among certified athletic trainers. The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice. 3 (1) Retrieved on August 28, 2009 from http://ijahsp.nova.edu/articles/vol3num1/HUGHES.pdf.

Kraut, R. E., S. R. Fussell, et al. (2002). Understanding effects of proximity on collaboration: Implications for technologies to support remote collaborative work. Distributed Work. P. J. Hinds and S. Kiesler. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.

Virtual reality. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved August 26, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtual reality.

Additional Reading

Bailenson, J. et. al. (2008). The effect of interactivity on learning physical actions in virtual reality. Media Psychology, 11(3), 354-376.

Galbraith, M. (2003). Adult Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Katsionis, G. (2008). Personalized e-learning through an educational virtual reality game using Web services. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 39(1), 47-71.

Kausler, D.H.. (1999). Adult learning and development: Perspectives from educational psychology. Contemporary Psychology, 44(1), 46-47.

Knowles, Malcolm. (2005). The Adult Learner, Sixth Edition: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development. Newark, NJ: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Lee, D., et. al.. (2000). Assessing adult learning preferences using the analytic hierarchy process. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19(6), 548-60.

Llyod, J et.al. (2009). Equivalence of Real-World and Virtual-Reality Route Learning: A Pilot Study. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 12(4), 423-427.

Marienau, C., et. al.. (2008). Educator as Designer: Balancing Multiple Teaching Perspectives in the Design of Community Based Learning for Adults. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 188, 61-74.

Merriam, S.B. (2008). Third Update on Adult Learning Theory: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Jossey-Bass.

Merrill, B. (2001). Learning and Teaching in Universities: perspectives from adult learners and lecturers. Teaching in Higher Education, 6(1), 5-17.

Monahan, T. (2008). Virtual reality for collaborative e-learning. Computers and Education, 50(4), 1339-1353.

Nelken, M. (2009). Negotiating Classroom Process: Lessons from Adult Learning. Negotiation Journal, 25(2), 181-194.

Pratt, D. (1998). Five Perspectives on Teaching in Adult and Higher Education. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company

Rose, F.D. et.al. (2000). Training in Virtual Environments. Ergonomic, 43(4), 494-511

Schmidt, B. (2009). Implementing the Virtual Reality Learning Environment Second Life. Nurse Educator, 34(4), 152-155.

Stolovitch, Harold. (2009). Telling ain’t training. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press

Troyer, A. K., et. al.. (2006). Name and Face Learning in Older Adults: Effects of Level of Processing, Self-Generation, and Intention to Learn. Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 61 (2), 67-74.

Wlodkowski, R. J. (2008). Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults. Jossey-Bass.

Xie, B. (2007). Information Technology Education for Older Adults as a Continuing Peer-Learning Process: A

Chinese Case Study. Educational Gerontology, 35(5), 429-450.

Key Terms and Definitions

Open Plan Desperation: Entrusting the next Generation of Innovation to Ping Pong and Bean Bag Chairs….Again?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:20:00 +0000

Open Plan Desperation: Entrusting the next Generation of Innovation to Ping Pong and Bean Bag Chairs….Again?

So I've been recently disturbed, again, by the seeming resurgence in Open Plan office design, and the belief that primary colors, asymmetrical symmetries, Star Wars models, Ping Pong, and free range animals in the work place will somehow bring about the genesis of the "next big thing". However, this time, Mia Disturbia Seguito comes from the lurking fogginess of implausibility that even the most-post-modern, cognitively vacuous ( is that the same as “open plan minded”?) Rancheros of free-range “thinkers” seem to sense (spooky right?). The Lofty echelons of the adolescent Arroganti are bereft with confident bewilderment, observable by the less enlightened, but not so much by the euphoric kiddies on the Meta Cognitive Short Bus to Destination Open PlanLand( man that is awkward grammalogy from me even). But still, to call into question the radicalism that spawned a 99% failure rate 10 years ago, flies in the face of repetitive innovation, but there are those who sense that the inspirations of a prior generation, that spawned a near perfect failure record, may not be quite exactly the right catalyst, again, but famous architects must remain famous despite convictions that may be somewhat clouded, possibly even lacking in the same sort of certainty that sent start-ups clambering to the nearest "Land of Misfit Furnishings" during the dot-com Uber "something" over a decade ago. Even worse, as some of you may recall, "legacy" companies, fearing that they would not be able to compete for Generation “I” talent, started feverishly converting perfectly good workspaces into nurseries and romper-rooms. It was as if it became instantly "obvious", that creativity could not happen in the absence of a Ping-Pong ball incessantly pinging and ponging through the airwaves. Suddenly, unless you were sitting on a yoga ball or in a bean bag chair, it was clear to everyone that nothing Innovative was going to happen any time soon.

The good news however is that in these shagged-out spheres( no, some were square I suppose, but many would also argue, or at least *should* argue, that "square" is a state of mind, which is certainly not all bad, especially if you are tasked with creating square things), is that it was well recognized, thanks to some basic principles behind the development theory of "fail fast", that many of the idea hatched in these synthetic incubators would indeed fail, in fact, most would fail. But the believers in the gods of foosball as a medium to a higher plane of innovationism, still clung to the belief that unless you stood on your head, finger-painting ideas in a sand-box, the 1 in 1,000,000 idea that just might work, gasp...., might never actually be thought of in the first place.

Is it not possible that the difference between the “Innovationist Haves” and “Innovationots” could be rather easily sussed out by putting each of appointed “Innovationists” in a simple, white room, bland in character, lacking in sensory chaos( maybe a prison cell?), like an immersive blank canvas. Wouldn’t we find out straight away who is inherently capable of filling the canvas with something truly impressionable? Well, it seemed to work very well for the Impressionists. It’s not like they started painting their masterpieces on top of brutally chaotic canvases already stuffed with “stuff”( yes I do know it was common to re-use canvases and planks, but that was based on economy, not Ensperation Desperation Disorder( EDD…errr…) . In fact, their brilliance materialized, gasp( again), on a blank canvas, and I don’t believe for an instant that the Sistine Chapel’s reliefs were inspired via divine bean bag, nor were they painted to a sound track of fooses, pongs, and mock conversations in Vulcan( or whatever). But I have seen this dilemma put to the test empirically, because I once had the opportunity to conduct a little experiment on a dozen or so PhD’s, and the results were not surprising…..using a double-blind model( in which I had both my eyes closed….actually I was cringing, but whatever…), I found that some people, regardless of the environment, simply cannot conceive of innovation( but you can in fact lead them to believe that they have…but more on that later).

Nostradamus, Da Vinci, Einstein, a few guys also pretty good at thinking of new "stuff", also had elaborate requirements for their surroundings in order to generate even the slightest inkling of thought beyond the primordial "I'm Hungry". In fact, I believe it was Nostradamus (he may have been a quack, but he had no lack of creativity), who had the grandiose requirement of a single lit candle in his chamber, and this was the source of some pretty innovative thinking, and I doubt very much that even if you illuminated his chamber by stuffing it full of lava lamps, you would find revealed much more than a desk, chair, wardrobe, possibly a bench. So how was this possible? Such simplicity defies all modern logic that affirms that without sensory chaos, nothing new can be conceived!

Part II: Failure is always an option, and quite often the best one at that.

(To be continued….)

Fracturing of the Antartic Ice Shelf in Late Southern Summer Yields Geologically Stable, Movable Airfield

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 22:41:00 +0000

Fracturing of the Antarctic Ice Shelf in Late Southern Summer Yields Geologically Stable, Movable Airfield

1. Late Summer's warm temperatures expose a large fracture line along the Antarctic ice-shelf. These fractures have been monitored and measured for years. Data and imagery is commonly available

2. An "island" sized section of ice shelf shows early signs of potentially breaking free from mainland shelf

3. Multi-year warming has created less turbulence and thus smoother surfaces along coastal ice-shelf

4. The 777 makes a direct course for subject ice-shelf

5. The 777 makes a not-unprecedented landing on firmly packed coastal shelf section. Plane lands safely, but without means to take-off

6. A series of small, but scientifically precise charges are fired, completing the natural fracturing, and subsequent dislocation of coastal ice field section

7. At over 1 mile in length and width, the "island-size iceberg" is in no way susceptible to "turtling" like a much smaller, calved iceberg would be.

8. South Indian Ocean currents, unimpeded for almost 365 degrees of latitude, quickly grip the now independent ice shelf fragment which begins quickly moving with the strong currents away from the latitude of origin.

9. Sensor reflective, camouflaged hangar is quickly erected over the fully intact and undamaged 777, preventing radar, radio, or heat signatures from being identified

10. Additional thermal wraps are used to cocoon the 777 while battery powered heat sources maintain minimum safe ambient aircraft temperatures, thus preventing any cold induced damage to the craft.

11. Peripheral structures of the same type are erected over large section bores which are open to the ocean below. These are used as docking stations by 1 or more nuclear submarines, which have long histories of polar habitation

12. Geologists work to optimize the size and shape of the naturally shaped ice field shard using imaging equipment that identifies opportunistic weak points. Additional shaped charges are used to "sculpt" a more efficiently shaped ice-barge.

13. Concurrently, engineers affix extremely large "sea anchors", used conversely as under-sea sails capable of catching even faster flowing under-sea currents capable of pulling the optimally shaped ice-barge at a rate of 12 NMPH.

14. After 10 days, the ice-barge is over 3,000 nautical miles latitudinally delta’d from its point of origin

15. Ex-military submarine recovery ship with suitable derrick lifts 777 unharmed onto cargo deck, and steams away at 15-20NMPH at a counter-intuitive/discordant vector.

16. Extraneous Jetsam has since been gathered and loaded into small craft with begin dumping their cargo in misleading, but not totally illogical locations. It is well understood by technicians what should be afloat after nearly 2 weeks, and what should not.

17. Cargo ship vectors off to any number of suitable, pre-arranged locations.

Motive? Why would anyone go through the trouble of stealing a roughly $350M jumbo jet? One which currently sits atop the world's "most wanted plane" list? Why go through the somewhat complex and modestly expensive hassle of stealing something that can readily be purchased? The first and easiest answer is: now you have something that no one knows you have....At an order of magnitude lower, we see this happen regularly with stolen art....$10's of millions spent on a pretty picture that you can never tell anyone you have.

But a fully functioning aircraft is a bit different. You don't make one disappear because you can't afford a new one. You steal one because you don't want it known that you possess one.....

777’s are now ubiquitous; possibly the most common heavy jet in the skies today. In the crowded skies, it would stand out like a Toyota Corolla on a Japanese motorway.

What to do with a 777 once you have it in "dry dock" is not a complicated problem. The motives and intents could be limitless, but bringing the 777 back to the skies would be only a small matter of technical identity theft....

At issue here for me is the "how", not "why"...

If a Theory Falls in the Private Domain,and The Public is Not There to Read it.....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 23:30:00 +0000

This is my blog so I will rant if I want to, even though I am ranting about my own mistake....

So I was reading today about the hottest new theory about the plane disappearance. It seems to be that some aviation "enthusiast" posted to his blog a theory that a second plane was involved. By flying very close to the missing plane, they appeared as one normal radar blip. I had an email exchange with a few people on 3/13 about this concept, and went into quite a bit of detail. What I did NOT do unfortunately is update my own blog with this concept (if I hadn't been rebuilding a car engine for 30 hours straight, I almost certainly would have updated this posting.....but sometimes rebuilding engines is a higher priority than getting your original thoughts into the public domain in a timely manner). This aviation enthusiast posted his description of the same scenario to his blog on 3/17. Let this be a lesson to all you kids at home: timestamp + public domain = credible citation of originality....

PS: I did attempt to post my theory in response to a LinkedIn article, but the as I recall, the website froze and my comment was not saved to the website. This likely happened because 5,000 people were adding their fascinating thoughts like, “OMG, I didn’t know that 777 was an area code for the location of missing airplanes”. So I got close to getting the theory posted on the 13^th, but I was not playing with horseshoes or hand grenades (at least as far as you know…and that’s all I’m saying about the possibility that I can in fact multi-task)

Unmolested by USO’s, Solar Magnetic Bounce Accelerates Aircraft towards Orbital Velocity

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 22:43:00 +0000

Unmolested by USO’s, Solar Magnetic Bounce Accelerates Aircraft towards Orbital Velocity

The Dragon Triangle, a well-known location of a deep sea USO base, could easily be the source of 3 things: 1) a communications/radar vortex 2) An extreme density of thermal venting 3) a highly localized EMP Plane flies into Dragon Triangle entering the boundaries of the communication/radar vortex, causing it to "disappear" from radar and become unable to communicate. USO's augment the naturally occurring thermal venting which in return produces an extreme volume of low density gaseous bubbles that proceed to the surface.

The "disappeared" plane, is incapacitated by the EMP, and begins a near vertical dive into the extreme low density pocket of ocean caused by the vented, gas filled bubbles. The extreme low-density of the ocean pocket allows the jet to dive into the ocean intact at high velocity and continue 10,000ft below the ocean surface until it comes to rest on the sea floor. The EMP has destroyed any device containing circuitry, including all locator beacons, including the black/orange box. Deep range sonar is unable to locate the plane on the ocean floor due to high volume of volcanic activity. The plane, built to sustain low pressure at high altitudes, is crushed to the size of a compact car. USO's take the condensed wreckage back to their undetectable, impenetrable base....Large Jet Disappears....

BTW, the USO I mentioned is completely extraneous and in no way detracts from the physical "phenomena" that I described.

But, I think we need to consider something other than the traditional jet crash….possibly undocumented, but maybe not impossible: a solar assisted “skip launch” into the upper atmosphere and a resulting extreme velocity, zero-glide “fall” to Earth

Solar flares, which are quite common can and do create EMP's which can be highly localized. Thermal venting that results in extremely low-density pockets of ocean water are not only possible, but have been observed in other parts of the world, and have been highly speculated as the cause of very large ships "disappearing" in the Bermuda Triangle. EMP and low-density water are not science fiction. Try this, fill a glass with water, float a small vessel ( a cup, etc.) in this water and establish the mass required to cause the vessel to be submerged. Now try the same experiment in a freshly power glass of ginger ale. Are the masses required to sink the test vessel the same? No they are not. Now drop and object into the glass of water and observe the magnitude of the resulting splash caused by the sudden displacement of water. Repeat using your glass of ginger ale. Again, the results are very much not the same. Think of diving pools used by athletes. Quite often there is a flow of water directed at the targeted area of impact (apart from making the surface more detectable), the thermodynamics of the manufactured current breaks surface tension resulting in lessening of forces of impact. Introduce a pipe filled with holes pumped filled with air at the bottom of the pool, and the lessened force of impact is even more observable. EMP + Geographical pocket of radio wave "confusion", + a radical reduction of water density = high speed, low impact deep dive of aircraft.

Further, considering a manned air-breathing jet propelled aircraft has achieved a max altitude of 123,520 ft, likely high enough to be caught in a solar wind, combined with the 777's existing speed of at least 500mph, or possible Mach 1 plus at that air density, might accelerate the craft to a velocity trending towards orbital velocity. The "bounce" that most solar radiated magnetically induced winds experience as they meet the opposing force of earths own magnetic "shield" could approach low earth orbit speeds. as the solar wind dissipated, and the object began to fall towards earth with no heat shields or glide, the kinetic energy of this velocity would likely be converted to heat, and something like a meteor, even though somewhat slower, the heat produced would leave very little of the object intact. The resulting as and other small fragments could well be scattered across the globe.

Time Lapse Chronography : The Continuing Saga Of “Does Man Make Time, or Time Make Man”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 00:05:00 +0000

Time Lapse Chronography : The Continuing Saga Of “Does Man Make Time, or Time Make Man”

So back to the subject concerning the origins of “time”: I recently came across the hypothesis that the origins of time depend on how you define time, and the author of this hypothesis offers up two definitions for us to choose from, and here is my response to the author:

The hypothesis I am responding to:

“That depends on your definition of "time", for it could mean either the "units of time" (seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.) or the perpetuation of change in the physical universe as a result of the decay of matter into energy. The first is obviously a human construct, while the latter can only be perceived by beings capable of perception.”

Rearranged a bit, I have restated the hypothesis as follows:

That depends on your definition of "time", for it could mean either:

- The "units of time" (seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.) or

o The first is obviously a human construct,

- The perpetuation of change in the physical universe as a result of the decay of matter into energy.

o While the latter can only be perceived by beings capable of perception.

So we are limited to either of two choices?

1. A concept of "units of time" of undefined genesis "that is obviously a human construct"

2. A "perpetuation of change in the physical universe" that requires a being to perceive it in order to exist

I can't be sure what you been by "either" in its entirety, but possibly you are suggesting that the two choices are mutually exclusive, and that we must choose?

Suppose I am indifferent about the 2 choices and not inclined to pick one. Does that make me Chronophobic? Decidophobic? Agnostic? Or Chronatheist?

In any event, I find it hard to agree that there are only two choices available to us, and even a bit harder to agree that they might be mutually exclusive( if in fact that is what you meant by “either”)

1. Now correct me if I have misinterpreted you here: “units of time” did not exist until at some point humans decided that their biological narrative was a continuous progression of man-made, contiguous units of determinate duration.

o So “days” could have been of infinite length until they were bounded by some constraint of hours, minutes, and seconds?

o Years could contain a limitless number of minutes, possibly 543,120 for example

Is the implication that celestial repetitions could be of random, non-time oriented durations until man imposed some structure on this solaristic chaos?

And in this realm of potentially aberrational sequences, was there any atomic level interval between occurring events?

I could agree that the linguistical tools of measurement: seconds, minutes, hours, would require language in order to exist, but I’m not so sure that these humanly derived words were the first means of communicating durations, and from that perspective, humans weren’t needed in order to establish a means of communicating “units of time”. To suggest otherwise would be to imply that humans are the only beings (Animals? Microbes? Flora?) capable of communicating determinate durations or naturally occurring cyclical delineations.

E.g. Apes had no concept of Seasons? Birds had no idea when to communicate with each other that it might be a good idea to head south, or return north? Lions had no idea when the lights might go out and it would be a good time to go hunting?

I’m not suggesting that one goose said to another goose, “Hey look, we’ve been swimming around in this lake in Michigan for 90 days, we better hurry since the flight to Miami will take 47 hours, and we don’t want to be late”. But what I am saying is that I can’t commit to the idea that non-humans had no idea how to communicate the passage of time. I think it’s fair to say they didn’t speak English as we know it, but I also think it’s fair to say that some sort of audible honking was likely the catalyst to get out of the Michigan lake and fly rapidly (does “rapidly” suggest that they move at such as speed that it might take a lesser duration to reach a destination”, and if so, how might a goose know if they were going to arrive early or late? Quite possibly they were absolutely clueless and simply obeying their inherent genetic programming, it’s hard to say I think, especially if a wholly instinctual goose “learned” in a single lifetime that “something in their environmental context” had changed, and maybe they better get flapping south a bit earlier( unfortunately I think that “earlier”, by definition, requires some time units)

What I can agree with is that the English words: “Days” and “Years” required a human to create them linguistically.

What I cannot agree with is that the durations expressed using these English words simply did not exist in the absence of the human linguistics commonly used to describe them.

2. “the perpetuation of change in the physical universe as a result of the decay of matter into energy” could “only be perceived by beings capable of perception”

a. Now without entering the black hole of a discourse on what you might mean by “perception”, I think your statement is too circular to bother pursuing. I would simply agree that things can only be perceived by “beings capable of perception”.

i. And if all you mean is that things can only be perceived by beings capable of perception, there is really nothing more that I can add to your tidy, circle of self-defining definition.

1. I could just stop here since your statement is terminal, but I’ll extrapolate on a concept that you may have intended to communicate.

a. I won’t even attempt to speculate on whether or not you mean to imply sensory or cognitive (or both?) perception.

b. Pretty much all matter capable of a process such as “decay of matter into energy” can do so over a myriad of durations:

i. Atomic things pretty much decay at constant rates when left alone to do so, but I am pretty sure that the end of the decay process does not require a conversion into “Energy”

c. In Physics, we pretty much refer to decay as an atomic level degenerative process often described as “Half Life”, but unfortunately Half Life is generally a measurement of Time, expressed using Linguistical constructs such as Months, Days, and Years.

i. But, I think it’s fair to say that this sort of decay is going to happen whether or not someone is there to measure it and assign a word to describe the duration required for total decay to take place. But again, left alone, atomic level decay seems to be fairly regular in its degenerative durations.

d. The idea that time might be defined by the perceptions of beings capable of perception, is a bit shaky in my opinion, especially if we mean Sensory perception as opposed to purely cognitive perceptions. The fact is, some things simply have trouble being themselves when observed (quantum mechanics), even if we only take the occasional tiny little peak( although the little peekers have recently postulated to the contrary).

e. If we forget about sensory perceptions, and focus on purely cognitive perceptions of what may be decaying, I’m not sure that we can arrive at a conclusion without some degree of Uncertainty, at least in Theory.

f. Lastly (and never trust me when I say that….),” does the perpetuation of change in the physical universe” truly require the decay of matter into energy. Maybe there is simply enough existing energy to keep things moving, without relying on the creation of more.

i. Seems like an awful lot of “stuff” is perpetuating based possibly on a sudden appearance of a great deal of energy, which may have also included a very large, even Big, Bang.

ii. But, “perpetuation” is a tricky one because it may imply “perpetual”, which doesn’t generally include a point of termination in its definition.

1. But, suppose that some quantity of matter, was kick started by some kinetically charged catalyst, and there is an absence of ”anything” to impede this bit of matter on its course of some kind of action, is the problem of perpetuation covered-off without the requirement for adding more energy?

iii. If a very large burst of energy suddenly existed, and there happened to be some lazy matter hanging about, seems like it’s possible that the origins of some kinds of perpetuation may have actually been a one-time event.

iv. And if a Big Bang falls in the woods, and there is no one there to perceive it, does it not happen?

1. And again, if this Bang soloist started something, and nothing impedes this something from continuing, why must there be continuous infusions of additional energy?

g. Lastelely, I can’t help thinking about the perpetuation of a Vulture, who might depend upon the decay of matter as a source of energy required to continue perpetuating.

i. But rarely is a bird something generally considered as Perpetual. And you can pretty much substitute all cans of Flora and Fauna into this equation if you are not fond of Vultures.

So, in conclusion (finally), regarding your two choices made available to define “time”:

- I can agree that beings capable of perception are required in order to perceive.

- I can agree that words such as “Hour”, “Day” and “Year” required humans to come into existence

But what I really can’t agree with is the idea that decay inspired energy is required in order to perpetuate ( and I’m still unsure of what you mean by “perpetuate”) matter. It does seem like there are scenarios in which perpetuations may exist in the absence of a continuous buffet of energy served up 24/7 courtesy of decay.

**Footnote: yes I am aware that I have taken some liberties in my choice of vocabulary. My Scrabble dictionary was not handy, and the game doesn’t meet my requirements anyway, so there may be a few words in this discourse that you have not seen before (or anyone has seen before…), but my objective is to communicate concepts, and in my mind, this sometimes requires filling linguistic gaps that exist based solely on my determination of need. But I see it this way: if Google( and not just Googol) is now officially a “word”, seems like a free-for-all in the linguistic space, and the genesis of new words is often just a popularity contest that I will unlikely win, but don’t mind entering…often. And I am offering a prize to whoever correctly identifies all of the “new word candidates” appearing in this article. TIP: when you enter, just present you list confidently and you might win, simply because I have not counted, and might believe that you are correct.

Common Domestication of the Entropic Vacuum: (The Flash-Non-Fiction article)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 13:48:00 +0000

So I just read-up on what "Flash Fiction" is. Because I am trying to follow the Flash rules, I won't elaborate on my thoughts. But my take-away was: use very few words, and lots of white space. The theory being that the reader will fill in all that white space themselves given the periodic, and sparsely available Flash words. Kind of like "choose your own ending", but Flash-Fiction is more like do the work of the writer for them.

Reminds me of when I played violin in a symphony ( shhhhh.), as a side project I also played in a chamber music group. As the sheet music became more complex, a funny thing happened, instead of the note becoming more dense, there was actually more white space. It was up to the musician to fill that white space (within reason), and just make sure that you got to the next traffic signal at the same time as everyone else. There you have it: the genesis of Flash Music.....sort of.

So the Domestic Entropic Vacuum ( DEV), explain in Flash style.

So you know how your house accumulates dust over time. When we clean the house we do not try to sort out the dust and put it back where it came from, instead, we suck it up with a Vacuum, and toss it out. Entropy dismissed. Next.....

But, outside of our manufactured environments, we find hostility. Not only does nature apparently "not care for a vacuum", it "abhorrers" a vacuum. And those are fighting words if I've ever seen them.

But just imagine if Nature Adored a Vacuum.....

Now this is Flash Non-fiction, so you have to finish the rest. Sorry. Those are the rules.

Cognitive Obesity: A Prescription for Healthy Thought-loss

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 13:18:00 +0000

That's pretty much it for now....but it's a darn good Title. Made you look....

Well, not really...this posting is going to be about "taking that infernal Thinking Box and relegating it to the deepest place I can find without leaving my chair".

Who coined the phrase "Thinking Outside the Box?" This is potentially the most counter-productive instruction that any Instruction Giver could ever possibly give to an Instruction Receiver. You might as well say "Imagine a box, then forget the box you just visualized". Now how many of you just visualized a box? I mean besides me, since I am actually writing about boxes, and unfortunately having to think about boxes while I do so. So Team, forget about the box I've been talking about. Erase that square shaped container-oriented object from your memory, and start thinking outside of it. I see two immediate problems:
1. If I am able to achieve the impossible( within a reasonable amount of time, and without the house starting to burn down), and forget all about the boxy shaped Box; how will I know if my thinking is outside of it?
2. Because (most) everyone will have fond memories of their "comfort box", it's quite likely that their thinking will not stray too far from the box they were supposed to forget. I like to think of this as something like a man with a chain around his neck dragging a 500lb safe around whereever he goes, and of course "not thinking about it"

So what do we expect? Well, I for one do not expect the neck-chained-safe dragger to get very far. It's very hard to forget about something as oppressive as a safe'o round the neck. But neck-chained-safe-dragger-man( officially known as NCSDM, pronounced Ne-Ksa-Duh-Mmmm). Regardless of his zeal to innovate his way, far away, from NCSDM, he's really not going to get far. The box is too much a part of his life. So he struggles mightly and finally innovates his way to conceptualizing a Box that is somewhat lighter, thus improving efficiency, reducing travel time,and increasing employee moral. His stroke of RAW innovation has both Hard and Soft benefits, its not been tried before, and thus his itty bitty teensie baby step of "fauxnnovation", is what drives his company forward in minute increments of innovation( hell, forget about leap-frog technology...be realistic about how hard it is to hop with a safe chained around your neck". But so it goes. The Innovation Short Bus has left the station, and everyone at the round table is thrilled with their breakthrough achievement.

Now bear with me for a moment because the next bit is super complicated: if you want "real" Innovation( you must first understand what that means), the LAST thing you want is to kickstart the A-Team of absurdly compensated Consultants by have a project launch meeting in which you talk about "the box" for an hour, then issue the instruction to spend 100,000 man-hours defining the box, so that when we get to the next step of "thinking outside the box", we have made sure that in every possible way, everyone even tangentialy attached to the project is completely saturated to the point of Cognitive Obesity( remember that phrase?). Cognitive Obesity is the result of continuous over-consumption of information that is fundamentaly a hindrance to cogntiive nimbleness. But, the corporate buffet never closes, and culturaly it's expected that everyone will ceaselelssly gorge themselves.

So, the solution put simply: get some damn people who don't about your stupid box, and sure as hell don't hammer the boxy-box-box concept into their fresh and nimble brains, lest they become victims of CO as well. Without severe trauma, or exceptional lengths of time, forgetting something is VERY hard when you have been immersed in it daily, with the box-drummer tirelessly beating out a metronome of rhythm that could make even my somewhat healthy pepper plant wither and die.

Here it is again, and I'll type slowly this time: get people who don't even know that a box exists, give them some basic objectives, and keep them out of earshot of the box-evangelists. The results may well be innovative, because the odds of a group of uninitiated randomly ending up in the same box that already exists are extremely small.

And yes this does work. And yes I have lead the teams at very large corporations who have made it work, and yes successful solutions were produced that were in fact REAL innovation.

Anyway, at this stage you either are with me, against me, or floundering around in your box.
I'll add a bit more to this later, but for now, just accept that I am right. :)

and no i did not meticulously edit this article, I was actually more interested in expressing a concept. I'll have my people talk to the editing people, and in a few man-weeks, we should see some documentation regarding the best way to go about editing this article.......

Literary Stick Figures –The Remedialization of Modern Linguistic Prose

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 02:59:00 +0000

Literary Stick Figures –The Remedialization of Modern Linguistic Prose

If a picture “is worth 1000 words”, are “1000 words worth a picture” ?

Show a man a stick figure, constructed of 5 lines and a circle. It’s a pretty simple concept, right? Well of course it is, because who hasn’t seen a stick figure? And therefore I’ll bet that we only need an amuse- bouche, not even an Hors d'oeuvre of words to describe the stick figure. Let’s try an imaginary empirical use case involving test subject “Bob”. We clarify that our test subject knows very little about anything, and sees the world only through his own eye. So here goes:

“Ok Bob, I’m thinking of an image. It has a vertical line, a horizontal line intersecting its top third. At the bottom of the vertical line are two shorter lines extending at roughly 45 degree angles in opposite directions such that they make a triangle shape. At the top of the vertical line, is a smallish circle.” Now Bob, being a fairly simple man, tries to create an image in his head. He struggles with different lengths of lines that could be used, and how big should the circle on the top be? A triangle on the bottom made from only 2 lines? Now Bob did get to play with one of those plastic peg boards with rubber bands when he was in 2^nd grade, so he knows full well that triangles need 3 lines( or one continues one if you don’t lift your pen….Bob is more clever than we thought….and like someone once said: “never underestimate a man who’s name can be spelled the same backwards or forwards”…). But Bob is armed and dangerous, not only has he got a sheet of paper, he ALSO has a pen. So, attempt number one: draw vertical line. Done. Draw horizontal line “intersecting its top 3^rd”. Hmmm. Interestersecting….

But Bob is not one who backs down from a challenge, so he takes a deep breath, steadies his hand, and with a degree of focus, matched only by possibly a preschooler, he takes the risk that he knows he may deeply regret( Bob’s pen does not have an eraser…and he knows this), he draws that

interesting line in nearly the best possible position, and of incredibly idealistic length. Bob has drawn a cross. And he knows this because he has seen crosses before. And while he was not certain of how many thirds there are in a line of indeterminate length, his subconscious compelled him to turn that vertical line into a recognizable geometric form: a cross. Now Bob recalls the description given to him in X number of words, and since the whole 2-side triangle conundrum seems a bit tricky, he opts to go for the circle first. So, Bob sets about to draw the smallish circle at the top of the vertical line. But darn. Should that circle be touching the top of the vertical line? Should the vertical line run through the middle of the circle?? Why can’t anyone explain things in ways that make sense??

Bob starts imagining circles above, through, asymmetrically placed, large ones, small ones, and soon Bob’s head is as filled with circles as a Spirograph is filled with spiros( ok, jaggedy circles, fine). Bob has been in situations like this before. He recalls the great blizzard of ’88, driving his rig west bound across Nebraska in near white out conditions. So many snowflakes, visibility zero, where’s the ROAD??!! Ok, settle down Bob( wait, who said that…). Drawing upon his many years of truck driving he knows that in all likelihood the road will not suddenly start making S shapes, or even worse W’s! This is Nebraska, and while it may not be the traightest place on earth, even AAA triptychs refer to this part of the route as having “good alignment and grade”. So with a renewed sense of calm, Bob drives straight down the middle (but who’s to say really, if no one can see, but the point is he went straight despite the sensory maelstrom of confusionary swirl). Faced now with similar circumstances, Bob is determine to draw that “smallish” circle straight down the middle, parting the ways of a vision filled with more circles than spaces, and Bob nails it indelibly! He plants that smallish circle with exactly ½” of space at the “top of the vertical line”. Having been down this road before, Bob knows that it’s always good to leave a little extra space. Because Bob knows from experience, that space can easily be used up, but, it’s much harder to get back. So ½” above the vertical line goes the “smallish” circle. Now, admiring his handiwork, Bob is starting to see the image come together: a cross with a smallish hovering ball just above it! Ha. Bob thinks. A cross with a smallish hovering ball! And all of this before his first cup of coffee and his first breakfastarette (Bob made that up. Very clever…) But what to do about that 2 sided triangle? Time for that breakfastarette. Then back to work. But, zippo-be-nimble, zippo-be-quick, Bob just drew a cross and ball made of stick(s). Accomplishment is sometimes its own reward, especially if there is also a real reward that comes with it…

And so on to the keystone of stick-figuredom: The Biangle (you Tri and figure that one out…I have faith….oh wait, I don’t, but that’s a different thread entirely).

“And visions of Biangles danced in their heads”, at least that’s how Bob remembered it, although he didn’t quite use those words (despite being an only child, he was in fact Valedictorian of his Home School, and that, is an achievement). Bob did have a secret, unbeknownst to his convoy brethren, Bob was a “closet Trekkie”. And “two shorter lines extending at roughly 45 degree angles” could obviously be only one thing in any space, including that part that hadn’t been explored yet( T4Life Yo): The Vulcan Biangle!

And with a smallish ball hovering subtly(but importantly) above a cross, supported by a Vulcan Biangle, Bob had drawn the image described to him.

And so using only 57 words (arguably inefficient), the image was transferred from one person to another. It has taken another 1,000 words to describe the process, but every work of art needs a museum constructed around it.

And so, Bob interpreted the vocalized words given to him as a description of a picture he had never seen before, and set about manifesting this sensory/cognitive vision into his tangible interpretation: a Picture.

Now the challenge I propose is to describe Bob’s picture to someone else, who has never seen the picture, and has no a priori knowledge of anything uniquely constructed by Bob.

And after that, let’s see if we can do the same with the Mona Lisa.

Part of the catalyst for writing this article was a scene from the movie “Legends of the Fall”. The scene presents the little boy working on an essay assignment for his father. As each iteration is handed over to Father for review, the response was always the same “Again, now half as long” [I paraphrased, but am darn close]. Unless you are writing a recipe for boiled water, at what stage does literary imagery become something that is less than an Art form, less than even a minimalist Art form, less than a primitive art form? And what are we left with? Literary Stick Figures.

And so I leave you with this:

I was hiking by myself down a trail and came to an intersection. I tried to see where each path went, but I couldn’t see very far. I ended up taking the one that I figured would be less conventional.

Hiking alone, there was an intersection, I had to decide without knowing either routes destination, but chose to avoid people.

Hiking, the trail divided, I decided to travel on unknowingly.

Hiking, at intersection, destination uncertain.

Hiking, decision, fate.

[ and just as jam packed with literary imagery as the original, right?]

This is a complex, and very real topic of consideration. It has nothing to do with Bob or Trekkies, but it is my hope that this serves as an adequate introduction to the subject of “Literary Stick Figures”

Comments U.R.B.A.D.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 12:25:00 +0000

Comments U.R.B.A.D.

I think that I may have discovered that my comments feature may not be working. Unless of course ever since the all-power and mighty G bought Blogger they have introduced an Commentary Anti-Narcissism Trammel( C.A.N.T.), or possibly a User Response Banality and Denial (U.R.B.A.D.) protocol, since in their opinion, leaving comments for yourself must be Evil, and since the "greatest super-power on earth and beyond"( in their collective opinion) made their first Commandment of Internetity:"Don't be Evil", the second most important action was of course to ensure that their will was exacted: Judge, Jury, Technology

Ok, in no way did I start this commentary as a rant against the "One who's Name cannot be Spoken"...but did you know that in some cultures it is forbidden to say the name of "One who's Name cannot be Spoken".

Does anyone here Remember Ning? No? Well that's surprising because they had such a simple vision it seemed impossible that they could fail: a social-type network for the connection of everything to everyone". A type social-neurdual net that was somewhat akin to “The Force”. I think that they achieved a modicum of success: I have no doubt that everyone who worked at Ning + their Families + Their Friends were quite likely all joined in a happy Ning-ring.

Google: Another very simple Vision/Mission: to store all of the information in the World.

But Google was not named Billoogle, or Trilloogle( all just as silly sounding until they become allowed in Scrabble), Google was derived from a tiny spec of numerical size: Googol. Sine only about 5 people know what that means, don't worry about it. My point is only this: take the biggest number you can find that has a nifty sounding nerd name, and bastardize it into something fictitious such that it could in part, be defined as something bigger than Googol.

"all of the information in the world"......cannot ever be defined using metrics that hold still long enough for the Wikilluminati to post an entry( and you though the staff at Google was answering your questions...?). Laws of physics hold still for No Man, or Google. But the dusty libraries of France generally are much slower moving and make for better Google targets,

I must go now, but I am not done with is write-up. I ask for comments, but seems they are not allowed ( but between you and me, I think it's actually user-error

From the Archives 2009: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea? And as such, a mechanism to Annhiliate the results of Twittering was needed, and Fast. Here was my thought at the time...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 07:23:00 +0000

Unexpected Applications of Physics in a Social Media world where Viral “stuff” is believed to overcome the laws of nature….

From the Archives 2009: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea? And as such, a mechanism to Annihilate the results of Twittering was needed, and Fast. Here was my thought at the time...NOTE – I never had time to finish this though piece, it is a interesting view on the subject, and I am well aware that it was never concluded or edited, so yes, it has as many holes as Swiss has cheese, so I welcome all contributions.

This was no hack designed to bring down the tangibles of Twitter, rather, it was a thought exercise on how to make the emerging trends and sentiments the battlefield where trends and their opposites would meet with such orchestrated impact, that when the dust of silicon settled, there would be nothing…..

So, consistent with my belief that very, very few innovations are anything more than marketing buzzicology, we turn to systems that we know, to demonstrate that all that is new, may in fact be old again…..

***************************************************

Unexpected Applications of Physics in a Social Media world where Viral “stuff” is believed to overcome the laws of nature….

Of what Mass and Velocity do I need in order to create a socio-kinetic-bombardment “weapon” able to disintegrate a Public Opinion existing in a closed communication system?

If I am building a Socio-Kinetic Bombardment Cannon capable of exacting total destruction of a rapidly accelerating Opinion in a closed system defined as Twitter, of what Mass does my projectile need to be, and at what velocity must the projectile be traveling at impact with target?

Of what Mass and Velocity do I need to launch a sentiment-projectile at Twitter such that I facilitate total destruction of a rapidly accelerating

Twitter as a Kinetically Charged System

System: A system of bodies may have internal kinetic energy due to macroscopic movements of the bodies in the system

The kinetic energy of a system at any instant in time is the sum of the kinetic energies of the bodies it contains

Twitter: A system of bodies known as Tweets

Tweet: A body that is defined by its data payload and transference

Twitter is a system defined by the activity of end-users.

End-user activity can be defined as Tweets

The kinetic energy of Twitter is greatest when the center of frame mass

COMF = A center of momentum frame, of a system is any inertial frame where the center of mass is at rest.

COM = The center of mass of a system of particles is the point at which the system's whole mass can be considered to be concentrated for the purpose of calculations

Inertial Frame: a single snapshot of a system, where all subsequent snapshots are subject to the same laws governing the system

F = ma. Force = mass * acceleration

F = volume of tweets * trend

Acceleration = change in velocity over time

Velocity = rate of change of position

Vector = a line drawn between 2 fixed points

Vector = Force = mass * accel

Center of Mass(COM) = The single point that the system can be considered concentrated for the purpose of calculation(eg. An entity topic)

Center of Momentum Frame(COMF) = The Mass of Tweets without consideration for movement

Kinetic Energy = Total Mass moving at the speed of the COM

KE = Ei + (Mass * Velocity2)/2

Ei = energy of the system when it is not changing(eg. What is the energy of an opinion when it is not changing)

Mass = # of tweets

Velocity = rate of change in position of M

Energy is required to do work

Energy =
Work = Force * Distance

Force = Mass * Acceleration

Mass = Sum of bodies in a system

Acceleration = Change in Velocity over time

Velocity = Rate of change in Position

Vector = the movement of A to B at a Velocity

Twitter contains Energy and Force

Opinion = Entity + Sentiment

Twitter Opinion Mass = # of Tweets sharing a common Opinion

Public Opinion Mass = Prevailing public view on a topic

If we can measure TOM at a Point in Time, (Mass)

And we can measure the rate of change in Sentiment(Acceleration)

We can calculate the Force of the

The faster a mass is accelerating, the bigger the Force it can exert

Or, the bigger the mass, at any acceleration, the more force is can exert

Does KOL opinion on a topic contribute Mass or Velocity?

Work = Force * Distance

If the Work is described as Management Signoff on a Project:

Then the Energy put

Socio Kinetic Bombardment

Damage is incurred when the projectile impacts the target at orbital velocity

the same rate that the target is orbiting around a point or another body

can I build a projectile and launch it at Twitter with such velocity, that the impact is devastating?

Requirements

1. We must establish that twitter has a mass

2. We must find the Center of Mass

3. We must establish the velocity of the mass

Proof

Of what Mass and Velocity do I need to establish to enable my socio kinetic bombardment “weapon” to disintegrate a Public Opinion existing in a closed communication system?

The Anti-Twitter

Antimatter = The counterpoint that what large quorums may be "trending" about, quite often really don't matter.

From the Archives: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 07:07:00 +0000

Want and Desire: Misunderstood and Universally Accepted

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 22:54:00 +0000

Want and Desire: Misunderstood and Universally Accepted

I recently came across a debate regarding “want and desire”. This is the sort of semantically accepted explanation for motivations and their subsequent actions that troubles me a bit. Want and Desire are Results, are outputs from very basic psychological equations. Wants and Desires are not in themselves foundational variables in these equations, and this concept is so often left unconsidered, that the resulting impact is the complete and utter lack of understanding in regards to human behavior.

"Want" is not is not an atomic level catalyst. It is the result of something(s) far more basic, and often mindlessly(mind is an entire discussion in itself, taken up in another thread) synthesized from far more rudimentary emotions, instincts, and programming(subtly different than instincts). Does a sperm really “want”? Or does it simply “do” based on its genetic programming. As “wants” manifest in more sophisticated entities, the question is always going to be “Why”. There are many, many examples of this, but I’ll use one or two of yours:

- “Two humans want a baby”…Why?

o To quickly cover-off instinct and programming, we could say it’s not a “want”, but a simple genetic program running with the human body that compels most animals to procreate.

o But conscious “want” is a simple logical chain, even if it is not always examined….e.g.

§ Susan and Paul “want” a baby.

§ They “want” a baby because all of their friends have babies and are always doing baby-oriented things, which is alienating Susan and Paul from their friends

§ Susan and Paul don’t want to lose their friends.

§ Why don’t S & P want to lose their friends? Who cares? Why does it matter to them so much?

§ S & P have fun with friends. Friends supply S & P with Joy

§ S & P feel alone without friends. They become Sad.

§ S & P rely on friends for help. Their friends pet sit for their dog. S & P need help from those they can Trust.

§ S & P “want” a baby to avoid losing a source of Joy, to avoid being Sad, to avoid the difficulty of receiving help from those they Trust

o – (Joy + Sad +Trust) = “want a baby”

- “A parent wants a child to succeed” – Why? Who cares if a child succeeds or fails?

- I think we could more safely say that parents want their offspring to live. Why?

o Genetic programming often includes the mindless, instinctual actions of perpetuating a bloodline

- So with bloodline perpetuation covered, if we mean “success” to be something other than mere survival, why do extraneous popular measures of success (house, car, job, etc.) matter?

o The simplest answer would be something like: the parents understand *instinctively* that food, clothing and shelter increase the likelihood of surviving and reproducing in order to maintain a bloodline.

- But society has its own judgments that many people choose to take interest in:

o Successful children can be a source of Joy

o Dead offspring can be a source of Sadness and Anger

- Parent want their child to succeed because they are seeking Joy, and avoiding Sadness and Anger

I think that is possibly enough logical relationship examples to explain what I am getting at, but feel free to add your own.

"Mean Aversion": Avoidance of all that has become "the new normal"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 07:50:00 +0000

[ Sorry, it's a bad joke if you happen to be a Finacial Engineer familiar with Mean Reversion]

The infectious ubiquity of that, which already exists, contains enough viral inversion to comprehensively vaccinate the "Mean" contributor such that the remission of symptomatic innovations is inoculated so thoroughly that the sick get healthier and "healthier" becomes so synthetically conceptualized that it is forcefully emancipated from the essence of original thought catalysts.

You say WHAT? But I actually said it first.

As Matters of the Mine, are exactly as such, you are as you perceived, completely on your own....the only other reasonable observation is that colocation is not a vaccination against Arrogance.

And subsequently if Thinking were not Free, we would either be destitute, delinquent or a withered hand-wipe of diminutive conscious frugality. Nonsensical? Let the Games of Empirical Madness Begin.

Such conspicuous consumption of thought consumables is a leading cause of cognitive obesity.

WHAT?

Believe!

- Absurdity

- Contrivity

- Very small Elves

Early scientists tested rocks and bugs. Today’s scientists face faces, and their indelible interpretations of improvements, but:

"Non Nocent, ut Tentaret"

Well whoever uttered these words, certainly was not living life as "fast as he can", because if he were, it can and does sometimes hurt a great deal to try. "Catchy buzz-phrase meets faux-Wisdom"

So for those of you can see where I am heading with this article, you know that i am just a few lines short of the conclusion. If you choose to remember only one thing from this article, remember "8", it is far more than the simple superior to 7.....

And simply to raise the bar against which "important" things are measured, I'll let you know that with a few short key strokes, the important bit will emerge from the din, like the faux-natural contrast of a new sleeping bag in the fog, so here goes an attempt to share some life wisdom:

1) Never, ever, talk to Strangers.

2) Never, ever read blogs written by people you don't know

3) It can hurt a lot to try. That bit about it not is simply false

4. Swimming Pool salt granules melt ice as well as "Ice Melting Pellets"

5) Freedom of thought is about as "free" as that lunch , is there truly "no such thing as a.."

6) Never, under any circumstances present more than 6* bullets, unless you divide your bullets into short groups of three first.

7) Acknowledging, while using a philosophical tone, that there is so much more that you don't know, when compared to what you do know. In many cases, we understand the truth in those words, but, the simple utterance does not create wisdom in all cases, quite often it simply restates the obvious that yes you, are an idiot.

8) It's well established Blogiquette to leave at least one comment per visit( commenting on your own comment still counts as only 1.

9. Don't forget to notice and fortify the tip jar. We rely on tips for buying erasers and rose colored glasses. And we believe in Fiscal Transparency, and transparency is often as fragile as a recycled mason jar, so please don't knock over the tip jar( which just happens to be a recycled mason jar)

So there you have "it". It won't go away no matter how much effort you put into eliminating "it"

Have a pleasant day and try to enjoy life, as it quite possibly could be the only one you get

The Time Before Time:

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 00:57:00 +0000

The Time Before Time:

"If man made time, would that not suggest that before the age of man, there was no linear sequence of events that could be expressed in some other way than: **all happening at once? **

Does this support the theory of Creation? Vs Evolution? I suppose just about any written work can be interpreted in a nearly limitless number of ways. However, when I referred to "all happening at once", at no point did I reference Faith, God, or some other ethereal kinetic source capable of converting a void, to a non-void( of course Creationists could take the position that "God" not only creates all that there is, but also all that there isn't. After all, there are a great deal of highly educated and thoughtful folks who think of our super-contextual environment as significantly more populated by that which is "not" than by that which "is". And this is not nearly as convoluted as it may sound: one who digs a hole is surely accountable for creating a space densely populated by the "existence" of nothing. The pursuit of explanations to the *currently* and historically unexplainable unfortunately so often dead-end with concepts of Faith, and the deities that generally form the core of these faiths. So, for the moment, to greatly simplify matters and stay focused on matters that exclude excruciatingly strong biases towards Beliefs, Trusts, and Devotions to essences that may or may not exist. I will play the part of the Agnostic dissenter.

Let's suppose that "god" suddenly created *Everything*. Well for starters a very common belief is that even "god" required 7 days. Now these were not simultaneously occurring days that were compacted down to a relativistic time/space microscopity. In fact, Creation is described in terms of a linear progression. Exactly 6 days (possibly working into an evening or two…), but it was done on the seventh day. This is obviously an extremely precise measure of time. Possibly “god”, in a fleeting moment of anachronistic amusement, created for himself a calendar, and possible even a watch. Within the realm of Creationism, I don’t believe it is clearly stated when other timekeeping instruments such as the Sun and Moon where manifested. So, supposing, in the absence of a watch or calendar, the sun and moon were actually *created* on day 3, and further supposing that there really wasn’t anything else to serve as a reliable “time keeper”, it could be possible that “god” didn’t actually finish creating until day 10. But of course an all-powerful entity wouldn’t seem to have much trouble making a few adjustments in elapsed “something”(i.e. a linear progression of some number of events that occurred before the delineation provided by time), thus things finished in a nice round number 7( or 6 if you don’t count recovery time). Which raises another interesting point about time: if God always was, and always is and will be, why was he so tired after just 6 days of work? Even by Creationist measures, *god* has been at work for around 6,000 years. But of course we would never be privy to whether or not *god* is kicking back resting every once in a while.

So, did man create time? Time create Man? Maybe. We are told that “god” took a rest on day 7; I suppose it’s possible that as “god” was resting, Man was busy as a bee establishing units of linear measure, which are most commonly referred to as Time.

Lastly, the concept that at some point in *time*, there was an exceedingly large “BANG”, may at least partially explain events post-bang, but what was this super-kinetic Bang-capable “thing” doing before it went BANG. Waiting? Resting? Practicing (wouldn’t you, for something so BIG”.

Ok, so what do we think we might know about time? Some of these ideas concern progressions of events that may or may not have occurred over “time” (depending on your individual bias). Still others are of the belief that all this banging and creation defied the applicability of Time, since after all “man created Time”.

So the two prevailing theories regarding the transformation of “vacuous somethings”, into somethings of a more fathomable density, both have well defined starting points within the dichotomous communications of Science and Religion. But what I would like to have a better understanding of is what was happening before either of these two competing events took place? I for one have absolutely no idea.

Thinking about Thinking: How many humans does it take to create a Thought Event?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 01:22:00 +0000

To begin: Something I have written about in other forums…The Cogito.

Part I

Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am. Am what? What has this “thinker” become? And is Thinking an atomic level Essence indivisible from “I am”. Applied to humans, the implication is certainly that without Thinking, you are Not. But again, Not What? Human?

Meta-Cognition is the fog that ceaselessly clouds the realm of logical attempts to refute, or validate the statement, regarding the Cogito.

If I do not possess any manner of meta-cognition, can I possibly know that I am Thinking. If I lack the ability to ascertain whether or Not I am Thinking, Am I?

Cogito Ergo Sum. Succinct and to the point. But correct in any defensible way? These 3( Cogito Ergo Sum) words do not include any sort of suggestion that while I may lack the meta-abstraction to evaluate the truthfulness of “I Am”, the same could be established by some quorum of observers, or via a self-administered and standardized evaluation.

A further point of philosophical debate that seems always ready to throw a spanner into scientific works is the question of Brain vs Mind. Machine vs Ethereal Essence? Tangible vs Linguistic Construct?

If a man, in total isolation, unschooled and completely ignorant in the various sciences and philosophies of Mindfulness, exercises a consideration of something, was this truly a “thinking” event? With no a priori understanding of Meta-anything, can we say with certainty that a “thinking event” has just come to pass? And here we( or maybe just I) are, providing surrogate meta-meta-cognitive evaluations.

So how many “thinkers” does it take to screw in a light bulb. None.

How many philosophers and scientists does it take argue the existence of Thinking into being? Quite likely more than one.

How many humans does it take to attempt to establish the occurrence of a “thinking event”? Quite likely also more than one.

The temporary conclusion to this thought exercise might be a question: Are self-awareness and meta-cognitive ability required to be present in order for “thinking” to occur? And if one must Think in order To Be, can we possibly know, with any degree of non-faith-based certainty, when the genesis of “Thinking” actually occurred?

Regarding the suggested necessity to be Intelligent in order to Think: Many well respected researchers and highly respected scholars have independently and collectively put forth a myriad of standard evaluations to attempt the demonstration of a quantifiable presence of Intelligence in many forms of beings, including those that may not be of organic origins, but may be in part constructed from naturally occurring elements (Silicon, etc.) Unfortunately, it must be considered that manifestation of “Intelligence” may not be limited to a finite number. Further, it must also be considered that variations of Intelligence may exist in forms beyond the current comprehension and subsequent definitions put forth by those who seek to articulate the essence of Intelligence. To suggest otherwise would be akin to reasoning that all manners of Intelligence are current understood to the point of scientific explanation.

Part II

What makes the Turing Test for the presence of Intelligence particularly clever( in my opinion at least) is that he recognizes the potential impossibility, or at minimum, the highly distracting digression that would be required to irrefutably derive a universally accepted definition of Intelligence. Instead, he focuses on the potential ability of a machine to imitate the response patterns of human, in such a way that they be indistinguishable from a human. Among the various challenges inherent to this test, is the well observed unpredictability of humans, especially as the bio-psycho-social, and of course cultural, diversity of human test population increases.

There have been many successful exercises that have correctly predicted the behavioral patterns of humans, but at the same time, we should be aware of a long history of failures to accurately predict human behavior, and the successes and failures to articulate “timeless” truisms regarding human behavior show no indication of ever coming to a *predictable* conclusion.

Can a machine now, or ever, imitate human response patterns to a structured evaluation such that man and machine become indistinguishable? Quite possibly given the right pairing of the current undefined variations of human behaviors, and the more defined spectrum of machines. In other words: if by chance a human who displays a certain variation of behavioral patterns happened to be compared to a particular type of “Imitation Machine”, the results may well contain the possibility of being indistinguishable.

Even more interesting ( to me at least) is the influence that the ubiquity of machines is having on human behavior. It would seem that the trend towards human imitation of machines may be increasing at a rate that is more accelerated than the trending of a machine’s ability to perfectly imitate a human test subject. But there is a dramatic difference in the manner in which these trends may be converging. This difference I believe is best observed through a simple test of “manipulative minimization”.

The reversion of humans towards basic instincts given the complete separation from anything mechanical is with some degree of certainty going to be far more dramatic(and readily observable) than the separation of machines from humans. Taken to some degree of extremity, and given some reasonable amount of time, it may be that while mechanical devices remain in a predictable steady state, which some may currently refer to as “over simplistic” relative humans; stripped of generations of mechanical prosthetic augmentation, humans may in fact regress to level of behavioral simplicity that trends towards that of a steady-state machine. For many, the concept of a rapid decline in human behavioral complexity given the absence of mechanical behavioral manipulators is difficult to accept. In many cases, those that find this concept hard to accept are the “thinkers” who have entirely confused their purposed “evolution” with the effects of the ubiquitous presence of mechanical prosthetics.( which I have previously discussed so I won’t be covering that concept at the moment) .

So, in my opinion, we cannot ignore the possibility of a state of human behavior that either already exists, or comes into existence, whereby humans unintentionally imitate machines in such a way that the Turing Test becomes predictably passable by a machine.

So what do we suppose might happen, if we give a variety of humans, ranging from experts in AI to humans with minimal exposure to mechanical devices, and ask them to behave in such a way that their behavior becomes indistinguishable from that of the most sophisticated AI machine that currently exists? A “Turinual[sic] Reversion” Test. But for all I Know, this may a standard scientific protocol practiced for the past 64 years….

Practical Applications of Pure Unreasoning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 06:45:00 +0000

Hyper Relaxivity Disorder: The Paradox of Multi-Thrashing Uselessness

A Fictional Case Study of Peterson: A Potential Observation of Quantum Idiocy

Peterson was on all accounts no different than anyone else he socialized with or worked with professionally. His Midnight blue suit was fitted just where it should be, his tie knotted to a geometric perfection, his Allen Edmonds cap-toes, seem to defy scuffs like teflons protects dons.

But Peterson had a secret. A really big secret. The kind of really big secret that if leaked, would cause ripples of ubiquitous agreement, that yes, Peterson did in fact used have a not just big, but very big secret indeed.

Masked in the stealth homogeny of “Everyday Type-A Man”, Peterson had risen through the corporate ranks as adeptly as a monkey on a ladder, just quieter, and vastly less unusual looking, considering the conservative corporate history and culture of Brooks, Broches, and Englesmoughen(EBB), one of the most highly regarded Private Equity Firms with prime street frontage on 5 Ave (with a carefully guarded 6^th Avenue mailing address). But in the indelible rumblings of Boughtry Englesmoughen, Founding Partner at EBB: “Hey, if Trump Tower can have 8 floors of Penthouses, and “grow” his square footage every year, what’s a little fudgery when it comes to something as trivial as what door you use to enter a building…”

7:17 AM

Peterson, pressed, primped, and primed for the kinetically infused “instawhat” that could, and often did happen at any moment. Vigilant, Observant, superiorly connected, his soft white-collar fingers splayed elegantly, but damn firmly in contact with the imported leather of his 18^th century English writing table he called “Home”, when he was, as he was now, precisely where his heart is. And that! Was not only the BBE cultural genetics, it was, to Peterson, a contact with the living and breathing essence of everything that mattered at BBE. Finger on the pulse of leather and 200 year old Mahogany. Steady as a metronome on plane, in a vacuous space, a mind space. And as such mindedly defined spaces afford, Peterson’s own pulse was in lock step with the drummed out beat of life he could feel reverberating through his finger-tips, then forearms, shoulders, chest, neck and yes, at last, the cognitive terminus of creation: The Peterson Consciousness, of which, as a student of all things Meta, Peterson covered off that digressive circumspection with an effort so imperceptible, that the modes of his modal, currently consisting of 2 flat palms on his desk; Peterson, EBB, and some finely crafted composite of ungodly expensive ex-tree and ex-bovine, but what is sacrifice if not for the carry-on of time, precious EBB time?

But today, as Peterson time-sliced his way through a charade of faux multi-tasking, possibly more aptly described as “prosthetical mind merger” with the steady stream of priceless tasks, that flowed with a volume and force that would cause a non-EBB man to question “stuff”, Peterson was EBB through and out, and this seemingly, and unexpected immersion induced assimilation with not just EBB right now, but with EBB as it was in the days that were days long before this day. And Peterson was by all accounts, 10 precisely, now a physical part of that history, as he reconciled that his in-touchness with the unseen, organic symbioticy of his once-untamed desk. But pulses will pulse, and desks will stand, while hides will often do just that, and it was this revelatory moment that cathartically caused Petersons left pinky to twitch nearly imperceptibly. But for that fleeting instant, and it cannot be argued otherwise, the full index of digitary pronation was disintermediated by a perception, a cognitive anomaly, an event of potential, that wreaked senselessly of dissention, and with it, the inevitability of confusion. Yes, Yes, Yes. Peterson had a secret, and in all the world that really mattered, defined by the sum of all sqft on floor 19 of EBB, this ethereal dissention could only have come to notice by that artifact of EBB history, that keeper of hearts, and that definer of homes, and it was beyond any sort of objection. The solidity, tenure, and obvious collocation deemed it all but indelible scripture. And it was at this point, that Peterson, knew that life could never, would never, be again, as it has been just 3 minutes and 27 seconds ago. This regal masterwork, this import of importance, was no more, for ever more, the conduit to the pulse of EBB. No, in fact Peterson, in this moment of clarity, whose longevity was impossible to forecast, knew that it was now, that heart is where the home is, if in fact the heart was at home. But that swift disintermediation of Peterson’s 37 years with the Objecte de Vie of 200 years changed everything. And as simple things go, what Peterson realized now, ranked right up there. His Corporate Personification of this “table”, was not a super effervescent magic that instilled life and meter where there was none, it was in fact, and fact is a strong word, and this was a time for words with strength, Peterson who gave meter to the lifeless form of “paper and stapler holder” now lying “dead” before him. It was HE who was the giver of life, not the givers of life now so unnaturally cast into corporate compliance that were the givers of life. The pulse, the flow, the organic persistence of the office thrivery derived its energy from Peterson, and NOT visa-versa. And this Level 11 Heresy was a secret that Peterson would bury so deeply in his custom shrouded soul, that just maybe, he could, keep, The Secret, from escaping and polluting with its realism, the microcosm of corporate pomp and circusry that was EBB.

The Business of Portals : Oh this used to be so topical, but is no less important now

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:27:00 +0000

Improving outcomes of virtual reality based protocol execution through a reduction of cognitive disintermediation caused by non-instinctive haptic input devices and cognitively inconsistent modal model interruptions

A human brain assigned the task of completing a protocol is in State when it is processing through the modes that comprise the model. The more that cognitive resources are in alignment with processing the modes, and the fewer State interruptions encountered by the brain, the greater the likelihood of positive outcomes in model completion.

When models are developed for the completion of tasks using computer systems, the model is necessarily interspersed with tasks only indirectly relevant to the model that yields task completion. However, the author of the model describing the task, will assume that the user is able to consciously insert the non-model related technology tasks as needed. In fact, the fluid ability to follow a Modal Model protocol, while in addition processing the necessary(but indirect) insertion of technology tasks requires a great deal of cognitive resource, whether conscious or unconscious to the person performing the task. As may be expected, the relative cognitive premium required to complete the model using technology, is a function of the performers proficiency with the tool, the intuitiveness of the tool, and the overall cognitive resources of the performer.

In our application of virtual reality technology as a medium for education, communication, and task completion, we are motivated to render contexts for model execution that minimize the cognitive premium required to perform tasks that are not described in the model necessary for task completion. In our study we look to articulate the impact on model outcomes when cognitive resources are preserved for model mode consideration.

We will present a virtual reality environment that has been optimized for modal model completion and minimization of the cognitive premium required to interface with the technology. Using virtual manifestations of the user(as a whole, or in part), minimization of proprioception, and replacement of inefficient haptic input devices, users of our environments will improve model outcomes through preservation and refocusing of cognitive resources. We will deploy these methodologies into the contexts of education, business, and gerontechnology.

Cognitive and Computer science based learning theory applied to business, education and health

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:12:00 +0000

The Post Beyond Reasonable Doubt, and Highly Dubious

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 09:45:00 +0000

Ok, so this is my blog, and I don't know how to create categories, so the absurd, get tossed into the blog-o-matic linearalization of my thoughts. Most are significant (likely), some are Absurd ( surely), and others retain a buoyancy akin to a flotsam and jetsam, but rarely travel in such tidy "Jeflotsam pairs. Like peeing in a pod ( sorry, it's a funny joke in Japan).

The point being that mixed in with the good, is something else entirely, and as someone(s) often said: "and now for something completely different"

Now I know I am not the first person to say this, but possibly I am the first person to say it today, and because it happens to be somewhere between the beginning and end of night for at least some of us, I feels this pressing sense of urgency to get these things said before either someone else says them, or I run out of time in which to say them, and with this winter chill, the pace at which I urgently put words to paper, or plastic to plastic, or skin to plastic, may be somewhat slower than it might be in a more or less favorable climate, but I can be certain of just one thing, and that one thing would be the conviction I feel to convert this expanse of white paper into an expanse of black and white paper. And, should I be so fortunate as to be at least mildly coherent, it stands to reason, that at least someone, myself included, may in fact take the time to not only put these thoughts to paper, but to remove them as well. Now that was a well-deserved little pause. I don’t expect that anyone else took as much from that tiny round bit of guilty pleasure as I in fact did, but as someone may well have once refrained from (and wisely so I suppose), if a period divides a sequence of otherwise contiguous ramblings, and yet no one is there to read it, did the periodical pause exist, or was it stripped clean of it only true reason for being? And to a lesser extent, the same could be said, of commas, I suppose. Unlike tower spires, or little piles of rocks, including those that may float, and of course those as well that don’t float, what could we say that would, in no uncertain terms, or even in certain terms, take up such a ubiquitous presence within the sightlines of our daily doings, and still, after testaments reaching to well about the almost inconceivable measure of a million comma march, could things, while possible having been slowed, now, as it were the second coming, coming, interject with such diminutive, yet iron clad insistence that a pause, is not a stop, while in fact a stop, especially is rather short, could assume the entirety of punctuational fluidity. Glory seeking, narcissistic, greedy fucking period, comma-wanna-be Period( and that was an intentionally denied, perfectly good opportunity to implant that ubiquitous, yet devious, cognitive-disintermediative, tiny round speck of nuisance, BUT, it was not to be, and thus :Denied ![ note the superiority of the exclamation points bar, standing square upon the undeserving, bottom-feeding, vermin of punctuation THE PERIOD])

It's about time: An Excerpt from an article I recently authored

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 09:23:00 +0000

"Beyond the 4th Dimension of Reason: Resetting the Dimensional Clock to Time Zero"

.....but time, seems to have the rather inconvenient characteristic of not wanting to stop, so for all of you so seriously litmusing and testing societal blocks to find out what time it is, best not to pause or lest you be left behind as time so indignantly waits for no "man".
Which leads me to believe that if you truly want to understand time, your efforts may be most productively applied to subjects for whom time does wait. And we can pretend that these anti-pendulous scoffers of sensorial narrative units don't exist, but now who’s being naive?
So let’s all close our eyes and each draw up a mental list of those things of which we know, that are neither concerned with time, nor impacted by it. And no, I am not accepting answers which include concepts like "Timeless Beauty", which is probably the most poorly named manifestation of universal progression....Absurdity!, Even the concept's name is derived from that construct from which it is claimed to be infinitely extracted from. "Timelessness" is a word.
And I really ought to simply leave it at that because any qualifier associated with it, even the seemingly nonsensical (e.g. Timeless Treasure perhaps? is just so plainly a reference to a far from chronologically ambivalent substance held in high regard by a temporary collective that clearly has the poor-boys half of the equation smudged out on the back of his coal shovel, while it apparently requires a large stone structure with windows, a quorum of some order often identified by the “timelessness” of their gray beards, to shuffle and mumble and hrrrfmmph around the room, *periodically" casting metered gazes at the black hole( helpfully drawn on cardboard with a sharpie and hung from the chalkboard), which is never there to explain itself when this quorum meets( because it wasn't timeless, or just wasn't on time?). But as they say, Absence makes the clock tick faster, at least in a black hole, where if you really think about it, it's far too dark to see clocks from within black holes, so who are we to say whether the sum of all time is singularly condensed down to an atomic unit, not really much larger in size or weight than the inherent value of a Bit coin on Chinese New Year. (So does that make Mr. Bit Coin stoic, or ignorant?) but more importantly, just the 30 seconds spent on a nonsensical vision of a personified Mr. Bit Coin is enough to 1) re-enforce the fact that we covet our 30 second fantastical escapades with C Bitty 2) run rough shod in our size 13EEE Geesus Ignorante moon boots over the tops of the truly time deifying list of entities existing within our realm.

If man made time, would that not suggest that before the age of man, there was no linear sequences of events that could be expressed in some other way than: all happening at once? is time a measure of history? a purely relativistic measure of some sequence of events happening not all at the same time? And if this is the case that before man came along and began "timing" everything, there was no essence( there's that word again) of time? we as humans have devised all manners of mechanics to monitor time, but is time not an inherent quality of all life? If something has a beginning and an end, does that require that the middle section is filled with time? this i think is not a question of whether a being needs to be able to contemplate time, it is a question of relativity, only, e.g.: what exactly is a "dog year" and who decided it was seven years of human time? do dogs know this? do they work faster to accomplish more given that their relative lifespans are somewhat shorter than their human companions? did early humans with life expectancies of only about 30 years, live their lives as fast as they could, knowing that they only had about 30 years to live? do fruit flies know that they have 1 day to live? If man made time, then how do other beings instinctively know when it is "time" to migrate, or create offspring, or challenge the leader of their group for supremacy? How much better would man be at keeping "time" if all mechanical instruments of time were stripped away? Surely some would be better than others. Primitives don't generally wear watches, but time is a very meaningful concept to them: when will the ice melt? When will wild game arrive, when will the 18 hours of sunlight in the far North begin and end? Do these events not occur according to a routine schedule? Time has existed long before man. But the mistake that is so often made by man is that they confuse meta-cognition with invention. Time knew man, long before man used mechanicals to count the ticks of life

Three Lefts don’t make a Right, but they do make a Square, and may even be potentially responsible for the genesis of Digitized Circles

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 07:39:00 +0000

Three Lefts don’t make a Right, but they do make a Square, and may even be potentially responsible for the genesis of Digitized Circles

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about little squares. Little squares are easily constructed using very simple mathematics. If we agree( at least in the alien world of computer innards), that little squares, built by 0 and 1 constructors, are capable of manipulating sensory perception to such an extent that most people don't ever consider basic concepts like "curved is a sequence of straights". "Arcs" are manifests of carefully arranged straight lines, with enough straight lines, we can create such a density of "straights", that Sensorially, we perceive what appear to be images that look nothing like squares or straight lines.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that in a digital context, proper and perfect geometric circles are impossible to construct. Further, it seems to follow that the observers degree of sensory conviction regarding the truthfulness of the Digital Circle of Perfection(DCP) is simply evaluated as an inverse proportion to the distance/magnification from which the observer receives information about the “alleged” circle, before passing it along for cognitive evaluation, where if “well” executed by the digital processor, Sensory perceptions and cognitive perceptions would be in agreement that the “circle looking image is truly a circle”

And if a general consensus is reached across a population that the image presented to them results in an agreement between sensory perceptions and cognitive perceptions, with singular( en masse) conviction that they are indeed observing a circle. If we can accept this principle, we are also accepting that “circles are made from squares”. And to extrapolate on this logical sequence, we should be able to say that the number of straight lines or little squares assembled to create this mass geometric quorum is not infinite( which is not to say that little blocks are infinitely divisible), and things that are not infinite are Finite. Finite things can be measured and counted.

So where I am left to think about this a bit more is: if a quorum of observers declare an image to be a circle, Do is it not? Now we see the inevitable divide between empirically constructed and observed “circles” and those that are incapable of manifesting digitally (which is not the same as tangibly). So at this stage, I think we say things like:

1. Empirical observation and mass quorum, may or may not be able to take something that isn’t, and convert it to something that is( e.g. Squares to circles)

2. The imagination of a perfect circle is seemingly possible, but impossible to test.

3. We can build circle-looking images from a finite number of straight lines( or little boxes)

So if we feel that this logic is sound, at what point during the assemblage of the “straights” can we declare that a circle has just been born, and if we can do that, we should be able to establish an infinitely scalable equation that will always be able to tell us how many “straights” are required to yield a “round”, so does:

S = straight or otherwise square building material

N = the number of S’s required to yield a perfect and proper digital circle

C = Circle

Then:

1) there is a point in time at which a non-circle transitions into circle status

2) There is a calculable and reliable number that can be derived such that this number allocates to the “digital circle builder the exact number of straights needed to construct the perfect round by the he builders. So if this were true, N number of straights makes a round, and we can always solve for N.

Now raise your hand if you believe in this train of logic…..

Now this post is not about circles, it’s about little squares:

Language. Unlimited? Possibly. Perfect? Not Likely.

Imagine trying to draw a perfectly smooth circle out of straight lines, or little tiny squares. This is in fact what a computer does. Unsophisticated computers produce circles that have jagged edges, like a saw blade. Very fancy computers seem to produce flawless curves and thus perfect circles. But, zoom in close enough on the edge of that “perfect” circle, and you will find the same saw tooth edging that was readily visible on the unsophisticated computer. We can build incredibly complex, and exceptionally sophisticated computers, with the best of the best mathematical algorithms for producing circles, but, when the disks have stopped spinning, zoom in again on this “Uber Circle” and you will still find that same saw toothed edging.

Why? The computer/display does not have “curve”, “arc”, “bend”, “circle”, etc. as a foundational building “block” within its language. It only has “little squares” within its core vocabulary. To represent anything other than squares, elaborate instructions must be given to the computer, explaining to it how to assemble these little tiny squares such that the result is something that does not look like a square. The simpler the computer, the less complex the instructions it can understand, and the more crude the output (let’s assume “circle) will be. Very sophisticated computers can be given very, very complicated instructions on how to assemble the little squares such that the result looks like a circle. But either way, the Circle is still just a bunch of little squares representing themselves to be a circle, with some computers better able than others to tell the story.

Human language is structurally the same, the key difference being that our vocabulary is not restricted to little squares, but our vocabulary is also not perfectly complete. The fewer the vocabulary blocks we possess, the cruder the story we might tell in relation to the actual event. The more sophisticated we are, and the larger the number of vocabulary blocks we possess, the more refined our story appears. But no matter how smooth the arc of our story, zoom in close enough and you will see the same saw tooth edges that we saw with our circle. Why? We can forever converge on linguistic perfection, but the difference between current state linguistics and perfection is infinitely divisible, and thus perfection is never achievable. Just as a square can never be a circle.

And therefore, while unlimited amounts of other linguistic accessories can be layered on top of our vocabulary building blocks to try and smooth the imperfect edges (tone, cadence, volume, etc.), we can maintain that our language is unlimited, but our communications can never be perfect.