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.

I wrote this before I left for Xmas vacation and set the publish button for 01 January 2010, but it didn’t activate so here’s the post (published manually — Wordpress glitch and now I understand why none of my friends were aware I was on my travels and offline!).

*********************************

*********************************

Where it begins and how it ends,

I seek no answers for,

Mid-flight whilst another dawn breaks,

Is the only state of now I can sense—

All else being ambient expanse,

A vacuum,

No echoes,

Soul secrets not to be heard nor spoken of.

Who sits and steps beside me,

A mystery, an odyssey, an ocean of life,

I don’t dive—

In case I drown or disturb that reverie,

A silent moment of still,

Life only in my breath.

No memories of pasts forgotten with fleeting blinks,

Smiles painted on mask-like faces sauntering along — anon,

Places that spark some profound residual belonging,

Tribal,

Homecoming,

The limbs and gasps and scintillations of love,

Asleep I dream only of reality,

Once more mid-flight towards a future in flux.

REALITIES AND RESOLUTIONS

As 2010 starts, I’m in one of my favorite countries (Italy) and my resolutions for this decade are S-I-M-P-L-E:

* Smart Innovation, Meaningful Perseverance, LOL Evolution

Hope you all have a wonderful 2010!

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, :*).

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!

This morning I decided to update my blog design to a newspaper format created by Christian Gnoth and available under GPL with Wordpress. Naturally, I went into the CSS stylesheet and customized the fonts, colors and margins for personal choice.

I hope you all like the new design!

YouTube is refusing to play ball with the “TWAIN IT!” video, so it may not be posted today, :*(.

This week opens with the terrible news from China that steelworkers at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Group factories killed one of their managers in protest against a planned merger with Jianlong Heavy Machinery Group. Merger talks have now been terminated.

* http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/27/content_11779033.htm

In recent months because of the global financial crisis major US and European banks have had to merge with each other and consolidate their balance sheets, resulting in hundreds of thousands of redundancies. Yet none of those employees have ever thought of physically beating the senior management or forcing them to stop the takeovers or value destruction which has taken place to people’s employment prospects, savings+pensions plans or homes.

Likewise in industrial actions at the Lindsay oil refinery, owned by Total SA, and the current postal office workers strike protest is conducted within the framework of employment laws.

Still, the events at Tonghua does spark the question, “What sort of “people power” punishment would Chinese investors mete out if Industrial and Commercial Bank of China / China Construction Bank / Bank of China said their shares had dropped up to 90 percent in value, the bank had asked for US$ billions in government bailout and they were continuing to pay senior management US$ millions bonuses?”

Although tragic, the Tonghua workers’ actions do provide a contrast and an insight into the different approaches in company-employee relations between East and West.

Onto much happier news……………….people who inspire us and advance Humankind………………

(1.) Apple Tablet designers

According to China Times, an Apple tablet (10″ screen) is scheduled to be launched in time for Christmas 2009. If readers click on the picture below, they’ll be directed to the article written in Chinese as hosted on Yahoo!

For non-Chinese readers, please read about it on the FT site here:

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a52c9ec0-7a29-11de-b86f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

The China Times article estimates the pricing with be between US$500 — US$800 whilst the FT cites an Oppenheimer Bank analyst’s estimate of US$600 — US$1,000.

I’ve been anticipating this ever since Axiotron Inc. released their Modbook, the first tablet to operate on the Mac OS, in Jan 2007. I even used the original Modbook design as a frame for one of my dynamic Flash files!

Instead of a Kindle DX, I’d like the Apple Tablet for Xmas, please!

(2.) Tom Daley

On 21 July 2009, 15 year-old Tom Daley won the 10m diving competition at the World Championships in Rome and became the first-ever British diving world champion. This is a brilliant achievement for a young man who’s obviously passionate and dedicated to the sport, and who’s had to overcome obstacles to achieve his dreams.

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/diving/5889170/Tom-Daley-reflects-on-crazy-World-Championship-diving-success.html

* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article6722656.ece

Here’s hoping he’s selected for the 2012 Olympics and wins gold there too!

Here’s my first-ever attempt to make vegetarian Chinese spring rolls. What’s the occasion for a first? A month-long celebration of my mother’s 60^th, so last w/e I thought it would be good to show her she’s managed to pass on some of her spring rolls heritage.

Admittedly I’m no novice in this Chinese classic, but it is the first time I’ve ever made it end-to-end: bought all the ingredients, assembled it, flavored it, fried it and passed the discerning palate of my younger brother who’s particularly particular about spring rolls.

Growing up, I did watch my mother make thousands of them. Her spring rolls are — without any familial bias — the best tasting in the world. They’re packed with the most perfectly cooked ingredients and flavors that take the palette through a memorable journey of saltiness, sweetness and spicyness.

It’s always a highlight of our year: spring rolls day.

I can only hope that one day, with a LOT of practice (1000 hours as Malcolm Gladwell recommends to master any skill), my kids will feel the same sense of anticipation and joy with my spring rolls. Yes, they will spend most Sundays in the kitchen practicing the art of cooking; it’s a skill that should be handed through the generations. The discipline of it can also help a person become highly organized and get a sense of how different discrete elements can be combined to make a whole — much like how a balance sheet gets put together or Javascript, PHP and AS3 can fit within a single xhtml cake bake.

My childhood duty was always to top, tail and wash the beansprouts, make the omlettes and also to separate each raw spring roll sheet from each other. The rest (the magic, the fusion of filling with casing) was all in my mother’s deft hands and secret family flavoring.

So here’s what happened when I attempted my version of it — minus the meat because I’m still on my 31-day vegetarian trial.

The verdict of its success or otherwise is best explained by this: my younger brother was even prepared to pay me for each one and yet, beforehand, my mother had insisted he wouldn’t eat any of them since they were vegetarian!

Now………….if the brainwork doesn’t pan out, I suppose I could just make spring rolls all day and sell them at GBP3.50 per roll — LOL!

Enjoy.

(1.) Prepare your fresh vegetables and wash them. When I say “aubergine” in the video that’s aka EGGPLANT.

(2.) Lightly stir-fry the vegetables in a wok with 1 tablespoon of groundnut oil and your choice of flavoring, on a high heat. Ground in some pepper to taste. Once the vegetables are done (still al dente and crunchy), turn the heat off.

(3.) In a large frying pan make 2 omelettes with 3 beaten eggs. Set aside some of the beaten egg for later — please see instruction 7.

(4.) Slice the omelette length-wise and mix into the stir-fried vegetables. This is the filling for the spring rolls.

(5.) Carefully separate each spring roll pastry sheet from the others and set aside on a flat surface.

(6.) Scoop 2 tablespoons worth of the filling onto a spring roll sheet. Fold in one corner, over the filling and roll it away from you until there is about 3cm of sheet still unrolled.

Fold the left corner of the sheet towards the middle of the spring roll.

[Take care not to puncture the spring roll sheet or the filling will ooze out and the oil may spittle on contact with the moisture from the vegetables.]

(7.) Using some beaten egg, seal the folded left side down. Repeat with the right side flap. Finally, the remaining 3cm still unrolled at the top — like an envelope flap.

(8.) This is how a completely rolled up spring roll looks:

(9.) Oil a thick frying pan and place the spring rolls inside. Put the heat on at a low-medium.

[The amount of oil you use is purely a personal choice. It's possible to deep and shallow fry the spring rolls. However, too much oil = too greasy inside + too unhealthy.]

(10.) Turn the spring rolls over frequently until they’re a golden brown on both sides.

(11.) Once the outside no longer shows any white patches of uncooked pastry, turn the heat off and let the spring rolls sit in the latent heat for about 60 seconds.

Then remove from the frying pan and serve. Garnish with some fresh coriander and offer a small bowl of sweet chili sauce as an accompaniment.

Although this version is vegetarian it is possible to include cooked prawns, crabmeat, scallops, chicken and pork in the spring roll. Chinese people also add and experiment with filling ingredients such as: wood ear fungus, glass noodles, shitake mushrooms, chestnuts, sliced savoy cabbage, seaweed and parsnips.

This isn’t a clone of my mother’s version at all. I simply wanted to show her I could make my own distinctive and flavorsome one that would get the family’s seals of approval! It was very very yummy……………..

*Contented sighs*. Next time I’m making a version with spicy Sichuan duck inside.

For today’s lunch we’re eating:

* smokey grilled aubergine (aka eggplant) and sticky braised eggplant with radish — I’m making this

* roast duck

* steamed fish

* grilled 5-spice chicken wings

* two types of tofu — one sautéed in hoisin sauce, the other stir-fried with chopped plum tomatoes

* coleslaw with sesame seeds and garlic rice vinegar

Photos and videos later.

Although I take my mother out for celebratory birthday meals in great restaurants — typically French or Italian — there’s nothing she prefers to do than to have her children around for some home-cooking. Anyone who’s ever watched the brilliant film, Eat Drink Man Woman, by Ang Lee (the director responsible for Crouching Tiger, Sense+Sensibility and The Hulk) will know that Chinese families are bound together by their shared love of food and of home cooking.

An update from ComCon 2009, San Diego says that on 21 August there will be a free screening of 15-minutes of James Cameron’s latest film, Avatar. I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE HOW FAR THEY’VE MOVED CGI forward after Steve Jobs led the way with it in animation techniques at Pixar Studios and Dreamworks re-imagined it for their productions (and the likes of Beowulf). The full version of Avatar will be in the movie theaters on 18 December.

Here are some YouTube tasters of Avatar for those not aware of it:

Also, in case readers aren’t into comic books, ComCon = comics convention.

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_search_results.php

This post shows how different sectors are all thinking about the brain, semantics and how to develop appropriate applications to increase machine intelligence. It also identifies the missing emotion dimension and how female considerations and contributions are needed in application development. Plus we get a glimpse of virtual collaboration and social interaction from MS’s vision for 2019.

According to Hedge Fund Research, AUM (assets under management) increased by more than US$142.5bn over Q2 2009, on the back of some of the best performance since the late 1990s. Whilst following up on this positive news for the alternative assets sector and rooting around the Web for some analysis to structure the fund-of-fund we’re proposing as part of Project ART, I happened across this interview with Richard Peterson, co-manager of the MarketPsy Long-Short Fund:

* http://hedgeweek.com/interviews/detail.jsp?content_id=339372

It was these paragraphs which stood out (source: Hedgeweek):

You can’t help it, but your brain (and everyone else’s) is wired to sabotage your investing. I discovered this through my own experiences in the mid-1990s. As the senior project in my electrical engineering coursework, I chose to develop quantitative neural network-based stock index forecasting software. I found the software to be somewhat predictive of the markets, so I decided to trade the software’s forecasts with a small managed account.

Something unexpected happened. Days when I was most reluctant to take a trade signal were the times that the most profitable trades were made. I measured this effect over three years, and then extended it to my read on ‘the mood of the market’. The pattern was consistent over the years - the market’s mood was inversely correlated with the future direction of prices. High media negativity was correlated with future price gains over the next week.

I realised that an enduring source of alpha lies between our ears. Understanding the workings of the brain, and in particular how investment decisions are made, unlocks a trove of novel investment strategies. And the clues to how and what investors think lies in the unconscious (their feelings) as well as in their conscious minds (what they say in conversation).

If there is alpha in understanding the mood of the market, how can we access the minds of thousands of investors to test this - and potentially profit?

GIVES US PAUSE FOR THOUGHT ON HOW THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS AROSE, HMMN? We may have the risk management systems in place but our emotions over-rides its logic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Right before I went rooting for hedge fund analysis I was watching Tom Gruber’s presentation on the Siri Virtual Assistant again. Of all the semantic applications and services I’ve trialled or kept up-to-date with from afar, this is the one that has most commercial potential, I think:

KEYNOTE: The Game Changer: Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

In Gruber’s presentation he refers to the virtual assistant conducting a CONVERSATION with the user, which would be part of the conscious mind by Peterson’s definitions. The unconscious component is about feelings. It made me wonder how quickly we can get to a virtual assistant that would understand this human instruction:

* I want to trade stock X on exchange Y at best daily price, but I’m concerned this may be too risky. Can you calculate what the likely outcome will be and how much I should trade if I go ahead?

I wonder whether something like Siri in the future will be able to gauge the emotional weights of the words “concerned” and “too”. Also whether it’ll be able to interpret inflexions in our voices that can turn directive statements into queries. Maybe they should trial it on some Australians and test what happens then — LOL. (Readers would understand if they knew the Oz accent.)

Directive statements are how men tend to communicate, btw. So since Siri is programmed to complete directive commands, it’s not surprising when Gruber points out, “It gets things done.” The challenge will be whether instead of a male directive like this, “When’s the next Mets game?” Siri can also understand this female conversation opener, “I feel kind of at a loose end. The kids are all at school now. I really want some funky shoes. Anywhere you can suggest? Nothing too pricey, though. I still have to get them their bikes for Christmas. That’s a few months away, but still………”

If Siri can decipher that chain of emotional reflection and identify a solution — for the shoes and not for the bike — then we’ll be closer to a genuine intelligent machine. After all, the barometer of true intelligence is whether the brain can learn and understand both male and female constructs.

What’s the Twain takeaway? Well, Gruber and the Siri team’s definition of what constitutes a “conversation” may not be what any woman would call a conversation! LOL.

All this considered, having an app like Siri that intends to apply voice-2-text semantics (specifically NLP and constraint satisfaction) and pull+filter multiple information APIs to find users local restaurants, sports events and make flight bookings or send the information to a contact is……. great. It would be really powerful if the virtual assistants of the future can also pick up on the emotions in our voices and determine whether we’re being rational / irrational / indifferent and the risk parameters we’re in whilst we’re trying to make key decisions.

Maybe there will be a time when intelligent machines can prevent excessive risk-taking as per my scenario with the trading instructions (and be more female and nurturing and less egotistical in the process). No offense intended to any male readers, but that’s what countless analysis points us towards: men are nihilistic — whether in war, in business or in relationships………….Hmmn……..

I’ve signed up to join the Siri beta. Meanwhile, back to figuring out the fund-of-fund’s structure.

OUR INTEGRATED FUTURE

Of course, I also recently saw a demo of MS Surface and the Integrated Communicator Office suite. That demo too had voice-2-text recognition and showcased a user accessing their emails via their mobile and being able to instruct a virtual assistant to notify others in the arranged meeting they were going to be late, then dictating another email to the virtual assistant to send before calling to find out where the nearest Starbucks was (answer: on every corner — LOL).

2009 may prove to be a landmark year for technology in terms of setting a new direction towards holistic (aka integrated) virtual and semantic intelligence in applications. Siri and more integrated iPhone apps as well as what Microsoft Labs are cooking up towards 2019:

WOW. XLNT!

LOCATION AWARENESS SERVICES

I should add that I had an idea for a location awareness service over 3 years ago and told a wi-fi entrepreneur. My idea was not to do with being able to upload photos from my mobile and the GPS then tagging it with longitude-latitude points, prior to posting and publication on a Google Maps / flickr / any other photo-sharing site.

My idea was where my mobile could detect when I was within 50 yards of a “to-do” and would send me a voice alert / buzz to remind me. So, for example, imagine that I have an item to mail at the weekend. I’m out and about in town and walk within 50 yards of a mail office. Then my mobile would alert me and up would pop a Google map to show me where it was, how to get there and opening hours.

Ditto reminders like these:

* pick up the dry-cleaning

* buy present for Mother’s Day from store X

* where I parked the car

The alerts would be triggered not by time, as SMS have been up to now. Instead they would cross location with time with the to-do (or as Gruber correctly calls it “intent”).

In the media space, the debate continues about whether, how and when the paid content model will take shape. The emerging consensus seems to be in 2010. The first link is Lionel Barber, editor of the FT’s, speech at a Media Standards Trust event on the need to rethink the content revenue model. It’s a MUST-READ article:

· http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43985

· http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/19/online-media-adfunding-newspapers-industry

· http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/07/08/paid-content-on-sun-valley-2009-agenda/

I was thinking about it all weekend (yes, whilst making spring rolls, gyming, trouble-shooting little Eva and watching Red Cliff).

Why?

Well, Lionel Barber noted the distinction between bloggers and trained journalists:

“On the other hand, most bloggers do not operate according to the same standards as those who aspire to and practise crafted journalism. They are often happy to report rumour as fact, arguing that readers or fellow networkers can step in to correct those “facts” if they turn out to be wrong. They are rarely engaged in the pursuit of original news: their bread and butter is opinion and comment. Their web-driven culture of immediacy means they are more often consumed by the need to be first than right. And there is a good reason for that. In the words of Michael Arrington, the influential tech blogger in California, “first is cheap, right is expensive.”

It made me think not only of blog sites where I’ve seen countless mistakes passing as facts because they don’t cross-verify sources and ensure integrity or independence of that source on a par with qualified journalists (who are also subject to tighter legal frameworks and the threats of lawsuits), it also made me think of the millions of comments on threads.

Here’s the thing. Whilst some of those thread comments are no more than random, disjointed rants or “trolling”, there are others where the commentator has provided due care and attention in their analysis and included important links to verifiable and reputable organizations and original source materials. For example, on threads involving government policies to deal with the global financial crisis they’ve linked to Whitehouse.gov, Bank of England, IMF, Bloomberg, FT, RGEmonitor (Nourbini’s site, btw), banks and other appropriate sources.

In this way, the commentator has actually contributed to increasing the perspective, context and analysis available to the reader beyond the site’s staff journalist. Yet the commentator is unpaid.

Now, if media sites move towards a subscription model will that mean that commentators will effectively be paying not only to read the site’s official content written by staff journalists but ALSO paying for the privilege to make their own comments?

Plus does it mean that if they decide not to subscribe to the site, they’ll be locked out from viewing comments that they previously made? Comments that they may want to refer to because when they originally posted it, they were treating the media site like a free, quasi-knowledge depository of associated content and links.

Another important consideration is this: WHAT INCENTIVE IS THERE FOR PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE COMMENTS / CONTENT TO A PAID SUBSCRIPTION SITE? Just as subscription means that they’re allowed access to N articles per month / quarter / year, will it also mean that a certain subscription means they are only allowed to make X comments per month / quarter / year?

This isn’t some random and disconnected element. My reasoning has a precedent and a logical basis in traditional media and it needs to be answered whether it will migrate to the paid online model.

Over the weekend in a PRINT supplement of a major UK newspaper I saw two separate adverts offering:

(1.) GBP 50 for any reader whose photo on their pets doing something unusual was published.

(2.) A family holiday for four for each of the 5 readers who submit winning 500-word accounts of this summer’s memorable holiday. Categories covered: adventure, beach, eco/green, family, UK.

So……….in the print model, content contributors were financially or money-in-kind incentivized……….

I’m also aware that women’s magazines will pay anywhere between GBP200-1,000 for women to share real-life stories such as: I met my husband on safari! My plastic surgery almost cost me an arm, a leg and my life! The doctors said I was barren and now I’ve had three sets of twins! How I beat cancer SIX times!

[No, not my style but still useful to know for paid content comparison.]

So whilst media sites consider their paid content models, they’ll also need to assess the situation from the content generator’s side. What’s THEIR motivation to provide comments and post original content if they have to pay for site access and are giving over the IP and copyright of their ideas, thoughts, comments, drawings, photos, etc.?

Of course, I’ve given this considered analysis over the years.

During Web 1.0, the dotcom where I worked was a joint venture with the FT and the M+A content we generated (I was responsible for 15-country coverage) was paid for by customers in the form of batch and bundled searches and seasonal subscriptions for designated numbers of account access holders.

Then when I co-managed the Strategic Investments portfolio in the bank, each one of the 50+ platforms charged differently for their services and content. Later, in the corporate finance boutique, the revenue model was a classic financial services one: introduction fee, retainer, transaction percentage, success fee and management fee (if an investment trust was involved). I also know exactly how film production models work and the breakdown of how each party earns which revenue stream generated (box office, DVD sales, syndication rights, on-flight entertainment sales, associated book sales, computer game sales, etc.)

More recently, with the disappointing user experience of the SemWeb play and its less than intelligent management team, I’ve been reminded about content value and the payment model not only chargeable to customers but also the one needed to PAY THEM FOR CONTENT, particularly content which contributes to making the site branded, distinctive and in possession of community values and an identity.

Content generators themselves need to pay attention because if the company decides to be less than intelligent, decimates their content or locks them out of their account………..Then it means the content has zero value and their time will have been wasted by the site.

All of this distilled knowhow is why in the business plan for Project ART it crosses elements of fremium with cumulative payment to content contributors.

Ahead of the curve?

No, just makes strategic sense and is a win-win. We like those.

************************************

GOOD BUSINESS VERSUS GOODWILL

An important lesson I learnt from the SemWebco experience is that it is NOT worth giving goodwill or time to tech start-ups out of some hope that your contributions will advance or catalyze someone else’s ideas and revolutionize the Web for the greater good. Particularly if the techco insists on repeating its mistakes — as I noted before, “less than intelligent management” — and treats its users with contempt like closing user feedback and decimating their content.

It makes a lot more business sense to own the IP+copyright and have free and complete access to your content, end-to-end.

It makes even more business sense to conceive and execute a revenue model where I’ll have personal sign-off about how payments to content contributors is structured and works.

We like this.