@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Once this blog post has been read it will become clear how seriously I’ve thought about the implications of 360-2020 for the Web and evolving global business models as well as how the code actually works.

This is a pivotal week and here are a handful of reasons why:

(1.) Yesterday I had several serendipitous “Eureka! Badda-Bing!” moments about what I call the “Probability Paradox of Non-Qualifiable Value” (more later).

(2.) Today TEDTalks released the video above by Tim Berners-Lee on what has happened since he made his call for Open Data last year. It’s an absolute must-watch for its inspiration.

(3.) Today is also International Women’s Day and next year will be its centennial anniversary (and I’m asking myself what contributions women are making not only to society, like when Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first-ever female recipient of the Best Director Oscar, but also to the Web — specifically in coding it, contextualizing it, providing perspectives and content to it, and founding the companies that could become a Google / Facebook / Twitter).

(4.) It is the 3rd anniversary of my father’s passing (and I’m taking stock of the progress made since I wrote that Google knol, http://knol.google.com/k/the-global-brain-the-semantic-web-the-singularity-and-360-2020-consciousness-to, which was inspired by some insights into consciousness when my father lost his).

(5.) Some of the next stages of 360-2020 financing will move forward.

360-2020 AS A SMART GENE AND MISSING CODE OF THE WEB’S DNA

Everybody and their cat has wanted to either build a social / collaboration network like Facebook, a real-time newsfeed like Twitter or to develop an iPhone application during the last few years — everyone except me. This is because I created and ran something called “e-Intelligence” inside a big bank. To all intents and purposes that was an internal social network with publishing, content sharing and real-time instant messaging capabilities. All of the Global Heads of business were on that social network as were the most junior of analysts and support staff.

Ergo, in Web 2.0 instead of social networks of and in themselves I’ve been much more interested in semantic, haptic, visualization and sentiment analysis technologies.

My conclusion from delving into these was this: “There’s a key sequence missing in the DNA of the Web, even with all this open data, natural language, AI and semantic structuring. A piece of code that is as vital to the Web’s intelligence as proteins are to amino acids to the proper functioning of neurotransmitters.”

Quite a thought, hmmn?

So what to do with this insight? Well, firstly conduct a SWOT analysis, identify / synergize potential solutions, architect and code that missing sequence, brand it 360-2020 and develop a business plan around it all.

THE PROBABILITY PARADOX OF NON-QUALIFIABLE DATA

Now let’s connect this missing piece of 360-2020 DNA to computational mathematics, quantum physics, macroeconomics and the way search engines, recommendation systems, sentiment analysis and risk management solutions in banks work.

Yesterday I was walking past a metro station when I saw a stack of free newspapers, so I picked up a copy. It was a supplement to the Observer on Sunday. I thought, “Wow, that’s odd!” since it was the first time I’ve ever seen any Sunday supplement being distributed for free. Now I have an admission to make: I’ve read the Observer on Sunday less than a handful of times to-date. I don’t buy it. I don’t surf the online version either.

Anyway, flicking through I happened on the ‘My Bright Idea’ column with Professor Vlatko Vedral, a quantum physicist at Oxford and in Singapore:

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/07/vlatko-vedral-interview-aleks-krotoski

Here’s another admission: this was the first time I became aware of this column.

The print version I read originally shows Professor Vedral with an equation written on his hand:

I = log (1/p)

This intrigued me. There was no definition provided about what “I” and “p” represent but I soon reasoned that “I must be “\information” and “p is particle” from what he said in the text. It helps to be a maths graduate sometimes, :*).

Now if we assume that p is essentially the number of particles where p ≠ 1, then (as an example) in a network like the Web where there is 1 particle or computer node, we get:

I = log (1/1) = 0

If p=2, then I = -0.301029996

If p=3, then I = -0.477121255

If p=1,000,000, then I = -6

So what does this mean?

Well, if we assume Professor Vedral’s equation is valid, then the more number of particles there are the quantitative value of the Information decreases. In other words, as it relates to the computing nodes of the Web, the more the number of nodes, the lesser the value of the information.

Hmmmn……..is this not contrary to the network effect theory as well as the fact that more nodes means a multiplication of information rather than a reduction? Well, it could be argued that we’ve seen a proliferation of computer nodes (whether as servers, as PCs, as mobile devices like the iPhone, as social networks, as search engines) and the value of all the information churning out from these sources has exponentially decreased simply because………THERE’S TOO MUCH OF IT AND NO WAY TO CONTEXTUALIZE IT!

Next let’s tie this in with what I’m calling the “Probability Paradox of Non-Qualifiable Value” or “Does 95% probability of an event happening or a piece of information being related to another piece of information tell us anything about whether the information is spot-on, reliable or relevant?” For those unfamiliar with mathematics that equation, I = log (1/p), can be related to the Poisson distribution theory and an explanation can be studied here:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoissonDistribution.html

Interestingly, the journalist asked an important question: “How can you explain the emergence of free will, of faith, of any subjective construct if information defined in your theory is binary, a yes or a no?”

Professor Vedral makes an important concession that, “I just don’t think anyone yet knows how to approach it.”

“So what?” readers may all ask. “What does quantum physics have to do with the Web?”

My answer is this: Voilà, the Probability Paradox of Non-Qualifiable Value. Therein lies the reason the search engines and sentiment engines, whilst they can index a lot of information, have no way of contextualizing any of it beyond absolute determinants (+1, 0, -1, noun tags, the probability of that tag being associated with that tag to make recommendations based on percentage of overlap).

Therein is also the reason the search engines accumulate more and more data points from our emails, our tweets, our social network threads etc. via scraping or extraction cookies because the fact about systems based on Bayes and probability sets is that the larger the data set the greater the confidence that the spread of the information variability is low, i.e. more accurate and relevant.

However, as is being shown time and time again………search engines are flawed and don’t surface 100% PRECISELY we’re really looking for, only a probability that this is what it calculates what it infers we’re looking for.

Even with the current approach to semantic structuring in the Semantic Web Stack this is the case.

Yes, it’s great there is deterministic and probabilistic mathematics — a marriage between Newtonian mechanics and Pascalian randomness (Blaise Pascal, btw) — but……..WHERE IS THE CRICK-WATSON GENETICISM (and more)???!!! WHERE IS SOMETHING LIKE THE 360-2020 DNA SEQUENCE???!!!

It’s no wonder search engines (including semantic ones), sentiment engines and information they extract is non-optimal. It’s no wonder they can’t capture ambiguity or subjectivity when the probabilistic algorithms behind them are reliant on -1 / 0 / +1 quantities.

Anyway, Professor Vedral’s supposition in the article — whilst interesting and there’s no doubting his qualifications — is open to question, in order to derive some answers instead of some more questions. He argues that information is a necessary precursor to particles, which are a priori to atoms. I use the term “precursor” deliberately because then the information would be iterated and be put into a recursive loop until it somehow transformed into a particle.

Yet Newton’s first law of motion (also known as “law of inertia”) states: “Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.”
 Ergo if Newton holds true, then that information quantity postulated by Professor Vedral would simply traverse in a loop or stay stationary and NOT transform into a particle unless……….it’s impacted by other information.

Likewise, on the Web, information (of and in itself) is a quantity with no velocity or value until some force brings another piece of information to the party. A-HA! But………………….how can that information be QUALIFIED to determine whether a particle can be made with it???!!!

When a search engine, recommendation engine or sentiment engine surfaces a quantitative list of links that are PROBABILITY INDEXED, where are the tools to qualify that information to determine whether a particle can be made from it?

The answer is this: They don’t exist yet because the computational mathematics doesn’t yet exist. The computational mathematics doesn’t yet exist because few have had the imagination to source — even invent —- alternatives to Bayes, natural language and chaos theory to the problem of ambiguity and non-probabilistic inheritance capture.

I’m already on that journey, though, if it helps.
 That’s what the 360-2020 DNA is aiming towards.

Professor Vedral also says, “When you strip out all the unnecessary baggage, at the core is the concept of probability………Once you have a probability that something might happen, then you can define information. And it’s the same information in physics, in thermodynamics, in economics.”

Actually, it’s not the same “information” in economics at all. Information in economics is derived from subjectivity. The quantitative information may be all there: price, location where it’s being sold, comparative saving relative to a competitor, volume of units sold, time period on which item is on sale. However, it’s the QUALITATIVE information that drives all that quantitative information. Just as in Newton the quantitative information, of and in itself, is not a particle (a whole) until it’s acted upon by the qualitative information. The qualitative information includes subjective inputs like our emotional state, our price consciousness, our concepts of loyalty, our susceptibility to advertising, etc.

So………if the search engines, recommendation systems and sentiment engines like Twitter’s continue along their quantitative loops………………….The quantitative value of the information online will only decrease exponentially as will the economic benefits derived by us!

This exponential decrease would completely undo the Singularity theory whereby the conflagration of information increase and processing power increase (derived from nanofication of circuit board surface relative to processing capacity and the contingent Moore’s Law) SHOULD lead to conscious machines that can then map and slingshot information around to solve major mathematical problems like, “How much renewable energy do we need to produce to enable us to colonize Mars and how much will it cost us? Is it worth it?”

Worth takes me onto the second point of “Eureka / Badda-Bing!”…………..

DIGITAL MAOISM: JARON LANIER

Now, since I read that article on Professor Vedral in print version whilst I was on my weekend out+about, once I was online I decided to search for it. I input the search terms “my bright idea Aleks Krotoski numbers” and this link came up top of the page:

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/21/my-bright-idea-jaron-lanier

Again, I thought, “Wow, that’s odd!” since the title of the Vedral article in print version was something like ‘Think about the numbers,’ whereas the word “numbers” only appears in the last paragraph of the Lanier article online.

Anyway, I read through it for the first time.

In it he explains what he means by “digital Maoism,” whereby user content generation is done for no compensation and he publicizes his book, You are not a gadget! This made me LOL because I’ve been arguing the case against Chris Anderson’s “theory of free” — in particular any school of thought on the Web economy which is detrimental for the contributors (prosumers / produsers / whichever term people like to use)………………I believe that online contributors of content should be rewarded for that contribution.

All before I read about Jaron Lanier!!!

Yet another admission: I have heard and/or read of Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly who are mentioned in that ‘My Bright Idea’ piece, but never Jaron Lanier.

It’s doubly funny because that “universal micro-payment system” is precisely what is being included in the 360-2020 model. Importantly, as a solution it tackles the question of information on the Web not merely as quantitative “Yes/No” type probabilistic objects, but as qualitative captors for ambiguity and subjectivity.

Even though I’m a maths graduate, I know that maths provides a language to solve QUANTITATIVE scenarios but not necessarily QUALITATIVE ones. That’s why I re-mapped my imagination, applied the cultural influences of my intelligence and synergized a handful of tools from somewhere other than mathematics.

When mathematicians / theoretical physicists / economists argue that mathematics is the natural language that unlocks the answers and the be-all-end-all to the Universe, my reply is this, 
“SO HOW CAN MATHEMATICS VALUE LOVE? Do you go around telling your parents, “The probability that I love you is 88%? 12% of me doesn’t love you because you grounded me when I was a teenager about once every month — or with an annual probability of just over 8%….”

LOL, of course we don’t!!! We are………….people not robots or calculators or as Charles Babbage, the inventor of the computer, would call us “difference machines”!!!

LOOPING IT BACK TO INFORMATION & ECONOMICS

Next I want to inject my information and loop it back into Professor Vedral’s piece of information and impact that (to potentially create a particle). The journalist also wrote, 
“The 39-year-old, originally from Belgrade, passionately believes units of information – not particles – are the building blocks of humanity and everything that surrounds us.

Information, he maintains, is what came before everything else. It is akin to God.

:

I do believe one day that we will be able to explain complicated phenomena such as love, for example. I just don’t think anyone yet knows how to approach it. But quantum mechanics does bring all kinds of shades of grey between the binary digits.”

A few comments on this:

(1.) It’s not the shades of gray we need. It’s full color — that’s inbuilt into 360-2020 too.

(2.) Information cannot precede everything else since without consciousness, serendipity, imagination and culture (specifically language), we wouldn’t be able to do this:

a. be aware of “information’s” potential existence;

b. be in the right place, right time, right (curious) emotional state to discover it;

c. accept the possibility of its existence; and

d. know to label it as “information”.

(3.) Information cannot be the building block of humanity. Information has no ability to emote, evoke or empathize. Humanity includes all three and more.

Now I chose the word “potential” instead of “possible” existence for a specific reason. Earlier, Professor Vardal said, “the key concept behind information is probability.” Well, here’s the thing: “probability” relates to a quantitative tool with no capture of the qualitative. Meanwhile “potential” relates to a tool that can measure quantitative and qualitative values.

Ergo, the way to capture complicated phenomena like love or what people mean and feel on the Web — or the consciousness with which they relate to a piece of information and then decide to collaborate to either create a particle (a whole) or to spend time / money / intelligence / effort is…………………..

CONTINGENT ON POTENTIAL AND NOT PROBABILITY ALONE!

Moreover, as Lanier would (probably) agree with me: POTENTIAL IS PAYABLE since……so is electricity and this is how, economically, I can incorporate micro-payments into the 360-2020 business model and make the business case for it! There, that’s something for all coders and contributors to the Web to carefully contemplate.

LOL.

LESS IMPERFECT INFORMATION => MORE MARKET EFFICIENCY

Professor Vedral also proposed that, “When you strip out all the unnecessary baggage, at the core is the concept of probability………Once you have a probability that something might happen, then you can define information. And it’s the same information in physics, in thermodynamics, in economics.”

There are intrinsic risks in this position.

I’ve already explained that the absolute belief in and application of probability is the root of the flaws in search engines, recommendation systems, sentiment engines etc. Now let me provide this fact: the risk management systems in the banks are predominantly based on probability mathematics. These have obviously contributed to the global financial crisis.

It’s not simply about bankers’ greed or the market and regulatory reforms, it’s actually about bankers trading products based on poor quality information and governments architecting reforms based on sub-standard information.

It’s about people designing risk management models based on poor quality information. Sure, they have quantities of it to calculate probabilities of mortgage default but whilst it’s possible to input economic figures into a system, it’s almost impossible to quantify what the fear of default or bank collapse feels like (and “fear” is a subjective factor which is a potential qualifier).

Also, if information is treated as being all the same then the numbers generated as outcome products are probability QUANTITIES and NOT QUALIFIERS. In other words, 99% of something happening or a score of 90/100 still provides us with no qualitative information on WHY that information is valid or where it is applicable.

This is an important distinction which seems to have been lost. A probability is a quantity not a quality. Strategic decisions based purely on quantitative information in the absence of qualifiers (contextual, non-numeric resources) ===> global financial crisis.

Information which is precise and appropriate in thermodynamics and physics is not at all the same or equivalent to the information in economics. We can transform:

=> Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal”

=> 

George Orwell’s addendum: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others,”

=> Twain: “NOT ALL INFORMATION IS EQUAL AND SOME INFORMATION HAS SUBJECTIVE QUALITIES BUT (AS YET) NON-QUANTIFIABLE VALUE.”

I write “(as yet)” even though I have figured out a methodology to potentially synch what were two separate mathematical paradigms.

GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS & WHY SEARCH NEEDS TO BE SMARTER

According to this tweet from OECD Insights in January 2010, global governments have committed US$11.4 TRILLION (and counting) in the form of bank bailouts, fiscal measures like quantitative easing and more :

• http://twitter.com/OECD/status/7943404301

Meanwhile, Business Insider quotes US$23.7 TRILLION:

• http://www.businessinsider.com/total-bailout–237-trillion-2009-7

Now here’s a curiosity for us all.

Both Twitter and Business Insider are gaining reputations for being at the cutting-edge of technology and real-time dissemination of information not previously available; providing us with insights from within non-democratic countries and explaining how technology companies make their money, respectively.

Yet this is also a clear example of the Web and search’s current limitations.

Even though I’m reasonably adept at searching I would challenge everyone to try and qualify that tweet and that BI link by finding the original source materials that provide those figures. The fact is they’re difficult – if not impossible – to find. So what exactly is happening with search engines and our ability to crosscheck information before it becomes accepted as fact in the era of the Web?

Also, let’s ask ourselves this, “Where are the balances and checks so that a tweet is subject to the same standards of journalism and editorialism as established media? Standards which mean that inaccurate or misrepresentative reporting may lead to legal action?”

Next let’s multiply out from that small example of a tweet that can’t be crosschecked with all the inaccurate, unverifiable, incomplete, poorly logged, poorly tagged, absolute nonsense or unconnected information out there — online, within banking systems, within search engines……..

It’s easy to then see that we live in a world of imperfect and incomplete information that is not only being spread via printed books but now propagated a million-fold via the Web. This is all before we even get to whether that information is contextual and coherent, btw.

Why does this matter?

ADAM SMITH & THE WEB

Well, one of Adam Smith’s key assumptions in his General Theory of Equilibrium is that there is “complete information”. This is why it’s so funny (bewildering even) for the monetarists to argue that Adam Smith provides the answer to dealing with the financial crisis. In other words, we redress the balance of the debts owed by the banks by printing more money.

Here’s the thing: if the Bank of England / the FED etc. have INCOMPLETE INFORMATION then monetarist policy does not result in equilibrium because the basic assumptions are all awry!

Ok, so that’s the first insight from the global crisis and people much cleverer than me like John Nash (who won a Nobel Prize in economics for it) have mathematically proven that Adam Smith’s assumptions of perfect and complete information are wrong, and that asymmetric information is the actuality (asymmetric meaning imperfect, btw).

The next insight then is about the Web. I’ve noted before that none of the world’s great economists (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, JM Keynes, Mundell-Fleming, John Nash himself) were born or lived during the era of the Web. This means that applying their tools to what is a crisis facilitated and accelerated by Web technology is frankly MYOPIC on the part of the governments, central banks etc.

What’s even more surprising is that they all gathered at Davos and the G20 meetings and not a single panel addressed examining how the Web and technology need to be improved to prevent a re-occurrence of the Credit Crunch.

The Web contributed in three ways:

(1.) Viral spread of incomplete (and sometimes inaccurate) information about mortgage products over banking systems beyond borders.

(2.) Real-time straight through processing, which means huge volumes of money are transferred in nanoseconds of a click.

(3.) It facilitated borderless transactions so toxic assets which were the problem of one bank in one country were moved and deposited to another bank in another country.

THE FUTURE OF US, THE INFORMATION AND THE WEB

At the moment there seems to be different battles between different interested parties on how the Web should work (privacy, the Cloud, pay-to-play-walls, etc.). Personally, I believe that it really should not be a situation of “them against us”:

• government control versus freedom of people

• oldies, Luddites and killjoys versus the tech-savvy, young and curious

• Google and other tech oligopolies versus the SME and entrepreneurial

• the book educated versus the online learners

• the capitalists against the communists against the fascists against the technologists

It should be about US AGAINST IMPERFECT, INCOMPLETE AND UNRELIABLE INFORMATION. Us against ignorance and myopia, if you will.

It’s not the systems we need to over concern ourselves with (those we can change — whether via a democratic vote / boycott of that company / etc), it’s the information content and the QUALITY and CONTEXT of it online that we need to tackle.

It is up to us to move the Web towards better quality information, to be the balances and checks of that information responsibly and collectively, and to apply that information collaboratively in ways which make us all more intelligent and capable and contribute to solving problems.

There are serious common challenges: global poverty, eradication of diseases, educational equivalence for more not less people, climate evolution, etc.
However, we cannot solve these challenges if imperfect information exists and persists.

Imperfect information leads to imperfect buying, trading and loss of competitiveness resulting in imperfect markets and cycles of economic disasters. Economic disasters mean that we end up not having the budgets to take care of our loved ones, wider communities or the planet.

As an adult and as a woman, I want to be at the forefront of developing and coding those tools that enable better quality of information, reduce spam/marketing nonsense and that put the controls of and rewards from that information back into our hands. I happen to like advertising because it can encourage creative genius, commonality and aspirations. These are all positives for human development.

However, search engines are propagating the imperfect information in the way they rank the importance and relevance of that information, so much so that Google is now subject to legal action in the EU

• http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/three-antitrust-complaints-lodged-against-google-in-europe

• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/100226-144308

As it is, I like Google in the way I like every other search engine. I have no issues with the search companies. I do, though, have issues with the computational mathematics and some of the unimaginative and unilateral business models underpinning them.

There are alternatives and potentials for real innovation out there. Alternatives where there may even be reciprocity of rewards towards users. Admittedly, some of that computational mathematics doesn’t exist yet but it’s already imagined so……………just like Da Vinci didn’t live to see a helicopter being built, this doesn’t mean that smarter alternatives to existing search engines and their business models aren’t possible or that they can’t be built.

If I manage to get 360-2020 incubated successfully, then as of 2012………USERS and not only the companies are going to earn money for providing better quality information. That’s right: USERS ARE GOING TO BE REWARDED FOR MAKING THE WEB A HIGHER QUALITY SPACE. That should disrupt the Web and economic models in a good way and….

POSSIBLY PREVENT MY KIDS’ GENERATION FROM ANOTHER GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS ARISING FROM IMPERFECT, INCOMPLETE AND INCOHERENT INFORMATION.

“Do no evil?”

How about “Be champions of the good?”

WOMEN & THE WEB

Admittedly I’ve never identified with the Germaine Greer feminists of the world. However, it will definitely help when more women get involved in the hard coding of the LANGUAGE and structure of the Web because, otherwise, the Web will never become fully socialized, realized, contextualized or make sense. If Al Gore and others liken the Web to a “Global Brain” then think carefully about how our young brains became aware of language, context, communication, ambiguity, etc. and were shaped and socialized.

Yes……. WOMEN: our mothers, our teachers, our female friends — as much as by our fathers and other male role models. What’s interesting about the over-reliance on deterministic and probabilistic models is that it reflects the way men think, link and risk assess information. It’s not the way women approach information. Our is a much more organic, fluid and relational approach.

Somehow, we need to synergize the female X chromosomes with the male Y combinator ones and that genetic hybrid is what can make the Web’s information contextualized as well as coherent.

360-2020 will literally be that missing code sequence in the Web’s DNA that makes it and us smarter.

E=MC2 ===> E = C*I*S

Enlightenment = consciousness * information * synergy

where * is the matrix cross-product of supporting variables, so in the case of synergy this would include location, time, emotional state, context.

Yes, once 360-2020 is all finalized I’ll potentially write a paper on its journey of discovery and explain with some nice double integrals from mathematics cross-pollinated with cool tools from other contributing disciplines.

If 360-2020 is successful with cracking this problem this will contribute to:

* AI passing the Turing Test;

* Nash’s Equilibrium being dimensionalized with emotion constituents;

* proving how culture and intelligence are transmitted in DNA and how this applies in inheritance within programming code; and more….

Maybe even enough to earn a Nobel Prize in Economics for Science for a team or two…………

Certainly it’s a commercial idea like no other out there, it’s realizable and I know how.