Feedback Governs Dynamics

You say you want a revolution

2011-02-24T17:24:00.002-05:00

The year of two thousand and eleven is off to an interesting start. First Tunisia and then Egypt with other countries in Africa and the Middle East seeking to force change. A computer impressively won back to back games of Jeopardy and President Obama determined that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. It hasn't even been two months!

It's pretty much impossible to see from the ground floor of a revolution, but I wonder if history will look back on this time as one. The real question though is, what will all this change, revolutionary or not, mean? It's a question that seems to be ignored in large part almost as much as the question of what we want our future to look like.

It's pretty clear the social network and technology we are building has become an important catalyst for change yet it also feels a bit like a loose fire hose that can do damage just as easily as it can prevent it. Figuring out how to operate this new vast machine will likely be the greatest challenge facing our generation.

It seems that we have built or are in the process of building all the tools we need. Now is the time to figure out what it is we want to create. In other posts as I've marveled at the exponential that we are riding and tried to visualize one possible future, but I'm increasingly concerned by the lack of discussion and vision. Without direction I fear that the vacuum will be filled not by those with the best ideas, but rather those with the greatest motivation. Now doesn't seem like the time to be on the sidelines, it might just be time for a revolution.

Jon and Barry

2010-10-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

This conversation between Jon Stewart and our President is one of the most insightful since Barack Obama gave his A More Perfect Union speech. It really is worth watching in it's entirety.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Let's Keep the President Waiting

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Barack Obama Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Barack Obama Pt. 2

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Barack Obama Pt. 3

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Moment of Zen - Obama Will Not Be at the Rally

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

The LHC, The Universe, and Life

2010-08-06T11:01:00.004-04:00

I came across an older TED talk by Brian Cox, a particle physicist working on a detector for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and he does a fantastic job explaining the machine and its purpose. But it was actually the very end of his talk that I think is the most interesting. He quickly explains the universe as a story of creation that I think should resonate with both the religious and scientific perspectives. He mentions a quote from Carl Sagan's Cosmos that puts it well, from the universe emerged consciousness and "At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution." I've written a number of times about how remarkable the exponential rate of change we are experiencing is, but I think Brian does an exceptional job of putting it into a perspective, making it well worth fifteen minutes out of a single day. If you don't have the time or patience to watch it all, at least skip to 10 minutes 50 seconds to see his story of creation.

This also led to one of his more recent TED talks on why we need continue investing the tiny fraction (less than 1% GDP) that we do in research. He again closes with a Carl Sagan quote that everyone should hear at least once in their life. Again if you can't manage the sixteen and a half minutes, skip to 12 minutes 45 seconds.

I've often wondered what a world where every person deeply believed in the fact that everything in our entire universe came from one single source might be like. I think inherently humanity longs for some form of oneness, but through our own wonderfully unique perspectives we more often only see the differences. Perhaps if there was a deep enough root belief we could find the courage and strength to focus less on the differences and more on how to live in peace. As knowledge of our universe spreads and grows, maybe thoughts like the ones in these short talks will someday help that root take hold.

Riding the Exponential

2010-07-30T16:20:00.003-04:00

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Thanks, and please only take it once. If you want to check the results again they are here. Please re-post the link if you don't mind helping out. Read on if you want to know more about why I'm asking, but fair warning, I wax a bit philosophical.

Having entered the world of parenthood I find myself wondering more and more often about the future that awaits my son. This led me to that very simple question above and as I asked myself , I realized that it only mattered so much what I thought. More importantly, I believe that what our society as whole thinks is more critical since we, as a collective, ultimately shape the future. The Smithsonian recently did an extensive poll, but I was curious what those connected to my social network thought.

My initial expectation is that there will be about a 50/50 split in responses. My intuition, however, is that as our future unfolds, there will be more people that are optimistic.

You can count me among those already optimistic, because even though I believe we've been headed down the wrong path for some time and even though things seem more overwhelming and polarized than ever. I have far more reasons for optimism. This isn't because the answers to all our problems are already out there, it's because there are at least a few things in our society that have great power for creating change and for these few things, it's all about riding the exponential.

For some, the concept of exponential growth might be familiar and understandable, but for others it might have a very unclear meaning. Try thinking of it this way. When you are in a car taking an exit ramp that turns, the corner often starts out gradual and then becomes more and more sharp as you come to the end. If you kept the same speed in that corner, you'd feel greater and greater force from the turn. So much so, that you usually need to slow down to keep the tires on the road.

A roller coaster doesn't have to obey those rules though. That's what makes them so much fun. Since they cling to the track and make use of this force to do loops and spirals. Roller coasters allow you to actually feel more of that exponential, which makes it thrilling for some and terrifying to others. So what are these things we've done right and what makes them exponential?

Technology is an obvious one. In 1972, 38 years ago, calculators looked like this.

For the majority of the 4,000 years before that they looked more like this:

A mere 20 years ago we used computers like this:

And just four years ago this was one of the hottest phones:

In just the last few years smart phones that run powerful applications have exploded onto the market and by this time next year they're expected to account for half of the cell phone market. These phones make use of a range of sensors and communication mediums that are radically changing how we interact with the world and they are fully capable of far more than what has already been dreamt up.

The interesting thing about exponential growth is that the amount of change looks pretty flat when you look at the last few years or at periods long ago. But if you look at the entire time window, the line pitches straight up at the end. Here's an example showing the rate of change over the entire history of homo sapiens.

The point I'm trying to make is that we are already riding an incredible exponential and we need to start learning how to make more sense of what it all means. By the time my son reaches the age of maturity, the change we've seen in the past 20 years will appear as flat to him as the last 100 years were to us (and we think a lot has changed in 100 years). It only grows from there as well. If I am so fortunate, my grandchildren will have a nearly unimaginable range of tools immediately within their reach.

Having developed so many tools in the decades before us, the next few years will really be about learning how to apply them. Right now there is a big tension between having incredible social connectivity and yet almost zero civil connectivity. Not that it is completely impossible to have some civil connectivity now, but more often than not we have no idea what our government representatives support and they, in turn, are often uninformed of their constituents concerns.

The networked world has reached a tipping point however, and I believe this civilian connection is going to start taking shape. From simple polls like the one in this post to detailed sites with all the data, models, and descriptions needed to describe the problem as well as the solutions, policy, and legislation. Linking this all together will be no small challenge, but the tools are finally maturing. All we have to do is start developing that vision of how to use them.

I'll try to keep fumbling through my examples and pointing to cool things already out there, but any thoughts and feedback are always appreciated.

Crime Model Video

2010-05-31T22:15:00.002-04:00

I finally was able to post this after learning that Vimeo doesn't have the same lame ten minute restriction that YouTube does. Of course Vimeo doesn't let you embed the HD version so I recommend clicking on the HD icon in the top right and then the link to watch it in HD on their site. Once their make sure you switch to full screen to see it in all its glory. The online model being discussed is available in this post. The full conference paper is here.

Crime Cycles Model

2010-03-30T00:56:00.010-04:00

The following is a model that I've been working on as part of my graduate research. Use the story mode to learn about the model structure, and then try a few policies yourself. I'll be posting a video later to explain a little more.

Update: for those that don't have a large screen, this link will load it in a separate page.

<applet code="cycles_of_gang_violence/Simulation$Applet.class" archive="http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/com.xj.anylogic.engine.jar,http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/cycles_of_gang_violence.jar" width="1280" height="720"> </applet>

Simple Population Models

2010-01-25T21:22:00.010-05:00

In a Master's course last semester I built a model to compare simple population cohort models using System Dynamics and Agent Based Modeling. Someone also asked in the System Dynamics forum if it was possible to embed models in a blog, so I thought I' try it out here. The model below simulates people moving through an aging chain, where at the age group of fecund, they influence the birth rate. Both models produce similar dynamics, but the representations offer a few unique insights on problem formulations. The System Dynamics model is quite a bit easier to build and calibrate, producing good fits to the UN data. The agent model is more complicated and is prone to stochastic effects (which could be smoothed with more agents), but it also more easily allows for additional individual attributes such as gender and wealth. Use the navigation buttons to explore the different implementations and run the model to 2050 to have more time and glimpse of where we might be headed (the population scale is per million people). Note, you'll need to have Java and increase the amount of applet memory available to at least 400M. See this page for a good explanation on how to do this.

<applet code="world_population_aging_chain/Simulation$Applet.class" archive="http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/com.xj.anylogic.engine.jar,http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/world_population_aging_chain.jar" width="902" height="718"> </applet>

Cash for Clunkers Impact

2010-01-21T13:02:00.006-05:00

When this program was rolled out, a friend asked me what the impact on consumption would be. I finally got around to running some of the numbers. Please let me know if you find any mistakes in the math. In summary, the individual benefits are pretty good, but the impact on the country as a whole are easy to dismiss.

According to the summary statistics from the program web site the average mileage of the new vehicles was 24.9 MPG and the trade-in mileage 15.8 MPG. This means there is an average overall increase of 9.2 MPG, or a 58% improvement. Not bad, right? So for an individual that drives the average 12,000 miles per year, the additional 9.2 MPG means they will save 281 gallons per year (note the math is 14,000/24.9 - 14,000/15.8, not 14,000/9.2). Using the average price of regular for 2009 of $2.31 per gallon, this is a yearly savings of $649 or a monthly savings of $54. So in addition to the tax rebate, buyers have a virtual $54 taken off their monthly car payment, making this a real "no-brainer" for those that had the opportunity to take part. This is especially true if you look at the current gas prices and longer term trend.

So what was the impact on the country? In total, there were 677,081 vehicles replaced, creating a savings of 190 million gallons per year! Sounds pretty great, right? Well it's a start, but when you compare it to the total United States consumption of 378 million gallons/day, it turns into a drop in the bucket. In numbers, this is only a 0.1% decrease in consumption per year. This is a far cry from the 58% improvement we started with.

There are some good insights here still. As an individual, when you go to buy another vehicle. Think about the true cost per year. If you get a vehicle that has even a modest MPG improvement, you might be able to afford a larger car payment than you think. Myself for example, if I were to get a Prius, I'd go from about 26 MPG to 48 MPG (highway, which is what I mostly drive). That's a difference of 22 MPG. I also drive around 20,000 miles per year and the 6 month gas price average is $2.56. That means I could save $902 a year or $75 a month. Up next, electric vehicles, but alas my lunch hour is over.

System Dynamics Forum Survey Results

2010-01-13T09:07:00.005-05:00

I wanted to try out the Google Spreadsheets Forms for doing surveys and some questions about the System Dynamics Forum provided a good excuse. Here are the results.

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Perspective

2009-10-28T20:48:00.004-04:00

As the new year approached last year I reflected on how I didn't readily know how long homo sapiens have been around in a post. What was most amazing to me wasn't just the 250K years of progress, but the exponential explosion that has occurred in just the last 470 years since the arrival of the Gutenberg printing press. A while after making that post I created the chart below to highlight this remarkable acceleration in the pace of innovation.

Some time later I realized that I also didn't really know the history of life, the earth, the sun, or even our place in the timeline of the universe. As a space nerd I did know that the universe was over 13 billion years old, but I had no idea where we sat in its history. After a little more Wikipedia research and some rough approximations in Power Point I created the image below that puts some of this info into view. With the universe exploding into existence some 13.7 billion years ago, it then took 8.7 billion years before our sun formed. Then in just 500 million years the earth formed, in another billion years the most simple life emerged. For the next 3.27 billion years life would evolve until the rise of the Dinosaurs, which would rule the earth for an astounding 160 million years. It would be another 65 million years before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene with our measly 250,000 years of history.

So why do I think this kind of information is so important? It's a matter of perspective. As advanced as humans are, we will never fully see reality but instead perceive it through our windows into the world. Understanding the implications of this explains a lot about human behavior. If we were to experience all of reality we'd simply be overwhelmed and unable to make sense of any of it. Instead, through the windows of our senses we sample just a piece of the world at a time. Through our collective we have extended our senses to allow us see further into reality, be it the depths of space or the smallest of particles, yet we will always be limited to a view through a window. This shouldn't belittle our existence, but rather emphasize both our uniqueness and our belonging to something that is incomprehensibly larger than our perceptions.

As we struggle through each day to solve our problems big and small, a little perspective might help us all understand what is really important and what is really quite special in our tiny spot in the universe.

Why the $300 Verizon Droid is fantastic deal even before the rebate

2009-10-28T20:04:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting as patiently as I could the last three years for the smart phone market to develop and I'm thrilled that my wait may finally be over. The Verizon Android based phone, the Motorola Droid is the first to deliver on all the features I've been waiting for. As I waited I never bought an mp3/media player, I didn't get a GPS, I got the most out of my 4mp point and shoot camera, I didn't get a Flip or similar mico HD camcorder, and I didn't buy a PDA. Let's see what I might have spent if I did get all these devices, and to be fair I'll only look at similar spec items. For an MP3/media player, lets go with the 4th Gen 8GB iPod nano for $120. Granted the newest can capture video for only $30 more, but this is more about being an early adopter. The Droid also has 16GB of storage, but I'm going to say that half of that will easily be consumed by other things. For GPS I chose the Magellan RoadMate 1430 with traffic for $150. Note that there is monthly fee for traffic, though I couldn't easily get a price. I'll exclude that since you'll have to have a Verizon subscription regardless. A 5mp basic point and shoot camera is pretty obsolete right now, so I'll instead go ahead and combine the camera and video functionality in the Wolverine MM100R for $100. Finally a PalmOne Zire for $150. This brings the total to $520, a full $320 more after the $100 Droid rebate. It is true that I could have had at least some of this functionality for several years now instead of waiting, but I probably would have spent even more since each device started out well over what you can get them for now. The iPhone was certainly very close to what I wanted and I was actually willing to let my Verizon contract expire, but I still wasn't quite happy with the 3G coverage and GPS aspect. When the TomTom iPhone app came out it solved one issue, but still cost even more. Now with Android 2.0 Google has rolled out a kick as turn-by-turn navigator with 3D and satellite views plus traffic and street view where available. Being web enable it's also constantly updated, no map purchases and the ability to find up to date events. Best of all, it's free. Check out the video below to see it in all its glory.

Playing for Change

2009-10-16T12:20:00.002-04:00

A while ago I bookmarked the playing for change website. In revisiting it I found some of the episodes deeply moving, perhaps worth buying the DVD. It's a unique project producing songs with musicians around the world. Their mission of peace through music is quite the challenge, but if people of such different cultures who have never met can make something so beautiful, why can't we all? Below is my personal favorite. Stand by Me is also very good.

Liberated Thinking

2009-09-17T02:12:00.006-04:00

I recently came across the Shai Agassi's TED talk below on his project Better Place that Charlie pointed out to me a while ago. What struck me the most wasn't just the brilliance of the idea of separating the battery cost of full electric cars, but rather his ability to overcome the typical pat on the head he received from some of the countries he approached as they said "it's fascinating that the younger generation actually thinks about these things." In the talk Shai demonstrates an exceptional ability in communicating "back of the envelope" calculations that help to put things in real perspective. While there are numerous conditionals on these kinds of estimates, it really is fundamentally necessary as we begin to think about change in terms of orders of magnitude as opposed to simple linear growth.

To further this point, if you look at the comments, on May 5th a Chinese student lamented that he had to have a friend who's English was better help him understand the video and suggested they they include subtitles in other languages. On May 6th there was an acknowledgment from one of the video editors and then in just a week the option to show subtitles with a volunteer powered translation was launched. The video currently has subtitles available in six other languages.

Ideas have become viral, spreading exponentially regardless if they are good or bad ones. Our society currently seems poorly equipped for dealing with this scale of change, yet it is also necessary for the future that we've created. I'm currently in the process of writing a proposal (aside from this procrastination) on some of my own ideas on how to handle this kind of transition, but I'll need more than just the idea. I'll have to pursue it with the same passion that drives Shai and survive the inevitable pats on the head that come with the territory.

Hang on, get ready, and go

2009-05-21T19:27:00.011-04:00

I think that from the moment mankind became self aware, we began to think about about the future as we thought it should be, and then set out to make it so. These changes might often be slow incremental improvements, but every once in a while, it is something really big. Something that sets a course that never would have happened otherwise. Language, fire, text, tools, industry, economics, phones, television, computers, the Internet, and on and on. More and more, faster and faster. Why?

I think we are about to find out. As we get glimpses of the possible there are folks that try and paint an image for us all. Be it in words, film, images, or song there have been many projections about first, what the future could be, and second, what it should be. The former is a motivator and the later must be our guide. It seems that a great deal of attention has been spent on the "what could be" lately. Yet a growing tide of people, either fed up, frightened, optimistic, or otherwise, are starting to focus on what our future really should look like. I would like to try and distill some of those views.

In my past explorations and posts I discovered many ideas about how the web would transform thinking and the world. From the likes of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Nova Spivack, Tim Berners Lee, Vannevar Bush, and Ted Nelson, the ideas came from both modern times and from before the Internet was even a possibility. The Internet and what it shall become is certainly a big part of our future, yet I've often wondered what else it would enable? It is, after all, just another tool.

I want to imagine a bit of that future and I'll apologize in advance if it ends up being incoherent or too disconnected, but I've envisioned it for a long time and I can't seem to find any good ways to incrementally get it out.

Hang On
Life will no longer be about spending nearly all your time getting the tediousness of daily life out of the way so that you can have a few moments to do what inspires you, what you enjoy, and what you love. Food, energy, mobility, and access are givens. All the value in the world is left to discovery, innovation, and contribution. There is no need for conflict, protectionism, and envy, they have no place in a world with a united purpose.

Technology has transformed us, is transforming us. In current times, for many in the developed world, food is already at your finger tips, energy cheap, mobility in all manners, and access to an unlimited wealth of information. Take a moment and imagine all the technology that makes this possible.

Now imagine it doubled over a few more times.

Get Ready
Robots will do all the mindless tasks. They will build everything we can dream up, our cars, our homes, electronics, infrastructure, everything. We must still do the dreaming though. We have to come up with the plans. When we do, it will be a symphony of actions, using all of our technology to put together plans, create funding and measures, and set into motion the great machines that will make it a reality.

Power lines will stretch over highways, extending the range of electric cars that drive themselves in a manner much more like trains, increasing the throughput of roads, while decreasing travel time and eliminating traffic and safety issues.

Food will be a distributed operation with millions of local robotic farms and greenhouses that provide fresh produce daily. As will energy with trillions of devices serving both as producers and consumers of energy. Our connectivity will be truly ubiquitous and transparent. Full high definition multi-person video conferencing reducing the need to travel, and when we do travel, we will simply declare a destination and be automatically routed and transported in the most efficient and timely manner.

Education will be a lifelong opportunity. There will be no cap on public knowledge. One will be able to learn about anything at anytime at any level of detail. Our textbook will be a giant organic collection of knowledge that will adapt to individual learning styles be it, visual, logic, experiential, repetition, or otherwise. It will be available to us anytime through tablets that have e-ink displays on one side, and full motion color on the other. They will serve our every digital need. Internet, phone, video, pictures, high resolution camera, music player, hd-video camera, gps, and computing. When you need a larger display and interface you will simply wirelessly connect to stations in our offices and commons.

Lifelong students will be able to explore any avenue of creativity, since there will be no reason to teach to mediocrity in order to have a workforce to do all the tedious and uncreative jobs. With robots studiously managing all the systematic challenges, we will finally be free to completely explore the depths of human existence.

We will have mapped out all of fundamental particles of the universe with accelerators like the LHC and generations of space telescopes past the Hubble and James Webb will have seen the dawn of time and discovered thousands of inhabitable worlds in our galaxy alone. We will have reached out into our solar system with permanent exploration of planets and moons. Space elevator tethers will make transport to and from space both a safe and efficient.

Health care will mostly be provided using sensors and robotic assisted tools in every home, allowing one to deal immediately with emergencies and preventative care. Institutions will have found treatments and cures for all systemic diseases and will carefully manage all evolving forms.

Conflicts will have long since ended and world travel, trade in music, art, food, culture, and technology will consume our international life. Population growth will have stabilized and consumption turned into an efficient system of recycling and reuse. Life on earth will thrive as pollution and our ecological impact are contained. The economy will be a vast trade in the arts, services, knowledge, and technology.

Taxes and spending will be clearly and directly tied to our priorities and needs. With all of infrastructure built and maintained by robots, education distributed and flexible, health care instant and efficient, and defense needs minimized, vast resources will be at our collective discretion to support research and projects that continually push the boundaries of our knowledge ever wider.

All of the information of our life will be neatly organized and accessible. Our interactions with the digital world will be intuitive and natural. The concept of searching will be lost to retrieving exactly what you need. Purchases will simply be what suits your requirements and can be delivered most efficiently and timely. Planning anything from travel to a meal for dinner will be effortless, freeing up vast tracks of time that we currently lose to all the mundane.

Go
At first all this may seem simply too far out to even consider, but we must begin to think beyond linear growth and start acknowledging that we are on an exponential. The advances our grandparents have seen are soon to be dwarfed by leaps that we can't even see yet. From that perspective, the above will be what is commonplace and the true innovation will be way beyond our current sense of the possible.

What is more is that versions of visions like this have been consistently told over and over throughout our history. Some have even given the moment of shift a name and devoted institutions to the concept, such as the Singularity University. Yet even with all the gloss and attention, this kind of future is not a guarantee. We still have to define it, still have to seek it, and still have to take action. It all starts by imagining the world as it should be, not as it is, or as it may be given the path we have taken in recent years.

There already have been many practical steps on everything I've mentioned in this possible future. The key is then to link these steps to our goals. We want to be free from the tyranny of daily life, we want to inspire ourselves and our children to pursue the edges of our existence, and more than anything we want life to flow on, making us all contributors to the shape and form of our universe.

Modeling Traffic

2009-04-17T20:53:00.010-04:00

I'm approaching three years of making a 50 mile commute to work and in that time I've had a lot of time to think about how bad people are at driving cars. I've also been thinking on ways to make it better. After a truly stimulating week at the MIT Media Lab Sponsor Meeting I've been inspired to finally finish a model I've been kicking around for just about as long. As it turns out there are a number of fantastic insights. I'm going to try and put together a video because it will be a lot easier to explain, but here is the model itself.

<applet code="traffic_model/Simulation$Applet.class" archive="http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/xjanylogic6engine.jar,http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/traffic_model.jar" width="802" height="658"> </applet>

A Very Simple GDP Model

2009-04-13T14:42:00.014-04:00

In all my free time I've been trying to put together a simple example of how to combine data with models and visualization. This is about as simple as you can get; exponential growth through a fixed rate. The US average growth over the last 219 years appears to be about 3.65% (see my earlier post on Putting the Recession in Context). What's interesting is that that every time we deviated from this average into faster growth, we seem to have fallen back. If you look at the trajectory we were on, it looks like we'll need to fall back to a GDP that is about the size it was in 2006. Now don't call me Nostradamus, but it will be interesting to see where we end up.

<applet code="us_gdp_model/Simulation$Applet.class" archive="http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/xjanylogic6engine.jar,http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/us_gdp_model.jar" width="802" height="658"> </applet>

Though that's not the point of this model anyway. In being so simple it is excluding a lot of important details about why the GDP rate has fluctuated the way it has over the last 219 years. Yet this data is available. What I'd like to see is thousands of Google Spreadsheets with data about anything and everything. People could then link the data to models to try and explain particular parts of the behavior. Be it the rise and fall of real estate markets, the steady slide in US education, or the migratory patterns of birds, I think now is the time to open source our theories on what makes things tick.

If we can explain where problems are coming from in a clear and concise manner, share it, and provide feedback then perhaps we can finally come up with better solutions.

White House Open for Questions

2009-03-25T15:25:00.004-04:00

The White House has launched a web site for open questions that is pretty much the same as what was used for the transition. While an interesting experiment, it is unfortunate that with all promise of developing new web services, they couldn't come up with at least some improvement. My main complaint is that it is chaos. The categories are extremely broad and there are a ton of repeated questions, questions that are too broad (i.e. how are you going to fix the economy?), and many more that are just commentary. What I'd really like to see would be moderator summaries and sub categorization to organize the issues better. All of the original questions could still be linked to where moderators thought they belonged, and if a person still thought it was different then they could still appeal. It'd also be nice to allow people to submit answers or suggestions separately and follow the same process as questions.

Anyway, I've submitted a few, I'd appreciate any votes (even it's a no). To find mine, first search the Open For Questions for: research consortium

At last check, two of my questions were the only ones that used that phrase. You can then click on my name to get the rest. You do have to sign up to vote, but it only takes two seconds!

Here's Obama's sales pitch on it as well:

Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data

2009-03-18T17:59:00.003-04:00

Tim Berners-Lee gave a pretty compelling talk on demanding linked data. Yet another call out there to turn the corner on the next generation of web technologies that are going to help us solve problems we have too long labeled as impossible.

Putting the Recession in Context

2009-03-04T20:46:00.009-05:00

Google documents has a pretty cool gadget for looking at time-series data. Check it out below. Move the window sliders to narrow the view and then move the view over the past dips in the GDP. What was a huge drop at the time is now only a drop in the bucket. What will a big recession look like now? This is the Google Spreadsheet, with data and the gadget in a nicer larger view.

Review cross posting - The Telrad

2009-02-24T09:28:00.002-05:00

I was reading about Comet Lulin and noticed that it was going to be clear tonight. I've been looking for an excuse to break out my old eight inch Coulter Optical telescope. It really is a fine telescope, with good optics and relative portability, considering its size. It really is a shame not to put it to occasional use. If you wanted one today though, you'd have to put it together yourself.

One of the reasons I haven't taken it out is that the finder, a Telrad, wasn't working. Without it, you have to be pretty good at pointing the scope in order to find small objects. I'm obviously going to be rusty. I was about to buy a new one when I figured I should do my due diligence and at least check the switch. Sure enough, it was dead, but I was so impressed that it did still partially work after all this time, I had to write a review.

After submitting the review, it gave me the option of creating a post. A really great idea, I think. If I'm going to go through the trouble of witting a review, I might as well publish it for myself. Not that any of my friends are likely to need a good finder for their nonexistent telescope, but the idea is a good way for creating trusted reviews.

Adorama

Telrad Finder Sight

Still lighting 20 years later

Bruce Millbury, MA 2/24/2009

Pros: Easy To Use, Durable, Accurate

Best Uses: Astronomy, Terrestrial Viewing

Describe Yourself: Casual/ Recreational

After twenty years (I bought it in 1989) the potentiometer finally went, but it should be a cheap fix and I can get by with bypassing it for now.

It's a really great finder, allowing you to see your field of view within the context of the sky as opposed to through a small scope. I wouldn't want to use anything else and will certainly replace mine if it ever does go for good.

Government Online

2009-01-19T15:54:00.004-05:00

One of Obama's transition teams, the TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) Team makes some bold, yet good "honest sense" statements about transforming our government into a modern and efficient system through the use of new internet technology. If the new administration can pull this off, the effects are hard to imagine initially.

Think about it though.... vision, if you will, a world with no paper and yet ubiquitous and secure access to everything you need. You'd have access to all your medical files, x-rays, images, etc, control over who get's to see them and a record of who and when for every access. All of your interactions with the government could happen anytime at your convenience. People could have clear access to information on legislation, budgets, projects, public police logs, and anything else that is part of the public record. Imagine now a collection of tools (the "mashups" mentioned in the video) that allow researchers, experts, and ordinary citizens to break down the issues and come up with the best possible policies.

It would be nearly impossible and incredibly stupid to commit fraud in such a system. Politicians would have an incredible resource through this participation, and differences would have to be explained directly to the people. This isn't to say that it should be rule by the mob even a complete democracy. The role of the republic in our government is crucial to furthering innovation and progress. The very fact that we will soon be swearing in our 44th president, just 220 years after George Washington took office, says a lot about both the role of leadership and of change.

There will need to be a of lot organization and careful design to make sure things are both secure and yet appropriately open. Coordinating collaboration with such diverse groups will be challenging too, but imagine having topic moderators sponsored across universities in the U.S. and the world. These groups could provide regular updates to data, conduct workshops and conferences, develop presentations, classroom materials, and other media. Most importantly, each group will be responsible for maintaining a model of their part of world system, be it energy, economics, or local crime. These models would explain potential problems and provide tests for different policies.

In all these ideas are pretty much extensions of my Google 10 to the 100th idea which may be up for voting January 27th, 2009 if I'm lucky. Anyway, take 4 minutes and watch the video. It's a bit nerdy, but if you are familiar with the tech and where the government is now in comparison, we are talking about radical change.

Ringing in the year of 252009

2008-12-18T13:50:00.007-05:00

In reflecting on the amount of change I witnessed in this single year I realized that I didn't actually know how long man, it its current evolutionary form, has been around. Doesn't that seem odd? As self aware as humans are, we have a horrible perception of time that is entirely of our own doing. It is of course honorable and sacred to note the year of the birth of Christ, and yet it has also created a great time-warp in the perception of ourselves. According to the consensus reported in Wikipedia, Homo sapiens evolved around 250,000 years ago. Considering the order of difference between 250K and 2K and the convenience to be gained, I think it is fair to just say that the year of man we soon will ring is actually 252,009.

I don't mean to replace our current convention, but I do think this fact is something that should be widely known and celebrated yearly. Why exactly should we diminish 247,991 years of progress for a measly 2,009? In a time when things are changing ever faster, perspective is critical. Think about it this way; it took an estimated 50,000 years for speech to develop then another 170,000 to develop drawn symbols, but then only 24,700 to creating writing. From there it took only another 4,739 years for man to develop the Gutenberg printing press (1439), and then just 464 more to produce the first production Ford Model A (1903). Then in a measly 66 years, man landed on the moon (1969). Eight (8) years after that the Apple II personal computer (1977) arrived and another 6 years after that, the first US commercial cell phone (1983). The next eight years saw the growing use of computers, networks, and other technology leading up to the formation of the World Wide Web (1991). In the 18 years coming to a close since, we've undergone a massive revolution in technology where storage and computational power double every two years.

I think I've made my point. So with that in mind I hope all have a Merry Christmas and a happy new 252,009!

eTextbook Google 10 to the 100th Application

2008-10-21T00:36:00.005-04:00

This is my second proposal for Google's 10 to the 100th project. Thank you everyone for the corrections and comments on the first one. This one is likely to be a bit rougher, but it isn't nearly as complicated so hopefully it will be almost as good.

8. Your idea's name (maximum 50 characters):

eTextbook – The evolving textbook

10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

eTextbook is a collaborative digital textbook that provides explanations for all different learning styles for K-12 and beyond.

11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

Print textbooks are obsolete in the information age. Schools spend millions of dollars every year buying textbooks that serve the learning styles of only a few groups of students. This makes them either too challenging for some or not challenging enough for others. Each school district uses different versions and publishers, making education inconsistent and inefficient.

While many textbooks come with supplemental materials, they are mostly inadequate and underdeveloped. My wife is a high school math teacher and constantly needs to create her own problems and projects to ensure that students are appropriately challenged. Not every teacher has the time or expertise to do this. Some materials are shared online, but it isn’t consistent and doesn’t always tie to curriculum.

The eTextbook will solve all these issues because materials can be shared by teachers and primary sections can be continually updated by experts. It will cover all subjects, providing links between history, science, math, language, and art. Digital ink is now a reality with readers already available for under $400, given economies of scale and advances, new versions will soon cost the same as a single textbook. Instead of lugging around multiple textbooks, students will have a durable reader that lasts all throughout their schooling. eTextbook won’t be limited by size either. If students need different explanations of concepts, it will be right at their fingertips.

Given success in developed countries, extremely high quality educational materials can be provided to developing countries at a very low cost. The OLPC is a nice idea, but its approach was backwards. Building the technology before the curriculum has left it disconnected from the day to day needs of a classroom. eTextbook will start with developing the curriculum first and will be available in a wide variety of formats, even perhaps helping the OLPC.

12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

eTextbook will be a key to advancing education throughout the world. Static print caters to only a few learning styles, leaving many students struggling. eTextbook will provide learning approaches for all groups of students. Students and teachers will be able to provide corrections, share supplemental materials, and suggest alternative explanations.

eTextbook will be dynamic, unfolding individual steps to solutions of a problem, allowing students to move past where they get stuck without jumping straight to the answer.

eTextbook will link our knowledge back together as it was actually discovered in the real world. Science, math, art, and literature all occurred within the context of our history. The segmentation of our knowledge is not only inaccurate, but leaves the living connection behind.

Education is a fundamental human right. Since eTextbook will be freely available online, anyone that can be given access will able to access the entire world’s knowledge.

13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

eTextbook would most benefit children all over the world. It will also help educators by allowing them to focus more on the classroom and student progress instead of having to spend valuable time creating new materials. eTextbook will also help adults that need to learn or relearn materials so that they can help their children with homework or to return to formal education in the quest for better jobs.

14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

Much of what is needed is already available, but there needs to be an organized consortium to create the eTextbook. Wiki’s already provide a collaborative medium. Electronic ink readers provide a portable interface for students. The main challenge will be creating and organizing the content. It will need to be organized by the grade levels, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the content has to be the same as it is today. eTextbook will give educators the freedom to rearrange the curriculum allowing them to introduce simplified versions of more advanced concepts earlier in education. There will likely need to be funding to support the consortium and for purchasing readers for pilot studies. If the efficacy of the program can be proven within the first couple years, government funding should also be able to help with development.

15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

The first year will primarily be about creating the consortium, and researching the organizational structure of eTextbook. I would like to see hundreds of educators and tens of institutions involved in these first stages. Curriculum should start with grade school materials that can be used in classrooms and evaluated and advanced with each year. Within 5 years there should be materials for all of K-12 education, with higher education rapidly expanding.

17. You may also submit 1 YouTube video (max 30 seconds long) explaining your project.

Coming if YouTube ever comes back online! - Well it didn't come back online in time, but here is is anyway:

18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words)

No time obviously, but I'd still be interesting in hearing from those interested in case this makes it to the second round in January.

Google 10 to the 100th Application

2008-10-20T13:04:00.010-04:00

So I worked almost all weekend on this application for Google's 10 to the 100th project and I have to submit it today (yikes), so any quick feedback on wording, the YouTube video, and the idea would be greatly appreciated. Also if you a part of an organization that could help this become a reality, please let me know and I'll add you to application. Finally, any thoughts on a better name? This one is a play off Google's Knol - A unit of knowledge.

8. Your idea's name (maximum 50 characters):

Dyknol – A dynamic unit of knowledge

10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

Dyknol will be an online problem solving tool that uses a system of sciences organized around models to address the world’s most challenging issues

11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

Dyknol is a mash-up of Knol, data analysis and visualization, video, GIS, and other services that are all organized and structured around mathematical models recreating aspects of different problems being studied. Dyknol will be used in sponsored projects led by experts, educators, and policy makers to develop real solutions to our most pressing problems.

Similar models are already used both in academia and industry to reveal the root causes of complicated problems, forecast issues before they become a crisis, and test possible solutions. Models allow experts with conflicting explanations to make their assumptions explicit which can then be compared to real world data. Through this process even the most conflicted problems can be reconciled. Models can also be used to describe a problem at different levels of detail for different audiences. From grade school, to college, to professionals, we can help people engage with finding solutions to any problem they finding interesting.

This tool would be similar to the debates in Knol, but instead of simply an exchange of text, facts, and figures, Dyknol would structure arguments though a causal model that is based on real data and observations. There is already software for building these models, but it is all offline and unable to link data, text, video, and other media to help explain and justify the model’s structure.

Imagine this scenario on global warming. A grade school student looks at a simple model explaining the causal relationship between CO2 and global temperatures. They simulate the model with different rates of change in CO2 and see the impact it has on temperature. Within the same space a college student explores the more complex linkages between our energy needs and CO2 emissions, while policy makers work within Dyknol to come up with practical policies that strike the best balance.

12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

Dyknol would address the key issue we have with solving any of the world’s most challenging problems; we have no effective means for resolving conflicting ideas and finding shared solutions. Dyknol will be a focal point for addressing any problem there is a large enough community to support it.

In the last few decades we have seen the challenges facing us grow ever more complex. While technology has helped keep pace, it has also caused new problems. Dyknol will give us a powerful tool for breaking down problems to reveal the root causes, as well as an ability to test policies and forecast issues before they become a crisis.

The science of systems has already been applied to designing physical solutions such as bridges and skyscrapers. It is time we bring it to the mainstream for addressing systemic issues that are not just physical, but intertwined with our social fabric.

13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

The whole world would benefit. With Dyknol, we’d finally be able to tackle the most challenging issues facing us today, before they become even more of a crisis. When listening to today’s society one can’t help but notice the overwhelming apathy mixed with frustration about the state of the world. Through this system we’d be giving people a way to learn the reality of our problems, affect change, and be part of something of purpose.

I personally believe that mankind has already been seeking to build this tool, but it has yet to take any real shape. Computers, the Internet, and connectivity are evidence of this change, but right now it lacks any real order. Structuring all this information is certainly no small task, but the science of systems is the key to making it happen. Building Dyknol, will help to bring about the global community we all hope for.

14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

The first thing needed is a web application for building models. This will require programmers that understand web applications and numerical simulation. The models built with this application will then need to be able to be embedded in web pages and Wiki’s like Knol.

In the early stages researchers will need to be sponsored to address some of the most engaging and pressing issues. Energy, the economy, healthcare, education, war and conflict would all be ideal candidates for demonstrating the potential of Dyknol. After gaining traction, other problems could be sponsored by groups of stakeholders, i.e. health insurers on healthcare, oil, gas, and electric providers on energy, banks on the economy, and anything else that gets enough support for the researchers and moderators.

15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

In the first year I would want to see the web application developed and tens of projects reaching thousands of registered users. I would also want to see several solutions that were discovered through Dyknol put into action. In the second year I’d want hundreds of projects and millions of users creating a comprehensive network of students, educators, and professionals. Many of the projects should also be officially sponsored both monetarily and with donated time.

Eventually I can see Dynknol being incorporated into the curriculum of K-12 and beyond, helping students discover the issues they want to work on in life. The ultimate measure of success will be achieving a sustainable world that is capable of solving any problem that arises.

17. You may also submit 1 YouTube video (max 30 seconds long) explaining your project.

18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words)

I have already received encouragement from numerous organizations that may be able to help with execution:
WPI - Department of Social Science and Policy Studies

Your organization! Please let me know if you would be able to help!

Terrorism Story Model

2008-10-18T16:24:00.003-04:00

I finally got around to creating an online story version of my terrorism model from my Bachelor's Major Qualifying Project. I did these updates as part of one of my proposals for a Google 10 to the 100th project. I'll be posting the proposal online to try and get some feedback, but the general gist is to create an online social problem solving tool. This tool will models like this one that are linked to the underlying data and explanations for why the structure is the way that it is. The idea is that by tying our most challenging problems to models, we'll be able to come up with far better solutions.

Interesting timing

2008-09-09T14:13:00.007-04:00

In my last post I laid out some of my thoughts on the vision needed to move us forward. Interestingly enough, today there were some additional hints that new ideas and technology for creating this vision are taking shape. First, Eric Schmidt gave an insightful talk on energy policy. There was also a good On Point story on NPR that I called in for (listen for me around the last 5 minutes) on education reform. The last nugget is a demonstration by Plastic Logic of a new e-reader that demonstrates the power digital mediums just on the horizon. Check out the video below:

What we have to do in the next 5 years

2008-09-08T23:28:00.003-04:00

We are on the cusp of what some have called the event horizon or singularity. It is a reference to the edge a black hole. Where not even light can escape, and beyond which all of our understanding of physics breaks down. Unlike a black hole however, our event horizon isn't the end of existence, but rather just a point that we can't currently see beyond. While there is a chance we could fall into a dark collapse, I believe that we finally have the knowledge and spirit to take us to the other side.

It is a scary time for us. There is a lot of chaos and disorder. There are many that choose to add to that disorder, because they fear what is on the other side and would rather see us collapse back to some more simplistic time. But it is against our very own spirit. That spirit that drives us to seek answers and to use those answers to bring our dreams to life and an end to our nightmares.

So most of us fight against that fear that would have us bring it all down. The trouble is that we aren't doing nearly enough. We don't yet realize our own potential and how quickly we must be able to move.

There are hints out there however. This week the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will circulate its first beam. If you don't know what the LHC is, you simply have to read about its incredible history. It is the most complex machine mankind has ever built and it is eventually going to be able to recreate the conditions that existed just an instant after all time began for our universe. This machine is a testament to our potential to reach to the farthest depths of existence to understand what makes our world as it is. If we can build such a machine and learn from the experiments it will run, then what else can we do?

Transportation:
There is Tesla Motors and its Roadster. The Roadster is the first no kidding, all electric car whose first production models should be delivered this month. Getting 220 miles per charge, 256 mile per gallon equivalent, making it cost less than 2 cents per mile. Oh yeah, it's more fun to drive than a Porche. Sure it is a 100K car, but they are using the rich to pay for the technology and should be able to have more affordable cars in only a few years. GM on the other hand has spent millions, perhaps billions and still has yet to produce a single production vehicle.

There is the smart highway. Imagine getting in your car and simply driving to the nearest smart highway where an optimized central control takes over and not only gets you where you need to go, but does it a manner that is safer, more efficient, and faster.

Education:
There is the OLPC, which despite its difficulties, engenders a whole new way of thinking about education. Why do we have thousands of different math, science, history, and language books? Especially those covering the fundamentals? Can't we as a society develop an incredible digital interactive collection that will cater to different learning styles, yet reduce the waste of rehashing the same old information? Imagine now a medium that learns about its user over time, suggesting the explanations that it thinks a person will understand best given his or her own learning style. Why do we keep using books? Isn't the world changing faster than we can possibly print them? Why waste the paper and let our efforts be scattered across so many different areas, unconnected and unfocused?

Energy:
First there is so much to be done for efficiency. There are LED lights that not only last over thirty years, but also use a tenth of the electricity. In addition to the changes in cars, we must ask, do we really need everyone to drive to work? And if so, does it really need to be every day? So many jobs could be easily done from home, but to be truly efficient we need the next generation Internet backbone. We need to be able to have instantaneous file transfers, high-definition video conferencing and ubiquitous access. Think of all the call center jobs that are getting shipped to India. Do you really mean to tell me that there aren't people in the US that would be willing to work from home for a low enough wage and that could at least speak and understand English clearly?

Beyond efficiency there is the distributed grid. In this grid, each home, car, office can dynamically change between a consumer, producer, or storage unit. You have technologies like nanosoloar which can allow solar energy to be harnessed almost anywhere. You have advances from MIT on electrolysis that will make the creation of the hydrogen and oxygen needed for fuel cell storage far more efficient.

Nuclear energy, despite the potential hazards can also be incredibly clean and efficient. The vitrification process used in the UK, France, Russia, and hopefully eventually in Hanford, WA and elsewhere in the US, can safely and nearly indefinitely trap nuclear waste so that it has no chance to be dispersed into the environment.

I could go on and on, but alas, sleep is important, and nobody really reads this anyway. My point is that we are right on the brink of our true potential. So many things are changing so quickly, and yet it is all too disorganized and unfocused. We need vision, and we need it now.

I'm so very concerned that we don't realize that right now, the way the we are affecting this world is very much like piloting a giant freighter that would take 20 mile just to turn around if we needed to. We also have about twenty captains providing course corrections, so that we never really have any bearing. Most of these captains are also pouring more fuel on the fire, accelerating our ship into murky waters. What we need now is to transform our ship into an agile craft that has high tech navigation that allows to move ever faster while avoiding the obstacles.

Some may read this as just more doom and gloom, but to me it is really about hope. Hope that despite my fear for the worst we will somehow awaken and take the helm that we have been gifted with as stewards of this earth.

A Uniquie Insight into the Workings of the Brain

2008-05-27T13:04:00.006-04:00

Jill Bolte Taylor shares an interesting perspective on the brain after her experience with a stroke.

CO2 Not a Pollutant?

2008-05-23T12:14:00.010-04:00

The recent ruling that CO2 is a pollutant by the United States Supreme Court made only a small splash in the news and was met with mostly cheers from global warming alarmist as well as several condemnations and predictions of economic fallout from the skeptics. What concerns me is that the CO2 problem has mostly been tied with global warming while spending little time considering less controversial issues. Despite what you believe about the link between CO2 and global temperatures, you simply can't ignore the fact that CO2 is now 160% above the average that has existed for the last 420,000 years (and likely beyond). The previous largest deviations never went past 122%, with lows around 80% of the average. Looking at the past 420K years of CO2 levels clearly shows that the earth has quite happily been hovering around an oscillating equilibrium of ~234ppm (parts per million). So what happens when you suddenly tilt that equilibrium in a period of say less than 100 years?

We will eventually find out, but here's a little experiment you can try at home with your dirty laundry. Start a load of laundry with about 14 shirts or other evenly sized items. After the wash cycle, take your sopping wet clothes out before the spine cycle kicks in. Let the washer pump out the water and then put 9 of your shirts evenly distributed around the bottom. Let the spin cycle start up for a few seconds.. notice that there is a little vibration, but overall it is quite smooth. Now take the remaining 5 shirts, wad them up and stick them to one side. Start up the spin cycle again. What happens? OK, so you probably don't have to actually do this to know that your washer will start wobbling horribly and making all kinds of noises that you will want to stop as quickly as possible.

The problem with thinking about CO2 as a pollutant is that in being an inert substance as well as an essential part of life doesn't make it as nearly as intimidating as all those nasty chemicals we hear about. The reality however is too much of anything no matter how seemingly harmless can be quite bad. Case in point, people actually manage to poison themselves by drinking too much water. The other problem is that science is just starting to understand where all this extra CO2 is going to go and what problems it is going to cause.

Today I finally saw a news story in the Seattle Times discussing one of these problems in the latest studies on the acidification of seawater. In a nutshell, the ocean has alway been an important carbon sink, absorbing large quantities of CO2 and sequestering it to the bottom of the ocean. The trouble is, just like any sink, they can fill up or sometimes backup when overloaded. Increased concentrations lead to increased levels of carbonic acid (the same substance in soda that gives it bite and leads manufactures to coat the cans so they aren't eaten away). This chemical imbalance in oceans could be very bad news, dissolving the shells of shellfish and killing fish eggs. The economic impacts could be devastating, not to mention the ripple effect of disrupting an ecosystem as vital as our oceans.

While I can understand the economic concerns with curbing CO2 production, as with any disaster, inaction is ultimately far more expensive. Our world has greatly benefited from past environmental actions not just because it protects our valuable resources, but also because it has challenged us to improve our technology and standard of living. Just try and imagine a world where sewers and factories still dump directly into rivers and oceans! I firmly believe that with just a little vision, we can create a lot of opportunities while taking swift action to control a very serious problem.

Anyway, the article led me to revisit some of the playing I did with historical CO2 and temperature data. Since my last post on the subject I fixed a problem in the data that made it look like temperature increases always came prior to CO2 increases (sometimes they still do!), and have normalized and smoothed some of the data to make it easier to look at. Below is the whole data set plotted. It makes it quite clear that there is definitely a correlation between the two. I'm still reserving judgment on the extent of and relation of causation, but as in my previous post am also quite concerned that reinforcing effects may actually release even more naturally stored CO2 that we aren't even considering still (think permafrost and desertification).

In the next plot I took the lowest point in the cycle of our current CO2 trend, which as was about 20,000 years ago. I then took the same bottom from the cycle preceding our current one (~140K-100K years ago) to see what ours should look like compared to what we are observing. This clearly shows that mankind is most certainly creating some new unknown cycle since we should actually be starting a declining trend in CO2 levels instead of the prominent "Yikes!".

Take what you will from this post, but I hope I've made it clear that no matter how you feel about global warming, we can't ignore the obvious. Carbon Dioxide is now a pollutant because we've changed the map. It's time we own up to our responsibility of stewards of this planet and take action to protect not only the earth, but also ourselves, for this is the only place we currently have to live.

A Few Weeks with the XO

2008-04-20T21:59:00.003-04:00

My "couple" weeks (that turned into more like a month) with the One Laptop per Child XO computer have finally come to an end. I would have liked to do more with it, but I do feel like in the little free time I actually had to use it, I was able to get a pretty good sense of where it is at and where it is going.

In short it is an idea with truly revolutionary potential. I emphasize potential not because I think it has short comings, but because just like anything in the world, realizing a dream takes more than a good idea and technology. It will take the right support, enthusiasm, and pragmatic process to get things going in a sustainable way. Anyway, here it is:
Time to take a short break and take another picture to complete my somewhat lame attempt at Escher like image.

Another call for Optimisim

2008-04-08T15:53:00.006-04:00

I think one of the main issues with trying to find solutions to problems is that very often, when you point out a problem, people think you're being overly negative and that the problem will work itself out before a crisis actually happens. I think that these people feel that by calling it a crisis before it clearly becomes one is risky and foolish. Yet in the problems we face today, given the scale of the system, we can't always afford to wait and see.

Al Gore has been on a campaign to bring more awareness about the threat of global warming for many years now. While, as a scientist I know that there is most definitely a growing possibility of a crisis tens of years into the future, I also have concerns about making the crisis real before its time. Part of the reason is because of the above perception, which helps skeptics dismiss the problem of global warming simply because the indicators being used are still too uncertain, even in spite of the mounting evidence.

Yet waiting until we can be certain is not only even more foolish, it misses out on a very real opportunity. Dealing with global warming is an opportunity to be forward thinking, an opportunity to be a leader, and perhaps more attractive to critics; an opportunity to make a ton of money.

Al Gore has retooled his message to try and bring this kind of optimism to the fore, and while it will likely still be lost on many, I thought it was very well done. I also thought it was interesting since it taps into the same vein of hope that Obama has sought out. See for yourself below.

A Post From the OLPC XO

2008-04-04T17:31:00.002-04:00

This post is being made from the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop that my parents sponsored during the "Give One Get One" program. It's going to be a bit short since it's not exactly easy being that it really is meant for children. That said it is truly an amazing feat considering the challenges. Sure it isn't perfect, but what totally new technology is?

So far I've been able to everything that I wanted to. I'm online in the Dulles airport, using the free year of T-mobile Hotspot connection that was donated with each of the give one get one XO's. Thanks T-Mobile! The general functionality is fairly straightforward, but I still feel like there is a lot that I don't know about. The amount of instructions to help with this also leaves a lot to be desired.

Yet given the innate ability of kids to figure out new things I'm excited to let my parent's surrogate grandchild, Avery, figure it all out. I'm going to spend a few more days with it before sending it out, and I hope to try out a few more things. Okay, that's about all I can type on this. More to come from a regular computer.

A More Perfect Union

2008-03-19T09:06:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama made a speech yesterday that is by far the best I've heard in my lifetime. No kidding. Through this speech, I believe he is trying to start an open and honest discussion about one of the most deeply rooted problems in American society. Racism. It is a long speech, but it is also a complex problem and deserves our attention and time. I hope everyone that votes in this election can find at least 45 minutes to see what kind of candidate Barack really is. If you choose to support him, I hope you'll consider doing it through my fundraising. Thanks, -Bruce

Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union

Inspired

2008-03-12T11:36:00.008-04:00

I know many of us shy away from openly talking about governance for a variety of reasons, but mainly because we only associate it only with politics. I'm coming to realize, however, what a shame it really is that we don't. It is not only an American tradition, but the very means by which this country was formed. Sure it isn't what it should be and very often it seems to be a hopeless effort, but it really isn't.

As a scientist, modeling complex problems, I have come to understand that very often there are indeed insurmountable forces in a system that prevent change from occurring. The solutions to these problems therefore lie in difficult changes in a system that is deeply rooted and seemingly immobile. Yet changes do happen. What is interesting is that unlike the large forces keeping the world the way it is, it is rarely a single force that creates change. Instead it is in billions of little changes that pile up and redirect one of those large forces into a whole new direction.

We live in a world with nearly limitless potential and our faith, knowledge, and technology have taken us to places where no single person could have ever gone alone. So why do we still have so many problems? Is it because they are impossible? Or is it because we now know and fear how complex they are and how much work, failure, and retrying it will take? Or perhaps it's just because many of the people in power want to remain so and are unwilling to risk doing things truly differently.

I know that we all believe that there are different problems and different solutions that need to be explored, but one thing I know we all agree on is that there are a lot of serious problems. I also know that is it frustrating so little is being done and accomplished. So here's where I'll have to leave the discussion on improving governance and get political. As much as we disdain the world of politics as it is now, it is still a vital means for acting on our beliefs about governance. After many years of being frustrated with the choices given to me, I have finally been inspired to do more than make token efforts and simply vote. I have been inspired to look into myself and the world around me and cast out my own beliefs for all to critique.

I believe that we are finally on the cusp of real change. After thousands of years of slow and steady progress, we stand on the brink of a new world that will look unlike anything we've ever seen. We now have technology and knowledge that will redirect and amplify the growing force that is humanity in directions one could have only dreamed of. We must not only ready ourselves for this world, we must set a course for where we want to take it. If we do not, we could end up projecting this force aimlessly, causing great suffering instead of great prosperity and freedom.

So here it is... we are quickly approaching a presidential election. With an election comes an opportunity. A unique time where people can reevaluate, develop, and share their beliefs about governance and what it will take to get this world moving in the right direction. The trouble is, doing it right takes a fair amount of work and effort to sift through all the pundits, hidden agendas, posturing and overall nonsense to get at the root of the opportunity.

Yet despite this storm, I believe I've found someone that understands the desperate need for a totally new approach. I've found a candidate that has an unwavering faith that we can find solutions to even the most difficult of challenges. And I believe this candidate knows exactly where to start on the path to a new way of solving problems. I believe in Barack Obama because he believes in us.

Regardless of how you feel about Obama, I only ask that if you have not given him a chance, if you haven't gone beyond the sound bites or snap shots, to take a few more minutes to watch at least one entire speech by Barack. Many might tell you that he's simply another politician, but I believe he is the real deal. I think he is more capable than anyone I've ever seen for inspiring significant change, not because he has all the answers, but because he knows that the only way to find them is to re-energize our society and focus its efforts. He understands that even the best solutions will fail if you cannot get people behind them. Barack also realizes that if we fail to find solutions it will only be because he failed to listen.

If this has resonated with you in any way, I'm hoping that you will find out more for yourself and do whatever you can to support Barack. Forward a link to this post, write your own, make a donation to my fundraising, or do whatever you can to make the most of this opportunity. Any size donations are especially appreciated. Over one million people already own a part of his campaign, which is unheard of at this stage of an election, you can be a part of it too.

Peace,

-Bruce

This is the speech that finally got me moving. I know it's almost fifteen minutes, but listening to its entirety is well worth it:

Terrorism Dynamics

2007-08-29T16:50:00.003-04:00

I've finally gotten around to converting my Major Qualifying Project model on some of the dynamics of terrorism over to AnyLogic. I also tried out some new visualizations of model dynamics in response to a challenge on the System Dynamics list serve (I'll link when it's archived). There is not much explaining it right now, but I'll try to get up some text and perhaps a video in the near future. For folks familiar with System Dynamics, it will hopefully make some sense already. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

<applet code="terrorism_dynamics/Simulation$Applet.class" archive="http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/com.xj.anylogic.engine.jar,http://mysite.verizon.net/bruceskarin/models/terrorism_dynamics.jar" width="842" height="768"> </applet>

CO2 Past Cause or Effect?

2007-01-26T13:48:00.003-05:00

OK so I'm still trying to get back to blogging, but here is a cool new tool I couldn't resist trying. I compiled some of the CO2 and temperature data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) Trends Studies and uploaded it to a new collaborative data visualization project called Many Eyes. From there I produced the following visualization that clearly shows the correlation between CO2 and temperature deviations over a period of 420,000 years!

In addition I produced another graph showing how we are reaching record high levels of CO2 over the same period. One bug/issue is that the line graph didn't work for the larger data set so this one was produced by taking 20 year averages.

An interesting note in working with this data that is harder to see from these graphs is that in the past, increases in temperature mainly preceded the increases in CO2. Perhaps I misinterpreted the different year scales, but it does provoke some interesting questions. If CO2 is already rising before temperatures, does that mean that worst is yet to come? For example, I did a small model of what might happen if the CO2 currently trapped in permafrost was released by thawing and it produced some startling results. In summary, the CO2 released created a feedback via increased temperatures that accelerated the release rate. A similar dynamic may be true in the melting of polar ice that reflects sunlight back into space.

Anyway, it is clear that we have some challenging problems ahead of us, but I for one believe we are on the cusp of a technology and social revolution that will finally provide us with a means to solve them or at the very least mitigate the damage.

Update:
I made some corrections to how the the data was serialized. See the data set for the visualization below for a detailed description.

Blog relaunch: Feedback Governs Dynamics

2007-01-11T09:35:00.000-05:00

Well it is high time that I kick the dust off this blog and get back to it. It has been nearly three years and a lot has changed both in my life and in the world. I still have been pondering the ideas I started on this blog, but have been keeping them mostly to myself for some reason. Hopefully no more, because my thoughts have matured and the growing problems in the world seem to be just screaming for better answers.

I've changed the name from "Global Mind Project" to my favorite mantra: "Feedback Governs Dynamics". This statement comes from the System Dynamics community, and I’m not sure if there is a true originator, but after a friend stated it, I was taken by its simple truth. To me, feedback is the root of all change, and without it our complex world would not exist. This is different than cause and effect to me because cause and effect only flow in one direction. It is not till a chain of causes and effects close to form a loop, or feedback, that true dynamics emerge. I see this process occurring at both the most fundamental physical level and at the most complex social level.

Anyway, the reason I felt that I must change the name is because, as much as I’d like to help deliberately build the Global Mind, I believe that the only way it will come about is to form on its own just as everything else in the universe has thus far. My role is then to take part in the feedback that is governing its dynamics and to try and help strengthen the reinforcing influences.

Still waiting for hypertext

2004-03-18T23:57:00.002-05:00

It is amazing how quickly a month can go by! I have been busy in pretty much every regard, which is great but also tiresome. I have been doing a fair amount of reading and have good variety of concepts to comment on. I will do my best to get through as many as possible, but may have to break it up a bit or come back to things for greater detail in another post.

To start with there is the interesting work of Ted Nelson, the first theorist to define the terms hypertext and hypermedia. Ted Nelson (this is a different bio page) has made several efforts to influence how we access the mass information available today with marginal success. There is project Xanadu, originally founded in 1960 to bring the concept of true hypertext to reality.

I say true concept because hypertext as we know it today in regards to the Internet and HTML, is very much a misrepresentation of the idea. Remarkable as it is in its own right, today’s hypertext is really was just the most simple and feasible means for bringing the Internet to life. Yet, after 40 years of advances in computing capabilities, the level it is at today means that a true hypertext source is easily within reach.

The demand for hypertext sources is also greater than ever. As information continues to grow in volume and complexity, the challenge of organizing it into useful forms will also grow. By transitioning to hypertext and hypermedia, we will be able to build a continually self organizing body of information that is completely interlinked. In whatever form the Global Mind comes about, I believe that the engine behind it will most definitely be based on a new generation of hypertext concepts.

The most remarkable part of looking at Ted Nelson’s ideas is that they stand in complete contrast to almost every recent technological development I have written about in this Blog. The Semantic Web, XML, and RSS are, in his terms, only further distortions of the hypertext concept. What is his assertion? Well you may want to read for yourself, but I believe my interpretation is reasonably accurate (at least in the abstract sense).

The problem with electronic media as we know it today is that it is simply a recreation of the material world within computers. Information is stored and accessed in a manner like file cabinets and bookshelves. We open “pages” that are all addressed and linked to a root hierarchy like those bound in a book. What is such an awful waste of the power of the computational world is the fact that the linking is one way. While a root structure is necessary in the real world, it is relatively meaningless to the virtual world.

For example, in the real world you can’t have a library that is simply stacks and stacks of paper with no particular order or location. You have to put the information in order on pages, in books, on shelves, in sections, etc. Yet in the virtual world, this boundary can be relaxed if you make the linking both ways. What does that mean? Well the way I see it is that with everything linked both ways you essentially have a network of continually growing loops. If everything is connected to everything through these loops, you can now pick up any page and then move to any other page in the source. No address needed!

This is definitely a difficult concept to visualize in terms of media, but think now of people instead. Most of us are familiar with the concept of 7 degrees of separation, but those of you that aren’t it basically means that any two individuals in a connected society can be linked together through 7 or less people. An example might be me and Bill Clinton: I have a friend, whose uncle, whose neighbor, whose daughter’s college friend knows Bill Clinton. Yet if we looked at the hierarchy of our families we would not likely be connected till ancient times if at all.

Societies have two way links. We not only know our families (source) we also meet and form connections to other sources. While this abstract concept may now be more clear to me (and hopefully you), I still don’t quite see how it translates into the current world of computers. I will continue to read and maybe track down a working prototype of the concept. Something such as Ted Nelson’s ZigZag might be just that. It is hard to find anything that is definitely up to date, while he may be brilliant, he certainly seems disorganized!

If you come across any dead links, search for them on the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive site. Another interesting project out there!

While this post is quickly growing out of control I do want to post on something else so that everyone knows I haven’t gone off the deep end on the concepts proposed by Ted Nelson. I am a very cautious man. I enjoy the insights of a wide variety of views and models of the world we live in, but I have yet to be convinced that there will ever be a complete single basis.

Anyways, the site of interest is the Vivisimo Clustering Engine. It is basically an automated method for organizing search results with the intention of making the search more effective. For example I could search for my 1991 Honda Accord and be given the choice to look at results that are in the category of Parts, Sales, Reviews, etc. While the concept is not completely novel, the automation of it is more unique and interesting. The Yahoo Directory was probably the original example of Internet search categorization. While I don’t know how automated the process was for them, I do believe it required a fair amount of human involvement, i.e. site owners registering with it in the proper categories.

Alright, this post has grown monstrous and my mind is quickly fading. Things are finally starting to fall in place in my life so hopefully I will be able to get back to being more diligent and brief with my posts!

A language more complicated than words

2004-02-19T20:36:00.001-05:00

Ok, so this Blog is growing cobwebs. I do have a lot to show for it at least. I’m about to finish up my second week at my new job at Aptima, Inc. I landed a position in the modeling and simulation group and get to actually use my major to do work. Imagine that!

I’m staying with friends for now, which is ok, but I miss my wife. Hopefully we’ll be able to be all moved up here by the beginning of March. It is odd how slow life can be sometimes and then just take off.

Anyway, I haven’t had much time to think about my project. In some respects just learning more in my profession is a good start, but at the same time I don’t want to let things fall off. Life will not likely slow down that much even after I’ve settled into my job and we have a new place to live.

Not having much time to think about the project also means that I haven’t had much time to do any reading. I’m afraid this post will be pretty bland, but I couldn’t see putting it off any longer.

One thing that has really struck me since I started this job is that there is certainly no shortage of approaches to complexity. Yet this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Diversity is good, yet it can also dilute the world of knowledge. In the academic world I primarily see diversity as promoting innovation and the desire to expand our knowledge of the universe and ourselves. Yet, in the personal world, sometimes our own desire for self importance gets in the way.

I write the following as general observation of a specific group of academic and professional researchers. I am by no means writing about any specific individual. With that said, a feeling that is becoming common to me when I meet someone who is obviously brilliant is that they feel the need to somehow prove it to me. Isn’t it ironic that you could be incredibly intelligent and yet not know that trying to prove it to others is a futile task? People will think what they want regardless of how unique your ideas are. In fact, sometime the more you try to point out your own individuality and creativity, the more people dismiss you.

Sometimes it is even worse. In a sad attempt to promote our own self images we go and further dilute the world of knowledge by taking something that is really not that unique and putting on a fancy new layer. We’ll add some layer that may look cool but really adds nothing to the concept. Being aware of this tendency I am terrified of falling into the same trap. In fact, what sincerely most interests me about the idea of a Global Mind is the potential for removing all the fancy shrouds we have built around knowledge.

When I look at all the dogma and countless professional jargons isolating completely related concepts it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Will our desire to feel important continue to fraction the world of knowledge, or will we someday come full circle and tear it all down to form a common base of understanding?

Some of my job is involved with the military, which brings a whole new meaning to the definition of jargon. I have come across 800 page documents with a 20 page appendix just to define the acronyms! Come on! Do you really save that much time by shortening three and four words to their first letters? Some sentences in the reports are completely nonsensical having more acronyms than real words! Of course it is completely logical when you look at the objective of such work. The goal of a military like ours is to ascertain, command, and control outcomes through the use of force and power. The control of power implies that energy be concentrated and placed into the hands of a few. Therefore one of the reasons new names and acronyms are coined is to help keep power within the ranks of military control.

Okay, this has turned into a bit of an obnoxious rant, but I believe that it often helps to just let it out to get over particularly long lasting frustration. I sometimes feel like it is all some twisted power trip that mankind has cursed itself with to make knowledge more difficult and distant from one another. I know as I work on this project it will be like battling the tide to try and return knowledge to its most elemental form.

Of course we will still need jargon to expand upon the complexity of our understanding, but it does not have to be based entirely upon it! Somewhere in even the most complex of problems there is a simple foundation for understanding. I just hope that somehow I can help us return to it.

The roots of a global mind?

2004-01-28T00:55:00.003-05:00

Well I have been slacking a little lately as far as the Blog is concerned, but I have been quite busy otherwise. The GRE is behind me now and while it would have been more ideal to do better on the verbal, I’m quite satisfied with my analytical. I also expect my essays (once they are graded) to be satisfactory for a science oriented education. Especially when you consider that I only had three solid days to study!

I also had an interview that I’m quite excited about, which means I may have found a way to make a living till I start a graduate program. I’ve felt good about an interview before, however, so I will continue to search for other jobs.

I met with professors again to talk about graduate possibilities. One had good news as far as funding potential, but another believed that he was not the best individual to assist with my program. I appreciated the honesty, as I truly do not want someone to simply sign off on the work I end up doing. I’d much rather have someone that is keenly interested in what I’m doing and who is willing to put some personal stake in the outcome of my project. Not all was lost either since he made some suggestions of others who might be better suited to advise me.

The next task nearing deadline is my application to the graduate program. I intend to have it ready to submit by this coming Thursday, which should not be difficult since it is nearly complete. Yet, I’m not very satisfied with my program description. While I expect the most important thing is to have the interest of faculty, I still feel that my application should be solid enough to be accepted on its own merits.

The main problem is that I’m being fairly general. I give an example for what I could do, but do not want to commit to it. The example is basically an extension of my Major Qualifying Project on terrorism, which is certainly a very pressing topic, but I find myself somewhat reluctant. I’m not sure if it’s that I don’t want to ride on the coattails of my previous work, or if there is just something else more pressing that I want to work on. There is certainly a great deal of funding out there for work on terrorism, but I also know that there are plenty of other potential sources.

To get more specific I will likely have to begin formally working out some concepts. If not on this website, then at least on my own. Those that wish to help me in working through some of the details certainly know how to reach me.

Well enough boring blather, what else have I been reading about? Since learning about the philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the term he coined, noosphere, has turned up some additional interesting information. One that provides an unique collection of links and background is The Integration Website, which wishes to co-develop the noosphere. It is a site that presents a predominately spiritual, artistic, and psychological thread to exploring the potential of a Global Mind. Created by Kris Roose The Integration Website provides yet another affirmation of the thoughts and feelings leading me on this project.

What is most interesting to me about all these searches are the variety of contexts turned up by using different keywords to search for a single concept. Of course when you look at the history of each keyword it is really quite logical where the differences come from. At the same time, I have yet to find a site that actively attempts to dissolve these differences. For example if you search for Metaweb and then for Noosphere the sites that turn up are, for the most part, remarkably different in the content they deliver.

What is more is that I’m only scratching the surface! Artificial Intelligence (AI) is yet another parallel to this thread. While it is perhaps a close relative to Cybernetics there are plenty of people out there that advocate AI as the ideal name for the trend towards emulating human intelligence in a machine. So who will win? Perhaps we all will, but I can’t help but think that there would be a great benefit to providing a more universal perspective to this task.

Diversity is certainly a clear force behind such innovation, yet collaboration is perhaps the most fundamental to making innovation widespread and practical. Nova Spivack may also be experiencing this frustration in his posting Every Revolution Needs a Name: The Metaweb, yet he is still only advocating for a name to a specific step in the process. I have settled on the Global Mind not because of any inherent ownership value, but rather because to me it says in plain English, what we are all working towards.

The mind contains all of our concepts of both spirituality and logicality. A Global Mind would then be an ultimate example of our consistent attempt to extend ourselves beyond the individual. We give lectures, write books, and post web logs, if we are not trying to create a Global Mind, then what is it that we are really trying to do with all this information?

This post has turned into somewhat of a rant, I apologize. So what am I going to do different in my project to make my point? That is perhaps the real question I will have to answer. It won’t necessarily matter what topic I end up choosing for my project. Instead it will likely be the process in which I present it that will make it my very own unique contribution.

Progress

2004-01-17T01:26:00.001-05:00

After a little checking and $110 later I am now registered to take the GRE on Wednesday the 21st. While it would certainly be more ideal to have additional time to study, I have little choice in order to meet the deadline of my applications. My getting into a graduate program is not necessarily contingent on me having GRE scores, yet a number of fellowships will be. I’m not certain if my scores will be good enough, and there is little I can do in this time-frame to change them, but I figured that a paid education was worth taking the chance. My applications are nearly complete and are simply waiting for my last essay. I need a description of my program goals.

At this point it is obvious to me, and I’m sure becoming so for you readers, that my area of interest is far too large to pack into a graduate program. Even a Ph.D. program, though I do know of one individual that took over a decade to complete his! I don’t think my wife would be able to go along with that ;-).

So what in the world does System Dynamics have to do with a Global Mind? I’ve been asking myself this question incessantly, and while the specifics have been a little fuzzy I am starting see the connection. I’m afraid that I can’t talk about these details on a public Blog just yet, but once my ideas are part of a program, I’m sure it will be safer to publish.

Yet to aid in my own process, and to give those of you that are actually somewhat interested some ammunition for providing me feedback, I will talk more about existing parallels. Principia Cybernetica Web is a rather unique project that started in 1989 that looks to help develop the very theory and philosophy behind a semantic network and other cybernetic technologies. I first came across this site as the result of a posting on the System Dynamics list serve that responded to a query about peoples’ favorite books and papers on system science. One of the individuals included a number of references to cybernetics, which was something that I had previously assumed was simply a popular science fiction term and not a real discipline. After a quick search, it became clear that Principia Cybernetica was indeed an interesting resource of a truly academic nature.

It’s not just about cybernetics though, and actually has a refreshing description of System Science. What is more, is how the site is organized and maintained. Some of it is very much like a Blog with user feedback enabled. Yet it also includes a unique user interface, and is designed to adapt itself in response to how it is accessed. Of course while Blogs are just now becoming popular, this was all started back in 1993 when the project was first implemented on the web!

There is also a fair amount of philosophy laid out, which is again interesting and stimulating, but begins to lead off-topic for my project. Like in my previous post, such information is useful, however, I don’t intend to answer any age old questions like “why are we here?” in my study.

As I’ve accessed these sites and read about useful technologies, I’ve started to recognize a patterned and systemic problem to each. It is with this issue that I hope my experience in System Dynamics will be of value. I would be glad to talk more about this in person with anyone who simply can’t wait, ha, ha. Until my idea is somewhat protected, the rest of you will just have to be happy with reading about whatever it is I’m working on!

An idea older than expected

2004-01-15T18:03:00.001-05:00

I have begun to take care of some of the formal work for applying to a graduate program and fellowships. I have contacted a number of people about letters of recommendation and have started filling out all the forms. I took a practice GRE and will take another at the beginning of next week, after studying more.

Since I would not be starting till the Fall, I am still left with a dilemma for making a living in the short term. I am hopeful that a internship will come through to provide some good experience before my return to academia, but nothing is certain at this point.

I have started to receive more feedback about Global Mind concepts from people I’m sharing this site with. I was sent an article written by Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg of the Institute for Global Communications about the philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an obscure Jesuit priest, who described A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain. What is so fascinating to me about this article is that Teilhard arrived at a very similar concept through such completely different life experiences and before such technology seemed even reasonable. His writings span from the 1920s to the 1950s and were largely rejected at the time!

Instead of through a purely scientific process, Teilhard examines the spiritual compliment of what is certainly a large and revolutionary idea. I am certain that there are many people that are uncomfortable with the idea of a Global Mind wielding a powerful amount of knowledge over the web. While a primarily rational person may not understand this fear or discomfort, I think this is a very natural response for those in between logical and mythical perceptions of the world.

To regain the spiritual component of science Kreisberg described Teilhard’s theory of radial and tangential energy. In this theory, radial energy is all that which is discernable in the physical world. In other words, everything that we see, measure, and create models of understanding for. From nuclear and chemical reactions, to cosmic and spatial theories, the world of radial energy can be logically interpreted and described.

In contrast, Teilhard’s tangential energy may be described as a “spiritual force” that does not exist in any physically measurable way, but rather it is phenomenon manifested through the actions of living organisms. Put another way, tangential energy represents the tendency of living organisms to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with physical rules. The most advanced form of tangential energy was therefore consciousness.

He was describing what he believed was the divine spark, a term often defined as the remnant of the light of God in the religious world. Furthermore Teilhard used the idea of increases in tangential energy to link consciousness to complexity to form “the law of complexity consciousness.” This law claimed that increases in consciousness were related to increases in the complexity of tangential energy.

Wow, what a different perspective. So what does any of this have to do with a Global Mind or the technologies related to it? Nothing practical, but it certainly is the beginnings of a potentially self-fulfilling prophesy! Whether people believe in it or not, trends in information sharing seem to lead to an entity similar to Teilhard’s “thinking layer” of the biosphere. What I am calling the Global Mind, some might call the Semantic Web or Metaweb, Teilhard called the noosphere. Noo, being the Greek word for mind.

Some groups like Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project are even trying to measure this force leading towards a global conscious. While I am primarily interested in seeing the practical and deliberate development of a Global Mind, a significant part of me is drawn towards the spiritual implications.

To link back to what I started with, I believe that a large number of people will be uncomfortable with the concept of a Global Mind for reasons beyond the logistics of such a large project. In these instances I want to be ready to answer some of the more personally spiritual questions in addition to the academic ones posed. Such an intersection seems quite inevitable to me.

The evolving web

2004-01-12T15:58:00.002-05:00

Last Thursday I met with several friends to talk about this project and the graduate research potential. It was a good exercise in several respects. I had the chance to further describe the concepts using different approaches. And it also led me to define more specific projects for starting points.

Overall I think my ideas were well received. All agreed that it was certainly broad and promising to be complicated, yet I don’t believe anyone doubted that a related project could be done. There are a number of different options for me to make a living, and I will most likely have to approach them all before securing income.

I do have some immediate tasks that need to be done. Several fellowship applications need to be in by February, which means I will need to take the Graduate Record Exam in the next week or so. Fortunately, computer versions are the norm and they can be taken year round.

I’ve continued my searches for related organizations and technology and discovering that my visualization of Global Mind concepts is more common than expected. While I have arrived at the idea through my own education and experiences, others have envisioned similar potentials as far back as 1945. Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” envisioned a human aid that would put a wealth of useful and easily accessible information at our fingertips.

Similarly, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and founder of the World Wide Web Consortium is promoting changes to create a Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is yet another term described as a web comprised of machine understandable data. In other words, in a Semantic Web, data and the applications for accessing it are designed to work together to provide higher quality information.

For example when you do a search on Google for “Bruce Skarin”, you might find some information about me. Yet, even though my name is quite unique, you are also bound to find information about different Bruce Skarins in the world. Myself knowing what information is correct can, filter out all the others so that only my info remains (like this), yet I cannot guarantee that it will always work and may be eliminating relevant data. In a Semantic Web, I will be able to provide you with a search function that finds every bit of information about me, exclusively, for an indefinite amount of time.

There is of course more to the Semantic Web, and more to what it would provide, but I am just learning myself. Mostly, I am again pleasantly surprised to learn that I live in a time where the technology for a Global Mind is really starting to take shape.

Specializing in nothing particular

2004-01-07T14:09:00.001-05:00

There are additional sites and concepts that support the structure I see behind a Global Mind. First there is, ironically enough, The Global Mind Project. The site seems to have been a venture in 1997 that was perhaps ahead of its time. I will be inquiring into the status of the project as my own begins to take shape.

The work of my new favorite programming author, Bruce Eckle is also a unique example of collaborative knowledge creation. His reasons for putting his books up on the web reflect an intriguing view of how to teach a concept. Instead of relying only on the opinions of a select few regarding the clarity of a concept, Bruce Eckle receives feedback from a growing number of participants. This powerful feedback process will not only improve the quality of the instruction, but also the diversity. Not everyone understands a concept through identical logics.

A good example is the differences between some of my friends. Two of my friends in particular are incredible visualists. They can see an assembly in their minds from a pile of parts that I struggle to understand as a finished assembly. Another friend has a way with words so that nearly everything he says sounds as if it came straight out of a book. And other friends can visualize problems in numbers or programming code that I would need to sit down and work out.

We all have our strengths in learning and surprisingly, most problems can be examined in more than one medium. For a beginning however, the medium should be simple and in plain language. Too often we each get lost in our own professional terminology and dogma. Even the concept of a Global Mind has its own share of new terms. Like Metaweb, RSS, RDF, and Microcontent and Macrocontent.

I’m not saying that there is no need for new terminology creation. In fact it is this very process that helps professionals in the field to distinguish new and different concepts from similar existing ones. Yet for crossover from different fields to exist there must be a simplified explanation.

I am coming to realize that I’m not really a specialist in any particular field, but rather marginally talented in many. As a result, I am hoping that it will be possible for me to become proficient in many areas and fluent in none, without being completely useless to the practical world. My usefulness might then be as a mediator between different professions, linking ideas and technology that can lead to the Global Mind. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Representing knowledge in its many forms

2004-01-06T13:05:00.001-05:00

To start with I need to clarify for myself and for anyone else interested what both the broad goal and the specific starting goal are. It will be key for me to find my own unique way to do very deliberate work towards developing the concept.

I say very deliberate, because in many respects the project is already under way. The advances in information storing, sorting, and relaying over the Internet have already spawned several generations of "intelligence". In fact Weblogs (Blog for short) like this one capitalize on many of the new technologies developed to make information more dynamic and useful.

Nova Spivack's Blog has been fairly stimulating to me, but may not appeal to everyone interested in what I want start with. I hope to draw upon my System Dynamics experience, which I majored in at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The broad goal is to use System Dynamics and other concepts and technologies for managing complexity to create the initial access layers of a system that is capable of presenting the growing collective knowledge in the world in a manner that is consistent and understandable to anyone.

What will make this system so unique is that it will learn to teach each individual accessing it in the manner that is best for them. What I think is one of the key failures in todays information exchanges is that there is very limited access between different professions, generations, and cultures.

For example, a child has a general idea about math that can at least provide a basis for understanding increases or decreases in the world around them. Yet if he were presented with a calculus equation or even description of one, he would be utterly lost. In fact, many adults would still be utterly lost, but this does not mean that they are incapable of understanding the function. Rather, if the function were expressed differently, say in the form of a chart, graph, or animation, they could understand at least the concept it is representing.

I believe that System Dynamics can help in this respect by aiding in the development of both a model structure for organizing the information as well as a model that adapts itself to individual learning styles. Some adaptive learning work is also already being done. Most recently I came across Ms. Lindquist, an online tutoring system that adapts to individual progress, providing feedback that is more than just the solution to the problem.

The more I search, the more I find. It seems to me that the required technology is already well under way. I just have to find a place where I fit in.

In the beginning...

2004-01-05T15:55:00.001-05:00

The description says it all right now. I have no idea what direction this will be going. I'm looking at graduate projects, existing organizations, and independent consulting. Links to what the global mind might be or already is will be posted.