Re: [xmca] Looking forward by looking back, sort of.

Mike, Emily and the rest of contributors, I apologies for late reply on the
topic that I interjected. Being in business, I have to take care of my
clients and work on several proposals for other research things. I will be
away for a while again and will be unable to contribute. But I will try my
best to share as much when I can. Here are few quick thoughts:

Yes. Human body itself is a 'big' tool for thought. More we know about our
'body', less we know about 'ourselves'.

We, human are quick to identify patterns visible in 'one' plane (view). But
computers can identify patterns across many views/planes (data sets -
records). Human interpretation of 'patterns' is biased while computer simply
outlines what it discovers. Human take long time to self-organize while
new research in machine learning techniques, such as enhanced
self-organizing-maps - an extension of artificial neural networks, are
promising tool to guide us to 'adapt' or 'align' us in the ever-changing
'environment'. But it will be all up to us human to take that advice. A
real example today is your mobile cell phone or a GPS device in your car.
your 'device' constantly 'pings to locate/connect to a nearest
communication-tower to stay connected within your wider-network. But as part
of this ping, systems knows your position/ranking (base on your service
level agreement-SLA) to place you in a 'map - a community' with similar SLAs'
so you are served accordingly. This is done automatically/technically by the
Networking gears without you knowing it that 'while you were talking' you
are now connected to a different broadcast tower. Your past temporarily
stored 'content' is left behind on the previous 'tower' when you were
'switched' to the new. All new 'content' is being stored on the new tower's
storage area... All without any interruptions. Have you ever thought of
what happened to all of your 'content' what I call 'data puddles' across
many tower while you were 'driving and taking'. Who really owns that
content? Yes. That content is left there for a moment only and then
destroyed depending on who is your original service provider and their
legal/business requirements for logging entire communication (which then
they data-mine again to send you a new offers and sell more services).

The point here is that, in the past, when we use to focus on men-computer
(notice the gender orientation) interactions, they were very much focused on
'individual' computers (silos) and User-Interfaces without a sense of using
computers as a "Social-Community". I have been there (14 years in Digital
Equipment Corporation PDPs to Aplha's). They were designed on the
'men-machine interaction' paradigm not community-interactions. They
'men-machine' systems were more or less designed for a few delegated
individuals collecting and managing very 'structured content' but not
'unstructured' or for 'knowledge' management. This argument bring the human
psyche right in the emerging social networks research domain because human
social networks are driven by communities - globally today, and hence need a
cultured-centered cognition research in a distributed environment. Today
business model is based on from 'transaction' to customer 'interactions."
Here you have some context (knowledge, preference) about the customer. Then
you interact to develop more business, say through recommendations (Amazon
today). This model is changing fast to 'interaction to transaction' (Google
has some success through analyzing how user navigate when they do 'searches'.
These are very elementary models and that will take a quite different look
in the future. Again, it takes us back how we influence one (through
one-on-one or through community influence) to make a visitor a buyer of a
product or idea or any thing. very different paradigm.

I also agree that computer will do what we 'human' program them to do.
However, they can analyze vast amount of information from many angles, can
help 'adjust' us adopt well in the 'social communities' very much like today's
'rules engines used by Amazon /Google but more powerful tools through use of
new emerging mobile agents - global self-organizing maps and other
algorithms. This is exactly a part of my research project 'Psyche Mining'.

I agree with Emily on the cost side of this fictional view. I also believe
that 'hard' cost of implementing such 'agents', to help us navigate in the
global world community, will be extremely low compared to its benefits.
Example, RFID (Radio Frequency IDs) that you see on just about every thing
you buy at Wal-Mart and other places. where Wal-Mart (back in their home
office in Bentonville, Arkansas) knows about every thing that you purchased
just about the time when you leave the Wall-Mart door to their parking lot
and before you reach your car. Not only the home office, that store and rest
of the 'supply-chain' gears know what has been purchased and how to fulfill
the new items back on the shelf ASAP. Yes. RFIDs cost was absorbed many ways
while new RFID engineering made RFIDs process to a few cents/unit. Not much
compared to the profits. (The nanotechnology is next big thing!).

The entire Wall-Mart business model takes us back to the original subject -
global collaboration model like a well-oiled-supply-chain machine driven by
extensive use of 'knowledge' churned by distributed computers and
information. Not just man-computer models of the past but a new
'knowledge-community' driven approach.

The major challenge that I see we'll face is how we teach the 'social
responsibility' when using such a large pool of free 'collective information'
resources that help you to be a better citizen of the 'globe'. This needs
curriculum to be focus on skills such as intra-cultural studies (not
intra-racial), communications, business negotiations (not you are with us or
not), collaboration, history, geography, math, basic sciences and team
building. Otherwise the way present school curriculums are in the United
States, will only develop workforce for the 'service' jobs - which then most
be outsourced someplace else. IQ or SAT is not that important compared to
how 'socially networked or capable' you are in the 'global community'.

And I think the new teaching tools should be more 'object' oriented.
Interesting enough, children learn from objects. but as soon as they start
to grow, we stop using objects to teach them. After all these years of
research I discovered how you get 1+1 = 11 ? The answer is - by mistake!!!
. And I'm the 'decider'. So you see in the end 'human-being' remain in
charge regardless of how much 'intelligence' we can gather from
automated-eco-system... Simply, kids needs to be brought up with new skills
so they are capable of how to interpret and use new information in the new
flat-world.

On my wilder side, I would say, at some time in the near future WEB 2.0 will
eventually transform into the WEB-PM'. The "Promised Messiah" web. The WEB
with 'embedded-social- governance " within the 'medium' of communication
used for social interaction across the globe (similar to Psyche Mining
goal). Why I say that? Here is why:

The way I see is that entire purpose of any religion is to form a socially
responsible community. Core civility principals are the same among all
religions. It is just how they are communicated depends on given 'time and
space.' Meaning way back when Hindu religion was formed, they built whole
bunch of 'Gods'. Say, Kali Devi = God of Cruelty . the reason these physical
gods were made to make community believe in them to establish common rules
in the society, and enforce concept of punishment and reward through
'physical' objects (Today we call hell and heaven). Perhaps at that time our
cognitive abilities were not sufficiently developed that enable us to accept
'concepts without 'physical' impression (same way the children learn from
physical objects). Kali Devi - a monster looking idol - meant if you are
bad boy, God (Kali Devi) will punish you (boo.) Just like we scare kids if
they do something that WE 'decide' they should not be doing so...

Then other traditional major religions evolved - Judaism, Christianity and
Islam. And all had the same basic principles but lead by
'social-community-acknowledged' individuals (not a government head) to
translate 'societal' message in the language acceptable/understood at that
time and space.. If you study religions, you will notice that the notion of
'physical' objects start to disappear by time and when Islam evolved, there
were no idols. Perhaps due to improvement in human cognition capabilities,
no more 'physical' evidence was needed to believe but to acknowledge based
on logical reasoning (perhaps with some small stick as well). Well, after
passage of every religion's founders and few generations later, disciples
opted for their own 'tribe vales', superiority and controls goals over the
core global community principles which lead to all historical religious
wars and still exists today.

Then many believe that today all signals point to the emergence of the
Promised Messiah (PM) to straightened this world out of misery but the PM
has to be the good ol' Christian (Jesus, Christ...). but my question is
this . who is going to 'certify' that the self acclaimed PM is the real PM ?
Pope ? The 700 Club or Jerry Farwell's Liberty University? Is the PM to
land in Israel and take over Israel? No way Israelis are going to give over
their Control over their land to the PM? Or the PM will be the new American
immigrant with Temporary Work Permit Visa (H-1) granted? Who? In fact in
1885, leader of Ahmadia sect of Muslim (Qadian in India) claimed himself to
be the PM. But no one else in the world has acknowledged him to be the PM.
And there may be many more that I do not know about them to be the PM.

So the point here is that I do not think when religion says about the PM, it
is not really a physical entity or an Individual but the PM is just a Tool
(just like Christ was just a tool - vehicle/medium to bring change and
civility) that will unite the world in creating a harmonized community out
of this chaotic world that we live-in today. And all the indications and
signals point to one such global tool - The Internet. Like Tom Friedman said
in his book, "The world is Flat" that most significant fact of this wave of
globalization is that 'individuals' who are connecting each other to
build/form communities and Internet is just happens to be (time and space)
an open vehicle/tool that we all can use to understand each other. I feel
that the WEB-PM will evolve into a medium/foundation of the future to bridge
communities across the globe and create a social norm that all religions
were hoping to achieve.

What do you think ?

Regards,
Naeem

---
Naeem Hashmi
Chief Research Officer
Information Frameworks
T: 603-552-5171 M: 603-661-6820
W: http://infoframeworks.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Looking forward by looking back, sort of.
> Ditto work of McNeil and Goldin-Meadow.
> mike
>
> On 6/28/07, xmcabb@comcast.net <xmcabb@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Michael Roth's research on gestures would seem to indicate yes.
>> bb
>>
>> -------------- Original message ----------------------
>> From: "Cunningham, Donald James" <cunningh@indiana.edu>
>> > Great quote Bill!
>> >
>> > I have a question, though. Is the body itself a tool for thought?
>> >
>> > Don Cunningham
>> > Indiana University
>> >
>> > Ancora Imparo!
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>> > On Behalf Of xmcabb@comcast.net
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 9:34 AM
>> > To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > Subject: [xmca] Looking forward by looking back, sort of.
>> >
>> > http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/c7010/Licklider.html
>> >
>> > Summary
>> >
>> >     Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative
>> > interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very
>> > close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the
>> > partnership. The main aims are 1) to let computers facilitate
>> > formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated
>> > problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making
>> > decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible
>> > dependence on predetermined programs. In the anticipated symbiotic
>> > partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, 
>> > determine
>> > the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do
>> > the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights
>> > and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Preliminary 
>> > analyses
>> > indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual
>> > operations much more effectively than man alone can perform them.
>> > Prerequisites for the achieveme
>> >  nt of
>> > the effective, cooperative association include developments in computer
>> > time sharing, in memory components, in memory organization, in
>> > programming languages, and in input and output equipment.
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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