Today there is some brouhaha on the Times threads about Lord Stern, author of a key UK climate change report, who is now saying that we will need to become vegetarian to combat climate change. Here’s the article link:

* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

So far this has attracted 550+ comments which is substantially more than the number of people who commented about intelligence and IQ tests and how we can improve our collective intelligence. Interesting, hmmn that people are more interested in going online to refute his points about methane production from bovines and that he’s producing more “hot air” than a cow.

Never mind, I’ll continue with my journey towards harnessing and increasing collective intelligence.

INTERCONNECTING DIVERSE DISCIPLINES

So when not architecting and implementing business strategies or in code bunker, there are three hobbies I allocate time to:

(1.) travelling;

(2.) cooking; and

(3.) knitting

Each has a discipline, a methodology and a culture that can inform the way strategy and code are approached. This may not be immediately obvious but they all require the following:

* planning

* sourcing of materials

* application processes

* troubleshooting

* end experience

and these also apply to strategy and code. There are transferrable skills from each which can be cross-applied and synergized into project management, creative problem-solving and the re-imagination of solutions by gaining alternative perspectives on the original problem.

We often hear the phrases:

* “What Company X’s cooking in its labs.”

* “We’re weaving the Web.”

Well, at the moment I’m knitting a rainbow-colored gilet like so, including with cabling:

Plus weaving 360-2020 profile pages like so — with something called a Navigator and the types of customizable features I’d want on a social network:

The key difference between 360-2020 and other social media applications and platforms is that 360-2020 aims to be a seed for the development of a Conscious Web.

In the same way that when I can’t find some knitting in the stores that suits my utility, I go right ahead and knit what I really want from scratch, since the social media innovations to-date aren’t doing the types of things I believe they should do (enabling us to differentiate between content — including whatever’s marketed and advertised; including consumers in the production value chain; and contextualizing the consequences of that marketing with consumption that affects climate change)…………I’m weaving it from scratch.

No, there are no plans to create yet another socmed cool app that’s fun, but (ultimately) serves no serious purpose. There are also no plans to do a Lord Stern and advise everyone to become vegetarian; I trialled it for July 2009 and would never recommend or impose permanent vegetarianism on anyone.

There are much more intelligent policies and pragmatic solutions we can innovate — if we would properly analyse and apply our own human and collective intelligence by synergizing both, :*).

This is a must-read from the Times. I like these points:

* The more intelligent someone is, the more they can see a fact in terms of other things. The greatest form of intelligence is someone who can make big links between different contexts, such as the scientist F. M. Burnet, who applied the principles of evolution to the immune system. — Professor Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution;

* The marks of intelligence are alertness, perceptiveness, wit, curiosity, creative responses to opportunities and problems, and the ability to learn quickly from errors. Intelligent people tend not to be mentally lazy or pedestrian, because being smart enough to recognise that one is either or both these things makes for dissatisfaction. Intelligent people are more often than not self-motivating and ambitious and derive pleasure from putting their talents to use. The value of what results depends, of course, on whether the intelligence in question is bent to good or bad ends. — A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck (ex-Oxford); and

* I don’t equate intelligence with cleverness. I think people who are intelligent have a touch of humanity about them. Their ideas, insight and vision set them apart from others, but they also have an understanding of what makes the world tick and how their ideas can impact for the greater good. Interestingly, as the World Wide Web has evolved so has the concept of collective intelligence, which is best encapsulated in the evolution of Wikipedia. This is a new form of intelligence that could lead to new insights into our understanding of the key challenges that face us as an increasingly global society. — Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton.

It’s interesting because 6 weeks ago this is what I wrote on BBCDigRev:

CONCLUSION: we are intelligent in ways not necessarily captured by current definitions of it or tests to infer it.

I have a similar take on consciousness; we are conscious in ways not necessarily captured by current definitions of it or tests to infer it.

This article is a comment on the Channel 4 program, Race and Intelligence: Science’s last Taboo.

MY VIEWS ON IQ-EQ, TURING TESTS ETC.

I’ve commented previously on this blog about my fun+games with Elbot, the Turing test and what is defined as machine intelligence and consciousness.

* http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/06/23/the-global-brain-the-cloud-and-other-grea-universal-neural-kinesis-gunk/

IT’S CLEAR THAT THE QUESTION OF INTELLIGENCE FOR ME IS ABOUT WHETHER SOMETHING (MAN OR MACHINE) CAN MAKE SENSE. By this I mean contextualize with diverse, multiple and sometimes contradictory sources of inputs, be able to filter in the perspicacious quality and out the nonsense noise, DNA path the consequences of each option, spark and cross-pollinate some synergistic random creativity (from what seems to be nothing, a vacuum, a pool of ignorance, unconnected silo sources) and…….DO SOMETHING WHICH MOVES THEM, THE PEOPLE AROUND THEM AND THE SITUATION THEY’RE IN FORWARD.

Now, superficially, this may seem to mean intellectual application. It doesn’t. For me, a footballer who can make sense of his terrain, filter out the noise of the crowds and filter in his manager shouting instructions from the sidelines yards away, be aware of where the rest of his team are, who he needs to pass to to move their game forward towards a goal, what paths to take to avoid defenders on the other team and then the random magic of foot connecting with ball to curve it into a net……….is intelligent.

Moreover, Ivy League / Oxbridge / Top 10 MBA school educations and qualifications don’t necessarily equate with intelligence. I’ve worked directly with types like that and some of them are simply incapable of making sense. If they were capable, we wouldn’t have had the global financial crisis in that gravity or of that magnitude and ripple effect. Yes, the nature of markets is that they are cyclical and we are bound to have booms+busts. Nonetheless, smarter anticipatory sense-making BEFORE the crisis could notably have decreased the severity of it and the policies available to take us out of it.

What highly qualified people may be good at is using convoluted jargon and “marketing mantras” but they can be poor at decision-making in any contextualized and consequential way. Unfortunately, people like that do rise into positions of sign-off so US$ billions of savers’ capital is put at risk precisely because those people are incapable of sense-making and risk managing.

Some of them are also simply not mathematically or technically competent enough.

Now, I’ve also been interested in the BBC Digital Revolution’s upcoming documentary which charts the last 20 years of the Web, particularly what it means for our collective intelligence and consciousness. This is one of my observations there about Program 4 which is about how the Web affects our intelligence:

* Baroness Susan Greenfield shares her concerns for our brains under the web’s influence; and

* Nicholas Carr offers his thoughts on the loss of the contemplative mind.

It’s been theorized that the Web will turn (or is turning?) us into non-thinking drones and rewiring our brains negatively. There may have been similar theories when the radio and the television happened.

What we’re showing in this thread is that actually the Web can INCREASE contemplation — with each contextualization by diverse contributors which elicits another contributor or reader (or the BBCDigRev team) to reflect and respond with a supporting / alternative / questioning position towards positive ends.

Positive ends being some type of preservation of the Utopian ideals of the Web first imagined by TBL and others’ genius AND also factoring in the corporate inclusion in the economic model — along with tools for corporate altruism, increased and incentivised online collaboration, and how WE should own its value ecosystems rather than any govt, corporation or Skynet wannabe.

So perhaps the basis of Program 4 shouldn’t be whether the Web is affecting our identities but rather how we’re shaping the Web and each other via online interactions.

INTELLIGENCE + IQ
============

Can we define intelligence without ambiguity or capture it precisely in IQ tests? Answer: NO.

The definitions of intelligence vary, culture by culture, individual by individual. In Chinese cultures someone who can cook well is said to be intelligent as much as if they can pass exams. In Western culture, is David Beckham’s ability to somehow instinctively figure out where his foot needs to hit the ball to bend it into the net not as intelligent as a Professor of Mathematics’ calculations of that projectile (force, velocity, rate of acceleration et al)? In Russia, are the oligarchs who engaged in illegal activities and are now in prison intelligent or is the guy who earns a regular salary and is free to take care of his family intelligent?

Relativism applies.

Besides which, IQ tests as a test for intelligence are quite silly. First of all, they only test for our visual-spatial reasoning — of the kind, “Can you figure out which is the odd one out?” That’s easy. If it’s one of those images with dots and crosses or a flag with stripes, we just have to see whether it’s a reflection / translation / rotation / inversion of the dots+crosses. If the number of dots+crosses changes, then it’s about an algebraic pattern.

They don’t test for our aural abilities to distinguish between people’s voices and their intent. They also don’t test for our actual manual dexterity or the aptitude of our olfactory senses. These too are signs of intelligence. The aural aspect of intelligence is particularly important in Oriental languages where the tone and accents of the vowel can determine whether we’re calling our mothers “Mother / a horse / hemp / measles / a nuisance.” Manual dexterity is a sign of intelligence — look at the artistry of pastry makers, sculptors, fashion designers, glass blowers. That doesn’t get captured in these IQ tests which are supposed to be a measure of intelligence. Ditto the intelligence of the “Noses” in the cosmetics and perfumes industry or even the intelligence of someone being able to smell out changes in the weather or where a piece of fish was caught.

CONCLUSION: we are intelligent in ways not necessarily captured by current definitions of it or tests to infer it.

So returning to machine intelligence because it has implications for Web intelligence. If, for example, we wanted to test a computer’s intelligence using standard IQ tests it would probably pass and be able to match the reflections / translations / rotations / inversions of images. Likewise, it would be able to complete all the computational mathematics ones readily — like “What’s next in this sequence? 2, 3, 5, 7?” Easy, they’re all prime numbers so the next one is 11.

Could a machine as readily get the words differentiation in the IQ test — of the kind, “Which is the odd one out? Dog, dolphin, bat and kangaroo.”

At the most, the machine could identify that they’re all mammals. Then it would apply binomial tree logic to distinguishing that the first is the only one with 4 legs, a dog + a dolphin can swim, a bat is the only one that can fly and a kangaroo carries its joey in its giant pouch, and the dolphin + the bat both have the same maximum hearing ranges (approx 150 Hz).

If you ask an Englishman, they may say, “The dog because if we read the word backwards it says “god” and that’s the only one of the options which can be read and spelt both ways. It’s a palindrome.”

If you ask an Australian, they may say, “The dolphin because it’s the only mammal which exhibits an ability for culture (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475).”

If you ask someone Chinese, they may say, “The bat because it’s the only one in this group not known to have previously been eaten by Man.”

If you ask an African, they may say, “The kangaroo because it can only be found in one land — Australia — but the others can be found in many countries.

So, clearly, our inherited tests for intelligence are flawed and if we apply the same types of tests to machines then we will only end up with a definition of machine intelligence which is flawed.

Solutions?

Well, first, develop better Web tools which enable us to understand US and each other with more insight. Some attempt towards this is starting with the Semantic Web and initial forays into structuring data for contextualization. More, though, needs to be done on the perception, culture and values dimensions but at least it’s a positive evolution for the Web.

Second, discern what the value dimensions are within these diverse cultures.

Third, create more sophisticated collaboration tools that can harness those cultural variances for collective hopes and aims.

It’s also important to note that an increase in functional processing power of machines may not be the same as an increase in the intelligence of machines.

Again, it comes down to what is our definition of intelligence and is it culturally cross-applicable.

Anyone interested in how technologists define intelligence can read about it here:

*http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/NatureOfIntelligence

Anyone interested in how biologists define intelligence can read about it here:

* Handbook of Intelligence, Robert J. Sternberg —
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handbook-Intelligence-Robert-Sternberg-PhD/dp/0521596483

* http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6803/abs/407470a0.html

AND FINALLY……ABOUT THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS + TECHNOLOGY
=============================================

Here’s some food for thought. Ever since it struck there’s been reams of academic argument from the Smith/Friedman schools versus the Keynesian schools. We have the likes of Paul Krugman (Noble Prize for Economics), Joseph Stiglitz (also Nobel Economics), Nouriel Roubini and Niall Ferguson getting into intellectual fisticuffs over the economic models we’ve inherited and how to apply them now.

It’s apparent by now that the Presidents and Prime Ministers are taking their leads from these economic giants.

However, what’s interesting is that the Internet, climate change and the interdependence of nations did not exist in the days of Smith or Keynes in the shape they do now. This seems to be escaping the attentions of the heavyweight economists of today. TECHNOLOGY is facilitating trade and driving it. Electronic systems created by the banks and companies to produce, market, distribute and sell products+services to us are also interdependent — not simply government policies.

So perhaps it may be a good idea to evolve the Smith vs. Keynes models into ones which DO INCLUDE technologies (the Internet, mobile, haptics), climate change and systems interdependency.

Otherwise, if we keep using old tools and economic frameworks which haven’t kept apace with technological advances we shouldn’t be surprised if in 10 years time there’s another recession and risk of stockmarket collapse and values eradication.

See? It’s about a lot more than Chris Anderson’s “theory of free” or “freemium” or whatever. It’s about the whole and holistic economic ecosystem we’re creating online that provides us with tools more sophisticated and current than Smith or Keynes alone.

********

Yes, we’re all in it together moving forward :*).

Yes and I don’t believe that the likes of Twitter or Facebook will be regarded as the apex of Web development. As much as they’re useful and have their own validity, there’s still MUCH MUCH MORE AMAZING INNOVATION, COLLABORATION + SENSE-MAKING AHEAD.

At some point, that’s likely to include a re-imagination and re-configuration of code with some form of pictographics like Chinese and more haptics. I see inklings of how pictographs would level the code playing field; there’s something written in Squeak which allows children aged 11-15 to learn about code in a purely visual way rather than as lines of tags and text.

For true democracy, we’re not only talking about as it applies to adults and people from the same cultures or “intelligence” or “edu-economic status” as us. We’re talking about….EVERYONE.

Who knows? Maybe someone will get an Epiphany/enlightenment soon and figure out a way of incorporating Chinese into RDF in a way which is more than a call to an image file of a Chinese character.

For me, right now, I just want to replace 5-star rating systems with something smarter and more meaningful.

360-2020

The reason for my interest in contextualization and consequentiality is that I don’t believe the Semantic Web is sufficient. Within my lifetime, I’d like to experience the realization of an intelligent CONSCIOUS WEB.

If we can structure content not simply to be able to categorize the simple stuff like people, places, companies, location etc. in RDF, but to actually differentiate QUALITY sense-making content from the noise and also discern the ways people are perceiving and valuing that content, then we will become a whole lot more Enlightened and intelligent.

Even more intelligent is when the on+offline tools to contextualize and consequentiality path the wealth of our content and productivity will enable us to derive more evolved economic models and social ecosystems that advance — rather than atrophy — our species and our humanity towards others.

Well in this post I’m going to tackle the limitations of 5* star and other scalar rating systems, the Semantic Web Stack and sentiment engines, and provide a glimpse into how 360-2020 will effectively kill 3 big birds (that can’t take full flight) with a single stone. Plus 360-2020 will do what none of those 3 systems can do: take into account cultural, gender and other demographic factors.

All for fun on a quiet Sunday — LOL.

Here’s the Twain rationale for building 360-2020……………Enjoy…………

Whilst 5* star rating systems allow for the capture of 5 variables (typically — poor, bad, average, good, excellent), their lack of usefulness has very recently been admitted by no less than YouTube’s senior product manager:

There is also some suggestion for using the “thumbs-up-thumbs-down” or +1 / -1 or (percentage) marks out of 100.

Here’s the thing: NONE OF THESE METHODOLOGIES PROVIDE ANY CONTEXT ON WHY A USER IS GIVING THIS MARK OR HOW THEY ACTUALLY PERCEIVE IT.

Now, it’s also been written and said that the Semantic Web Stack should enable us to connect and contextualize content better because the data will be better structured (such as being able to differentiate Paris is a place, a person, a character from Homer’s Odysseus, etc.)

Here’s the thing: those classifications are still based on KEYWORD NOUNS (in case anyone hasn’t noticed) so whatever contextualization and link connecting of data objects remains restricted and rudimentary.

I’ve already noted the missing gaps in the Semantic Web Stack which I coined as a “Rubik cube of contextualization” (i.e., it’s rigid and not as flexible as if we adopted a naturalistic DNA approach) in my ‘The Global Brain’ Google knol:

* http://knol.google.com/k/twain-360-2020/the-global-brain-the-semantic-web-the/31fjy9fjsu1×2/19

Next up, sentiment engines which are said to be able to scrape data content not only for keyword nouns but also how a user’s text comments indicate they feel negative, neutral or positive about something.

Here’s the thing: sentiment engines are still producing results which are effectively -1, 0, +1 and whilst we can plot a table from the results there is NO way we can chart ongoing, real-time, dynamic N-dimension graphs wherein we can examine the constituents of those sentiments.

Below are examples from Twitter and Interaction London and the limitations of sentiment engines are covered in these blog links:

* http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/09/five_reasons_sentiment_analysi.html

* http://blog.techrigy.com/2009/10/five-myths-about-automatic-sentiment-analysis/

360-2020

360-2020 is a perceptions and values analytical system. It will have 3000+ variables to enable users to rate, review and rank content and it will produce graphs like this:

Yes, wherein possible code-wise, I am building it to simulate the way my brain perceives, contextualizes, cross-references, collaborates with, synergizes, deploys and evolves content. Hence my comment about a naturalistic DNA approach.

Yes, I am having to code parts of it personally because if I wait for so-called semantic tech leaders like that SemWeb CEO to “get” what contextualization reallys mean and should be able to do, then we will find ourselves in 2020 with Dr Larry Brilliant and Vint Cerf making the observation that “technology hasn’t changed that much since we built the WELL and TCP/IP”. That SemWeb CEO also lost my respect and confidence because he deleted my content, including my evidence that Google was already moving into the semantic space — analysis of mine that was about 12 months ahead of the tech media, actually.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

It’s called 360-2020 for obvious reasons: 360 degree perspective and 20/20 acuity of vision. The temptation might have been to call it “TWAIN IT” the same way that Michael Bloomberg named his stock analytical system after himself, but the brand logo looks distinctive and says it all with the numbers. My friend GC loves it which is good.

Initially he noted that 5* star rating systems are so established and universally understood that people might not understand the need for 360-2020. Plus it’s not a name that’s readily familiar. I pointed out that Google, Knol, facebook, Wikipedia, Technorati and more are all invented names and before they became tech sector incumbents we didn’t even know we needed them either! Before Tim Berners-Lee originated the World Wide Web, someone invented the wheel and MS gave us something called a “browser” we didn’t realize we needed those or what the names were either!

Anyway, 360-2020 is informed by a lot of my direct experiences with technology and on the Web and I know it’s what’s needed for contextualization and consequence tracking.

IF CONTENT IS KING, CONTEXT IS QUEEN & CONSCIOUSNESS ARE THEIR PROGENY

To date, male coders and tech entrepreneurs have done a great job in encouraging the production and propagation of content (sharing, bookmarking, RSS, etc.). Context, though, will also need female input simply by virtue of academic research which notes that we understand communication nuances, emotions and relationship complexities differently from men:

* http://www.newsweek.com/id/203458

* http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168362.php

* http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20091022/

^{* http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/do-women-make-better-bosses/}

^{* http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=46}

^{* http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpsoc/joop/2007/00000080/00000004/art00010}

There’s no interest on my part to continue with any exacerbation of male-female differences or the statistical versus semantic arguments. My primary objective is to TWAIN what would initially seem to be two separate, silo and mutually exclusive areas and to develop the tools that can harness the best from each and both.

Now, THAT’s an interesting challenge — LOL.

Ok now I have to go out for Sunday dim sum………yummy!

Here are some photos from my recent trip to Paris. Videos to follow on YouTube once I have some time to compile the various recordings into 10-minute batches. Even better I’m planning to post it onto a Google Map so that it can act as a mini-guide for anyone who wants to know where the major landmarks and sights to see are in this beautiful city.

Unequivocally, Paris is architecturally one of the most magnificent and inspiring cities in the world. One of its advantages over London is that the eye lines are not disturbed by any juxtapositions of skyscrapers — or the South Bank complex, which may house the National Theater but is not that pleasing on the eye! By comparison, Paris is timeless, classical and majestic (yes and incredibly romantic).

In terms of flying over for a long weekend stay, the wonder of cut-price airfare is that it is possible to pay GBP0.01 plus airport taxes and luggage charges which amount to less than GBP35 for a return ticket. Yes, 1 penny flights!!! Then hotel costs range from about EUR35 per night in a hostel located in outskirts boroughs to EUR600+ for a 5-star hotel off the Champs Elysées. I stayed in the quarter I always stay which is………near the Notre Dame and within walking distance of all the major landmarks.

When I build the Google Map I’ll also include some tips on how and where to buy metro+bus carnets as well as where the main markets and washrooms are, all very practical information.

Anyway, here are the photos and it’s clear the weather was sunny and brilliant — just like the trip:

(1.) Bastille market — Japanese lady in a kimono

I was wandering to buy some food for a picnic lunch and happened across her near a boucherie (butchers’ stall). The incongruence of her graciousness and demure attire was quite notable and she was very kind to let me take a picture of her.

(2.) Bastille market — tempting escargots but with no kitchen at hand I didn’t buy any

(3.) Bastille market — more foie gras than anyone can buy

(4.) Eiffel Tower — from Place de Trocadero

(5.) Eiffel Tower — armed guard carrying machine gun

Admittedly this was pretty strange since there are no armed guards on patrol in London around its landmarks, yet in Paris their presence was felt. Interestingly, there are also substantially more surveillance cameras in London — including on public transport — than in Paris so this may explain some of the difference.

It is also still not as strange as being in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and seeing a small team of People’s Republic soldiers doing their mid-day marching exercises and then shooting photographs of each other as tourists. Bizarre.

(6.) Pont Neuf @ sunset — what a gorgeous view (one of my favorites anywhere)

(7.) Notre Dame at night — another atmospheric and breathtaking view

I also managed to record a video of a live band playing in the square at sunset and the crowds joining in in a waltz there (will post this on YouTube).

(8.) The Opera House — Covent Garden in London is no comparison

(9.) Les Puces at Porte Clignancourt — an area for antiques and mass-produced street clothes

(10.) Musée de Quai Banly — photography exhibition

This is an absolutely innovative open air gallery that is open until the end of November 2009 and it was perfect to wander through on a sunny day.

(11.) La Rive Gauche — statue of Thomas Jefferson

(12.) Café Voltaire — one of the first places I went to when I visited Paris as a teen

(13.) La Rive Gauche — artisans putting their stock away for the day

(14.) Place du Vendôme — statue of Napoleon

(15.) Les Tuleries — the gardens near the Louvre

A completely brilliant setting for these adorable contemporary sculptures which were full of character.

(16.) La Louvre et le Centre Pompidou — the rainbow spectrum refracted off the glass is so cool!

There were moments I could seriously imagine living and working in Paris. For a start, the markets are a norm and the quality of the produce is superior to what I’ve found in London’s markets and I include the famous Borough market. Strolling along the River Seine is incredibly therapeutic and the architecture simply stunning.

If the founder of that make-up brand decides to follow up on my suggestions, I’ll have a great reason to return to Paris and fall in love with it all over again, :*).

Today is my birthday and instead of writing about how glamorous I’m going to look for my birthday, I want to focus on a serious topic.

In the past fortnight a number of articles have sparked some attention:

I am also mindful of the excellent BBC documentary series ‘The Love of Money’:

SHOULD BANKERS RECEIVE BIG BONUSES?

Yes, SOME of them should. There are bankers who are a total waste of space; they do little of the work, are “me-me-and-moreme” and get excessive credit. However, there are also bankers who work incredibly hard, apply their smarts (and expensive MBA educations) appropriately and are the difference between companies (and entire countries) increasing in value, output and ultimately corporation tax towards government treasure chests for the building of schools, hospitals and other social infrastructure.

Still, legislation should be introduced so that there are no wholesale bonuses across-the-board — even for those who may have contributed to the global financial crisis in the first place.

The City and Wall Street are supposed to be MERITOCRATIC places so rewards (if any) should be based on the banker actually achieving objectives of merit on behalf of their clients, wider society and positive wealth creation rather than wealth decimation.

MY EXPERIENCE OF BANKING

My path into investment banking was unusual. Unlike most graduates I wasn’t part of the graduate trainee program and I also didn’t progress because of nepotism, old boys’ networks or because I was in a personal relationship with someone in a position of power. Nonetheless, within the space of two years I went from being a data input temp in a back office function to this in my mid-20s:

* CEO-Chairman’s Office, specializing in strategic investments and corporate strategy;

* a designated “revenue generator” (about 90% of employees are designated “support” and less than 10% are “contract”). Big-time revenue generators are known as “rainmakers”; they’re the ones who make those US$billion deals happen and, yes, they’re the ones who get the eye-watering US$ millions bonuses the media love to write about.

* creating and running e-Intelligence;

* being co-responsible for the Strategic Investments portfolio of 50+ constituents which included the likes of Perot Systems and all the major trading platforms in the world;

* being board observer on 20+ technology investments globally;

* having input on what was invested in, written down and exited (I wrote the Strategic Investments policy as well as co-authored the termsheets for Private Equity third party agreements);

* one of only 30 employees world-wide to be taught Corporate Finance by the Dean of INSEAD before he stopped his classes due to other commitments.

It should be noted that long before the bank I was known in my own right in other positions of leadership like: managing 15 country coverage in a dotcom, responsible for the ‘Risk Banking Survey’ of 3000 banks globally aged all of 22, Academic Board and Student Council member at university, responsible for European drinks projects at the second largest aromachemicals company in the world when I was 19, model student at high school (English and Chinese, plus Royal Institution maths master classes for gifted children), school monitor in junior school from 8-11.

Others have commented previously about my prodigiousness. The truth is that a person can only be as good as the people who are their role models and mentors and I’m blessed to benefit from being taught, trained and nurtured by some of the most phenomenal, wise and generous people in the world.

SEXISM + PROMOTION IN THE CITY

Luckily for me, my direct manager was and continues to be a BRILLIANT leader. He’s married to an incredibly smart and talented MBA (who was previously a top-flight management consultant), so he appreciated and understood how to develop my intelligence, knowhow and drive to collaborate successfully, and he did everything he could to be an OUTSTANDING ROLE MODEL — both in terms of delegating and entrusting me with responsibilities as well as simply being a supportive, meritocratic and decent human being.

From all the positive feedback that the Global Heads of business and senior MDs provided about me, my line manager went to a Special Committee to present the rational case for why I should be promoted as an “exceptional case” to bank policy.

HR informed us that I was the first and only person in the bank’s history this happened to.

Years after we no longer work together we stay in touch and meet up if we’re in the same city. His proven leadership skills is why his team is ranked #1 in their specialism; if you are lucky enough to work with an outstanding manager you’re inspired to work 8000% harder, simply feel motivated to go those extra miles and want to aim even higher to achieve team success. It’s that simple.

It is not at all the case that the City and Wall Street are populated by egotistical Neanderthals. There are good men and women there who are super-smart, work exceptional hours and who also care about their teams and others. However, it would be denial to say that discrimination and inappropriate behaviors don’t exist in high finance.

THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

It would also be denial to say that the system(s) should stay the same and it’s “business as usual” after the recent global financial crisis. Very senior people I’ve spoken with in the last year are absolutely appalled at the outright incompetence, excessive risks and lack of information/communication between and within business units. The corporate financiers, commodities traders and oil analysts are keen to distance themselves from the guys who structured those toxic mortgage CDO assets.

The Private Equity sector is particularly annoyed because the effects of that near-collapse of liquidity now mean that there is hardly any capital around, so they’re finding it tough to raise funds. That doesn’t augur well for companies seeking investment in 2009 and 2010 because it means the funds are at depleted levels. Any funds which are available are being ploughed into existing portfolio companies and, if start-ups are lucky enough to attract investment, the terms are a lot tougher than during times when the financial system was awash with cash and liquidity. For example, start-ups are now having to give away more equity in their company for less investment than during boom times.

TALKING HEADS & WALK THE TALKERS

What has been noticeable during recent outpourings of commentary about the global financial crisis is that about 99% of commentators have no or little direct experience of corporate strategy and implementation at the highest levels of banking. Yes, Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan as well as entire rafters of financial journalists and politicians would be included in this. Their perspectives are intellectual abstractions or politicking rather than pragmatic first-hand experience.

The question has been asked by lots of people, “Why did no one see this coming? Why couldn’t the economists predict this bust? Where were the risk managers?” Apparently, some leading economists including those at the Bank of England replied to the Queen’s question of the same with this:

“In summary, your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole,”

* http://blogs.ft.com/arena/2009/07/28/economists-what-is-the-point/

This made me LOL.

The answer is simple: they have NEVER seen the blueprints and balance sheet strategies of any of the investment banks. They have also never been charged with the responsibility of implementation — and we all know that ideas and theories are one thing but SMART EXECUTION IS WHAT’s VALUABLE. Besides which, those commentators have no access to the systems and blueprints that govern how banks operate. Not even the bank’s own economists and Heads of Risk Management do. The management consultants who come in to help shape a little bit of the strategy are also not getting the 360-2020 insights.

The blueprints are what give any bank their competitive advantage over their peers and are so confidential that no more than a dozen people are privy to and have clearance to them. 99% of people don’t even know they exist.

I do because I worked directly on them, and they are………….COMPLEX.

The most obvious Achilles of banks is that, despite very sophisticated technology, a lot of information remains silo and business heads do not share sufficiently or effectively to enable everyone to risk manage appropriately. There is a culture of “knowledge is power” and some business heads hold that information so closely it makes it impossible for people trying to design appropriate corporate strategies to be able to do so.

In spite of any personal charm and reason I may have, there were times when Fixed Income business managers absolutely refused to cooperate in information exchanges. This proved to be their own (and the bank’s) downfall because we all know now that the more Fixed Income refused to disclose information about the real state of the mortgage CDO portfolio, the longer the toxicity was allowed to stay on the balance sheets and internal books, and pollute the other performing assets.

So whilst my e-Intelligence creation spread and sling-shotted knowhow across the silo businesses (so that more people would be on the same page and playing field), some business managers engaged in information hoarding which resulted in no one being aware of the risks on their books until it was far too late and the bank ended up writing down US$ BILLIONS and being bailed out by the government. Moreover, a lot of people lost their employment unnecessarily.

The value, capital and employment decimation is affecting everyone. That’s why there is such brouhaha over the bonuses issue from the Obama administration as well as the Mayor of London, who was previously the sole principal political defender of the City.

STEPS FORWARD FOR THE FUTURE

Personally, I’d like to see technologists become a lot more involved from the outset in the entire process of restructuring the global financial system (and it sorely needs this to prevent recurrences of the last 24 months), so that it not simply the theoretical or political points-scoring framework of some politicians and commentators, but based on PRAGMATIC IMPLEMENTATION.

It beggars belief that the 2009 World Economic Forum and the various G20 summits had hardly any senior technologists discussing how technology can be deployed to tackle those silo information issues — whilst still preserving security and competitive advantages — and creating early risk warning systems, across a whole range of financial products and interconnecting them, that can be universally accessed by the banks for a fee.

My experience has been with consortia trading platforms; that’s how I know something tangible can be created and I even know how the terms of agreement and service level agreements would work and be written.

Equally importantly, we need our smartest economists and corporate strategists to collaborate and construct new economic models wherein:

(1.) VALUE explores quality factors and not pure quantity dimensions of GDP, trade deficits and ISLMs (investment savings, liquidity of money).

(2.) comparability is on a more like-for-like basis;

(3.) consequentiality of consumption can be charted and is transparent;

(4.) philanthropic allocation as a compulsory and not simply voluntary facet of business models that is distinct from corporation tax; and

(5.) contextualized connections between information that seems silo but is actually critical in sense-making.

360-2020

There are all sorts of reasons I’m developing this system. What has been obvious is that we need the ability to discern, categorize, tag and synch data objects, situations, relationships and more in a way which is pragmatic, anticipatory, contextualizing, consequential and smarter than what has been available before.

It is not simply a matter of having real-time updates provided by the likes of Twitter nor is it about the categorization afforded by the Semantic Web Stack and RDF nor is it about semantic social networks.

The facts are e-Intelligence had a real-time IM channel and that IM had been created back in 1999. Separately, the M+A dotcom had an ontology authoring tool which enabled text to be classified as people, places, organization, date, etc. and that had been created back in 1998. The social networks of today are not that different from the virtual communities of the 1980s like the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), just as Larry Brilliant has commented on:

This is why when I observe that Web technology has not made that much progress (and certainly not the type of leap I personally would like to happen) I’m basing that observation on historical, practical and personal experience.

Is there anything like what I am trying to do with 360-2020 already out there or even in idea generation? No, it’s not. I’ve even examined various sentiment analysis methodologies along with what’s happening in semantic scraping and I have a 99% confidence that it is on no one else’s horizons except mine.

That’s good.

The Chief of Staff of the big bank once observed I was “left of field” and they needed to get me thinking more along the same lines as everyone else, doing what others were. This was after I presented a strategy paper that offered alternative strategies to the US mortgages market and which presented competitive matrices and growth curves that were different from then accepted convention. I used elliptic shapes instead of nice round circles to represent competitive potentials, and my growth graphs didn’t show straight-line trajectories but rather curved humps which plateaued before a new injection of strategy created new curved humps.

Five years later, I read in some management consultancy reports that elliptic shapes had become industry standard and saw some corporate finance reports which showed those curved hump growth curves.

LOOOOOOOOL.

So……….on my birthday, I can say this happily: “I’m glad I think the way I do, can do what I can and am who I am because I was spot-on about the Asian collapse back in 1997, spot-on about the investments I was involved with, spot-on about the risks of overloading into the US mortgage CDO even way back in 2003, spot-on about the need to evolve some of those accepted management consultancy frameworks  and spot-on about various Semantic Web plays and their limitations.”

In a few years time, I’m probably going to prove spot-on about the creation of a Conscious Web and those new economic models too.

Meanwhile, I need to go and find shoes and make-up to match my party dress………….LOL.

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360-2020: MY SYSTEM, MY VALUES

GC asked what would happen if Google came along tomorrow and offered US$10 million for 360-2020. Could I imagine what else I could do with that US$10 million? What other ventures?

I said that if Google wanted to become a STRATEGIC INVESTOR with a sub-3% equity stake at US$10 million, I might consider that. To sell out 100% to Google at US$10 million is not a value proposition because I’ve observed at close quarters quite a few of Google’s flagship products. As with anything, some work better than others. Overall, of the big techco’s, Google has a lot to merit it.

My considerations would involve my confidence about Google’s commitment to realizing a Conscious Web — one in which tools are available to help us understand the context and consequences of our choices and actions across a range of major issues: consumption, climate change, education, global economies, etc.

The ultimate strategy of 360-2020 is towards the realization of a Conscious Web.

That’s why I’m allocating my brainpower, knowhow and energies to it.

Mary Meeker’s Internet Presentation 2009

The advantage of being a female technologist is that we can gain multiple insights into different product sectors and how code is applied on their websites. For example, men might be principally interested in cars, gadgets and unisex websites (art, architecture, design, books and humor). There is, though, an entire spectrum of sites they wouldn’t go in search of for code inspiration: cosmetics, clothing retail and accessories.

I happened upon this “Let’s Play Makeover” widget on the Estée Lauder site and it’s totally………COOL!

Following transformation via the interactivity of user choice and clicks:

You can also upload your own photo and apply the make-up to your own image!

Readers may recall that back in July 2009 I wrote a blog post about revolutionizing the US$ billions cosmetic industry by me thinking of a potential cross-pollination of two products from different sectors:

* http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/07/15/the-ingenuity-of-simplicity-twain-to-revolutionize-a-wee-bit-of-usbillion-cosmetics-market/

Well, folks, I ran this by my good friend GC because he knows a lot about everything — unfortunately, apart from the cosmetics sector so he didn’t quite understand the opportunity gap or what the manufacturing involved would entail. He does, though, know how industrial materials are engineered and can explain the finer intricacies of finance which means we have some great conversations about models and processes that resulted in the global financial crisis.

Anyway, as destiny would have it I found myself wandering along the Champs Elysée and into a hive of the cosmetics industry. “EUREKA!” the person I needed to touch base with who would understand the innovation I had in mind appeared from nowhere (which I’m reading as some sort of weird synchronicity). Subsequently, I’ve made a video and sent it direct to the founder of a really cutting-edge cosmetics brand.

What’s the lesson from this?

If you have a good idea — even if it’s not immediately obvious to anyone else and doesn’t seem to have immediate relevance or application — always store it somewhere good in your brain, nurture it with regular check-ups and stay open to any random event(s) or encounter(s) that might happen to synergize the next steps towards its realization.

In a sense, our lives are circular works-in-progress. We continuously revisit topics, to-dos and issues which are only partially solved / resolved; it can be like that movie, Groundhog Day. Each time it happens we simply bring improved tools or a more conscious self to tackling those topics, to-dos and issues.

Some of us consistently repeat past mistakes, some stay in blissful states of ignorance or inertia, and some of us……….resolutely plot those paths of difference and try to DNA those circular works-in-progress.

Je me suis passée un bon temps à Paris et je vais ecrire un blog detaillé plus tard (I had a good time in Paris and I’ll write a detailed blog later). Amongst the highlights I captured on film are:

(1.) a woman dressed in traditional Japanese kimono walking through Paris’s largest and liveliest market;

(2.) couples dancing at the square in front of the Notre Dame; and

(3.) an impromptu oompah band playing at the Eiffel Tower and then on the metro platform!

I spoke enough French to be able to buy a number of food goodies in the markets, to get a make-up lesson and to discuss the workmanship of a knitted shawl. My leg muscles are now super toned because I walked………..everywhere, even though I had bought a carnet (book of metro tickets).

Anyway, more later.

Today I found out that my ‘The Global Brain, the Semantic Web, the Singularity, 360-2020 Consciousness….’ knol has not only been designated a Top Pick Award, it’s also receiving an “Honorable Mention” as one of the best top picks amongst the hundreds of thousands of knols written to-date. I’m really happy and glad that the knol is adding perspectives to others online and that its popularity has remained consistent throughout the last 12 months.

According to the Knol community panel who track the Google statistics:

“Winners are produced by the most objective criteria: Google’s secret algorithm that evaluates a combination of reader page views, ratings, reviews, comments and even how quickly each Knol gains popularity. Statistically, these are the best Knols of the month. Google calls them “Top Pick.” There are no conflict-of-interest human votes, no juries of questionable judges.”

When I originally started the knol on 26 November 2008, it was in honor of my father (he would have turned 65 that day had he survived his coma which, sadly, he did not). During the first few days and weeks hardly anyone read the knol — the topic matter is so niche, obscure, not about baking cakes — but still I felt that it was important to explore the very serious and substantial issues of the Global Brain, what online consciousness is, what human consciousness is, how we can harness the Web for more constructive purposes and what we need to evolve about online tools, to enable us to reach an Enlightened/Conscious Web.

So from those small beginnings and first steps this has happened:

* exposure to the amazing talents and knowhow of other writers from all over the world (most of them qualified medical and business professionals)

* recognition from Knol’s community of authors

* respectable viewing metrics

* a documentary in which I was interviewed about online consciousness

* a personal philosophical framework which informs what I’m doing with the 360-2020 system

A certain CEO from a Semantic Web play once wrote that my writings had “NO effect on viewer metrics” and that no one even read what I wrote because I was “crazy” and a “spammer”. Quite apart from that being libelous, defamatory and a total untruth — since I have the screenshots to prove my postings on that SemWeb platform garnered good view counts — Google Knol now proves him completely wrong (again).

Now, should we rely on Google’s algorithms which are an industry-standard, out there and publicly available for everyone to see or should we rely on the intentionally hurtful words of a CEO who decided to hide his own platform’s view counts from even inside the community and who is known to spin user metrics out of proportion?

Hmmn……….

That was not a pleasant experience but certainly one I learnt from. When someone who claimed to be your friend, does a shocking volte face, spreads falsehoods and tries to smear your reputation, STAND UP FOR YOURSELF AND LET YOUR WORK & THE QUALITY OF IT DO THE TALKING. Even if those who would spread falsehoods outnumber you in quantity and even if they may seem to have the power+influence to silence you (by deleting your content or excluding you)…….YOUR QUALITY & CHARACTER WILL CUT THROUGH THEIR CRAP, somewhere, somehow, sometime.

Quality hands of aces, kings and queens trump s*** decks in the long-run, and all smart players know this.

My position now — particularly following the global financial crisis — is that the ignorant, incompetent, disrespectful and unconstructive CEOs and leaders should step aside and let the quality ones come to the fore to get business, value and societal creation models to operate more effectively (or they risk getting steamrollered by the rise of the QUALITY BRIGADE anyway).