Multiplicity of Re-cognition Evolving Systems

Wired brings this interview posted April 8, 2009. Tim O'Reilly founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media Inc. discusses much more than "the origins of Web2.0 and the rise of Twitter..." during his conversation with Fora.tv CEO Blaise Zerega on April 2, 2009 in San Francisco.

To cite some:

• We're moving into a more sensory-like evolution process involving humans and machines,... "starting to build hybrid human-computing machine as a sub-text of Web2.0".
• Companies that survived the previous crash: invited their customers (to contribute) to make the company better. (focus on Amazon.com)
• Google as a collective intel: the people point to a page and then Google elevates it... We are all contributing to Google every time we create web content. They are figuring their ad options in real time... measuring what people click on.

• There may be a revolution coming in business, when you see what Google does when it gets (new) information: Google has to adjust the algorithms all the time, so it's not about people taking in lots of data and making decisions but with figuring what's been mixed and changing algorithms.
• Imagine what happens when your supply chain is driven by sensors... voters ideas... we are starting to build autonomic systems, that respond automatically to stimuli...
• The vision of Web2.0 is learning to recognize things by accumulating content and analyzing it with new tools. Everything in Web2.0 was implicit in what Tim Berners-Lee originally designed.

• We are teaching machines to do recognition ... speech recognition, visual recognition.... we're are getting to that kind of augmented reality when our computers will have sensors that might be even be better than our own recognition senses. Google is developing "an ear" to recognize speech data and provide users what they are looking for utilizing their location and info they have on nearest places and data.
• Sub-systems that give you access to data bases in the cloud, constructed by human aggregated data: crowd sourced.

• It may not be about a single "new new thing" or that we might notice it right away... but he does highlight Twitter as a distinctive new thing: "it's brought real time to a new peak on the web".
• Modularity is one of the things we are learning from Twitter Vs a world with info delay, or a narrative that has to change altogether every time an element within changes. Revision controls for collaboration at scale must be improved.

• No need for a catalogue book on the Web... that book would be the World Wide Web.
• We don't wear name tags in everyday life to recognize people we've seen before. Our computers are getting best at recognizing context in order to perform better sensory induced recognition.
• It's not just about tools but about learning how to use tools better. We are changing our machines and they are changing us. We have always adapted to our artifacts. We use memory very differently in our different evolutionary stages. People thought only a couple hundred years ago that people who could read without moving their lips were... strange.

Key Considerations*

* from the book I was reading today: CLEAR and to THE POINT by Stephen M. Kosslyn
QUOTE:
" The following is reputed to be an actual transcript of a radio conversation between a Canadian communications officer and a U.S. naval vessel, recorded off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995:

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert your course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert your course.
Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet! We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15 degrees north, that's one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship!
Canadians: We are a lighthouse. Your call!"
UNQUOTE.

Off to read the rest of the book after a good laugh, reflecting on the current waters many formerly acclaimed Finance guru's might be surfing these days, especially those who thought they were sailing with astounding support vessels, navigating substantial truths that would always stand.

Some like John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid refer to this as "tunnel vision" and "tunneling ahead"... topic for another post.

Kosslyn presents this "web posted joke" also quoted by others on academic gatherings as he informs on the book, as a good example of "bad navigation maps". He states that there is no point in blaming the participants "for their attitudes or communication skills". Regardless of nationality factors -in the current global mix migrants are in fact the largest population- given a group of authoritative individuals working together as a team, they will most likely support a chosen common path strongly. To the point that even if presented with proof that they were "not seeing what they thought they were seeing..." it would be very difficult and a major challenge for any of them to see differently. Likewise, if any of them did become aware of a need for urgent change in their navigation (thinking) course... it would be seemingly difficult to speak up, even more to convince the rest following group pressure factors.

For a good example on this, go check the site of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: Hearing on the Role of Federal Regulators in the Financial Crisis.

Humans could use a strong meta-logue mechanism to alert us when we're following badly configured "maps". Indeed, we have such a protocol and it's called science, sound analytical tools and rigorous financial metrics ... but we seldom apply them when there are huge "hush" "hush" group interests or other political or belief factors involved.

Whatever they dream

"Whatever they dream ... that's what they should reach for, and that's what they can achieve"

(Dr. Sally Ride)


Via: The Women's Conference Channel


My dream (today, and after having watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics 2008 yesterday) is that the image of humans having fun and "joining" for a common purpose ... regardless of gender, politics, belief, tradition and temporary maps... was not just an image and an exceptional couple weeks period.

The Olympic Games' rules involving 200+ countries seem to work pretty well for a couple weeks. WHAT IF ?... this was the vision of reality many of us could contribute to ... and share? Except for a few moments of non-sense with some participants -possibly less than 5 in thousands- ... THERE IS PROOF ... that IT CAN BE DONE.

Technology and Magic Wands (V.08)

Vía Bryan Alexander
Bryan distinguished this quoting the blog Tarina: Teemu Arina's reflections on networked learning, knowledge and collaboration in organizations. And I went on to read more:

"The future of mobile phones is perhaps... not a mobile phone at all, but rather a contextually aware and active mobile magic wand. (...) It's a wand, I tell you. (...) It´s going to combine cloud computing, augmented reality and the internet of things in a meaningful way."
(Teemu Arina, June 30th, 2008, on the history of mobile phones... Go read his blog!)

Plus this wonderfully illustrative comment to Teemu Arina's post:

| View | Upload your own

The origins of science involved the activities of alchemists and magicians, as much as the entertainment/funding practices of the time. In the early days of scientific practice, research with mechanical devices and other gadgets, frequently took place on stage. Science has evolved as institutionalized practice -in most regions so to say, and in a somewhat "flat world" we marvel with technology innovation and gadgets giving way to "discovery rituals" and cults that prevail in time.

In the the times of Houdini's "challenging the locks and chains to escape the barriers that constraint him" it attracted masses watching and maybe also dreaming about breaking their own chains... whatever those may have been. I like the way the two creative and informed mix&mash works above reflect relations with humans and the mystifying techno-objects we design ... the (techno) cultural practices and quest for something "magic" we sustain.