@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Today it occurred to me to coin a term that encapsulates how applying quantitative methods and approaches to code without also incorporating quality dimensions (which include emotions, tastes, perceptions, wit, values and beliefs) leads to deficient decision-making. I’m calling it “ALGORITHM AUTISM” (© Twain 刘秋艳, 16 May 2010).

Its definition is as follows:

Algorithm autism is a state of syntax and audiovisual deficiency in the input, process and output stages of code which don’t enable the machine to interpret or relate the socio-emotional elements of content, and thereby understand its context and make sense of it.

Given my previous definition of information as “a consciousness of quantity and quality that enables differentiation and contextualization over time”, the definition of INFORMATION AUTISM is as follows:

Information autism occurs when the constituents of information are purely quantitative, objective facts or data objects which don’t carry any associated subjective contextual qualifiers such as human emotions, tastes, perceptions, wit/humor, beliefs and values.

Examples of autistic information would be most of the equations in quantum theory and that underpin risk management models (===> implications for understanding why and how the global financial crisis happened). Examples of non-autistic information could be found in psychometric and EQSQ tests such as Myers-Brigg, Alpha Assessment for Leadership, Belbin, Saville-Holdsworth and Simon Baron-Cohen etc. Simon Baron-Cohen is the Cambridge professor cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen of ‘Bruno’ and ‘Borat’ movie fame.

Why did I choose this designation of autism?

Well, it’s well known in medical circles that autistic children are often highly intelligent (numerate savants and linguistic encyclopedia). However, they’re afflicted by an inability to read, interpret and understand the emotional states of others and nor do they have much concept of social relationships and their role in the dynamics. Their brains process mechanistic, metaphysical inputs (numbers, words) but don’t capture or process those socio-emotional codes that would make them understand the philosophical and psychological motivations underpinning another human being’s communications and interactions.

So………if we think about the neural networks of the World Wide Web and the codes which are streaming between its nodes…….It’s arguable that there’s algorithm autism. We have lots of functions that enable us to capture and interpret numbers and words (binary, probabilities, data objects). Yet none that enable us to capture and interpret socio-emotional context and thereby make sense of the whole of it. Therefore, the algorithm is itself autistic.

This has far-reaching consequences in global finance terms because it means the risk management models — which are built from increasingly complex and sophisticated mathematics (chaos, Black-Scholes etc.) — as well as economic models en masse are FAILING TO CAPTURE THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HUMAN QUALIFIERS which actually drive human engagement, intent and consumption of any piece of content, product, service, lifestyle etc. It’s been commented upon broadly in this MIT Technology Review article, even if no solutions have been proposed there.

Now, in the case of human autism there are methods to help those with the condition to deal with it. Plus there’s support for their loved ones to identify it, appreciate that it makes their autistic child special in different ways from other children and work with it. In the case of algorithm autism………..We need and are going to find methods in object-oriented programming (OOPs) in conjunction with whatever semantics technology has to offer (NLP, machine learning, AI, neural nets et al) to re-orient code pathways so that the machines do comprehend those socio-emotional elements of content that will enable it all to make sense and help us arrive at more informed decision-making.

And, no, the existing sentiment analysis algorithms do not tackle or resolve their own autism bias. They’re not able to interpret socio-emotional context with much degree of accuracy. For example, let’s take a look at Twitrratr and the search term “facebook” today and let me highlight some obvious examples of “algorithm autism”:

This last week has seen unprecedented criticism of Facebook’s privacy policy with Google trends showing that “how do I delete my facebook account” is increasing in popularity:

The Institute of Quantitative Studies at Harvard University has also pointed out how the number of words in Facebook’s privacy policy has grown over the last 5 years, from 1004 to 5830 (which makes it even longer than the Constitution).

So……..existing empirical and anecdotal evidence — Google trends and numerous examples of users threatening to leave Facebook en mass or griping about it all across the socmedia space — indicates to us that the sentiment towards Facebook is negative. Yet Twitrratr shows only 3.89% of comments as negative, 10.03% as positive and 86.08% as neutral. Superficially, this may look acceptable but when we manually sanity-check some of those comments, it becomes clear that Twitrratr’s sentiment extractions are……..AUTISTIC. They can’t read or interpret the socio-emotional context to any degree of reliable accuracy. Here are some specific examples from about 50 comments:

(1.) lied! i didn’t have lunch…i just worked. now i’m having lunch and playing a little on facebook. still listening to cool vibes — This has been bucketed into “positive” when in fact the word “cool” is in reference to the music this commenter is listening to and not specifically to facebook itself.

(2.) methinks i want to take some modeling pics. any burgeoning/talented photogs need willing subjects? xxxxxx@gmail.com, facebook or dm me — This has been bucketed into “positive” when in fact it belongs to “neutral” because it doesn’t make any sentiment about whether the commentator likes or dislikes Facebook itself.

(3.) glad to see most of the online retail partners I work with have a presence on Facebook — This has been bucketed into “neutral” when it’s clearly a positive statement.

(4.) found living kidney donor through Facebook – another perk of social media — This has been bucketed into “neutral” when it’s clearly a positive statement.

(5.) is posting 1 obama supporting link for every anti obama post he sees on his facebook gotta keep it fare — This has been bucketed into “positive” when in fact it belongs to “neutral” because it doesn’t make any sentiment about whether the commentator likes or dislikes Facebook itself. Actually, the brand in question is President Obama rather than Facebook!

(6.) having fun the toolbar from www.cooliris.com. wicked for my iphone, facebook, and surfing……and i’m not getting paid to pimp — This has been bucketed into “negative” because the sentiment engine interpreted the word “wicked” as a negative term when it’s clearly a positive statement — albeit not for Facebook specifically but for cooliris. So Twitrratr’s natural language processing is being doubly autistic.

(7.) eathing lunch and sending out birthday greetings on facebook while reading the comics in today’s paper. adhd or wickedmulti-tasking? — This has been bucketed into “negative” because the sentiment engine interpreted the word “wicked” as a negative term when it’s clearly a positive statement — albeit not for Facebook specifically but for the commentator’s own ability to multi-task. So Twitrratr is being doubly autistic in this instance too.

Some people might argue that 10-20 percent of inaccuracy in 50 comments is not a big deal. However, there is something called compounded inaccuracy which — like compound interest rates — can accumulate to quite a sizable influence. The main issue, though, is how this socio-emotional deficiency of context then propagates and permeates throughout the rest of social media which……CONTRIBUTES TO MORE NOISE RATHER THAN TOWARDS SENSE.

Ergo, autistic algorithms are making the Web less intelligent.

How I arrived at this term of “ALGORITHM AUTISM” was the result of twaining elements from these topics: dsycalculia, DNA, Objective-C language, IQ-EQ, dexterity and discern. One day (when my book gets published), I’ll explain exactly how this twaining happened.

:*).

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

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

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

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

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

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

* recognition from Knol’s community of authors

* respectable viewing metrics

* a documentary in which I was interviewed about online consciousness

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

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

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

Hmmn……….

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

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

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

This morning whilst shooting my video to explain how I’m discovering and solving the missing keys to the Global Brain, Semantic Web and 360-2020 consciousness with my perception-emotion tool, I happened upon this comment on my knol:

Hi Twain

My name is Alex Gabbay. I am a filmmaker based in the UK currently making a film on consciousness. The idea sprung from a forthcoming exhibition on the brain involving eminent scientists and artists. I am contributing to the exhibition by making a film on consciousness that provokes discussion but does not pretend to have the answers.

For it, I am talking to neuroscientists, artists and anthropologists about their work on consciousness. I was extremely happy to find your knol on the Global Brain, while researching Berners-Lee and other contributors. I feel it is extremely important to include this perspective in the film.

Your own personal motivation in the introduction was moving. My motivation is to provoke discussion on a subject that to most of us defies definition and yet defines us and our world.

Is there anyway of getting in touch with you for further discussion re the film?

Alex

Okay, now I’m going to Google him and see what films he’s made previously…………….

Oh and when I release my video, it will become crystal clear that I didn’t write it as some purely theoretical construct or critique of current limitations.

I have “Twained” the various concepts with CODE and implementable solutions which will transform

LINKING DATA ===> MEANINGFUL DATA

(and I don’t mean NLP taxonomies and ontologies alone) . I mean a perception, emotion, relation and contextualization matrix / dimension that synchs with the way the Web currently works and can move it closer to TRUE SEMANTICS, wherein man-to-machine and man-to-machine across different media more accurately interpret the other’s meaning.

Watch Twain space and playpen……………..:*)

Why connect the dots? Well, because we can — if we really want to apply more than 10 percent of our intelligence and find solutions to major issues like these: global economic stability, education equivalence, climate change, gender contribution, etc. etc. etc.

If we don’t do it now, we and our children will simply find ourselves in the same situation (global financial crisis and absence of sense).

CONNECTING THE DOTS: THE TECH CONTEXT

Here are some articles on how technology could be applied to prevent a future global financial crisis:

· http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c25e1008-f93e-11dd-90c1-000077b07658.html

· http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/09/24/3669282.htm

· http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=a1Yy1SLxmCwo&pid=20601103

· http://www.tonybates.ca/2008/11/16/world-economic-forum-global-advisory-council-on-technology-and-education/

Worryingly, it’s notable that even in the 2009 World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on Technology and Education, whilst participants recognized that everyone was being impacted upon by the banking crisis, very little discussion took place on how technology can help us learn from our mistakes of the value-destroying experience.

GAC on Technology and Education was very much a pimple on the flea of the dog. Technology and education was seen as one of many areas that impact on economic development, but which in reality has little direct or immediate relevance to the current world financial crisis. Thus you will see that in the final summary reports of the global summit, technology and education was not even mentioned, it being considered a subsidiary area of technological innovation.

(source: http://www.tonybates.ca/2008/11/16/world-economic-forum-global-advisory-council-on-technology-and-education/)

There is no trace on the WEF site itself of any session even covering the harnessing of technology towards future risk prevention. Moreover, I’ve watched countless interviews with heads of regulatory agencies, CEOs of banks, tech CEOs and government officials and, with the exception of Geithner’s proposals on an integrated OTC information platform, almost no one seems to have given this any serious consideration.

…………………………………………………………………………….AND THEY SHOULD!

* http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm

CONNECTING THE DOTS: THE CHINESE CONTEXT

In July there was news that China and Singapore are recovering from the global recession:

· http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14045372

· http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753152552435965.html

· http://aric.adb.org/pdf/aem/jul09/Jul_AEM_complete.pdf

Interestingly, China (including HK) and Singapore have a higher proportion of women in senior management positions than their Western peers, according to Grant Thornton analysis.

· www.gthk.com.hk/cmstree.GetCmsAsset.do?…IBR%202009%20- %20Women%20in%20management

Moreover, the Chinese attitude and cultural observances towards savings and avoidance of debt+consumption may also explain why it’s likely to lead the global recovery. Unfortunately, certain economists have attributed the cause of the financial crisis on the Chinese propensity to save, without understanding anything about Chinese rationale or acknowledged that the root of the crisis lay in the US mortgage market and incompetent bankers creating complex SPVs which they themselves had no idea of how the over-leveraging would later cause the unravelling of!

(source: Merrill Lynch, 2009 Global Macro Year Ahead)

· http://www.suomenpankki.fi/NR/rdonlyres/436385A1-4A51-4061-814F-8D90D91B97BD/0/dp0209.pdf

· http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/why-do-chinese-save-boys-want-to-marry/

· http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2009/06/sense-on-chinas-savings.html

· http://mpettis.com/2009/05/why-do-chinese-save/

· http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/world/asia/26addiction.html?_r=1

· http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/08/differences_in_.html

· http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/256331/chinas_economy_in_2009_and_beyond

· http://chinadaily.cn/bizchina/2009-01/07/content_7375620.htm

CONNECTING THE DOTS: THE FEMALE CONTEXT

There’s an article in this weekend’s Observer which says the Treasury select committee is now investigating the role and contribution of women in the City (aka the British Wall Street) and whether having more senior women would have and can prevent the type of meltdown we’ve experienced over the last 18 months.

· http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/26/discrimination-financial-institutions-banking-women

This topic of how male testosterone may have caused the global financial crisis versus how female oestrogen could potentially prevent it has been covered on sites ranging from the UN to Scientific America to Management Today.

Some articles like Michel Ferrary’s (Professor of Management at Ceram Business School, France) in the FT even present the case that French companies with more senior women in the boardroom are faring better:

Last year, Hermès was the only large company whose share price rose (16.8 per cent) and it has the second largest feminised management (55 per cent). Companies with a highly feminised management, such as Sanofi (44.8 per cent female managers and a 27.3 per cent share price decrease), Sodexo (43.39 per cent female managers and an 8.3 per cent decrease) or Danone (38 per cent female managers and a 29.6 per cent decrease), declined less than the CAC 40 (a fall of 42.7 per cent).

Conversely, stocks of companies with mainly male management have decreased more than the CAC 40. For example, Alcatel-Lucent (8.6 per cent female managers) saw a 69.3 per cent decrease, Renault (21.7 per cent female managers) an 81.3 per cent fall and Arcelor Mittal (12.3 per cent female managers) a 67.4 per cent decline.

(source: FT, Why Women Shine in a Downturn — Michel Ferrary)

· http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=is-testosterone-to-blame-for-the-fi-2008-09-30

· http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/wom1721.doc.htm

· http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1f00a08-9ade-11dd-a653-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

· http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/10/AR2009071002358.html

· http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hewlett/2009/01/too_much_testosterone_on_wall.html

· http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4848188.ece

· http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1871066,00.html

· http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/channel/HumanCapital/news/865053/let-women-tame-macho-excess/

· http://www.ceram.edu/index.php/Latest-News/Latest/Financail-Crisis-Are-Women-the-Antidote-CERAM-Research.html

· http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/27836d74-04e4-11de-8166-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=1d22aad4-0732-11de-9294-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

· http://www.20-first.com/1056-0-womens-role-in-the-financial-crisis.html

· http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/would-women-have-avoided-the-current-finanical-crisis/

· http://armila.gaia.com/blog/2009/2/global_financial_crisis_are_women_the_antidote

· http://www.europeanbusiness.gr/SiteResources/Data/Templates/article.asp?DocID=1061&parentDocID=

· http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/05/03/the_female_advantage/

· http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/A_business_case_for_women_2192

· http://www.catalyst.org/publication/200/the-bottom-line-corporate-performance-and-womens-representation-on-boards

· http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/uoc-tlp041008.php

· http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/weekinreview/16dobrzynski.html

CONNECTING THE DOTS: THE TWAIN CONCLUSION

We need to wise up instead of dumb down.

The sooner we can build a coherent and robust Global Brain platform that can make sense of the better practices from different cultures and which takes into account male AND female contributions to decision making, risk taking, value-risk-reward paradigms and problem solving, the more we’ll advance as a species.

Ok, I just heard that my cousins from Germany are flying in later this week. What am I supposed to do with teenage girls?

Hmmn……..Well, all teenage girls love TopShop where Kate Moss has her own design line……..and Portobello Road for kooky treasures…….and eating foods that are banned by parents or unavailable at home (like chocolate, cream scones and fish+chips — separately and not together, of course)………

Hey and their surprise visit is cool. It means I’ll be able to speak Spanish, Italian, French and German all within the next month along with English and Chinese! There was I thinking I may have to watch another movie by Tom Twyker or Der Untergang (Downfall in English, btw) again to remind me of what German sounds like. Incidentally, it’s an Oscar-nominated film, a must-watch and is gripping with exceptional performances:

German and I have a strange relationship; it’s my least favorite of the European languages — lacks poetic lyricism — and yet it’s the language of some of the world’s best philosophers.

My German languages teacher was pretty upset I chose chemistry instead of German as an elective. Mostly because in the last German exams I ever took I got 99%, the first time anyone she’d taught had passed the 85% mark. Oh well, at least I opted to stay in her French class and she got to write in my report, “Twain has a natural flair for languages!” Ha ha. If she’d had her way instead of my mother, I’d have studied all the major languages, marched off to the LSE / Sorbonne, studied European Studies and become a UN interpreter or something.

LOL. Of course, if I hadn’t studied chemistry SmithKlineBeecham wouldn’t have let me play with their Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machine when I was 17, compound my own paracetamol, glass blow my own test tubes and round-bottom flasks, and then two years later I wouldn’t have been in the development team (at what is now IFF) that created the world’s first alcopops, right? I wouldn’t have spent one summer synthesizing one cola as close to Coke as I could, right? And promptly lost all interest in soft drinks because if you spend 10 hours a day in a lab concocting and testing it, the last thing you want to do at the w/e is drink it!

Most importantly, I wouldn’t know an iota about chemical mechanisms to propose that THIS is a much smarter and more natural way to envisage and realize the Global Brain, when crossing it with linking open data:

See? There’s cause+effect and a natural connective order to each of our lives. I gained insights on this and it created neural paths to enable me to make successive leaps of know-how and cross pollinate it into another sector.

Hmmn, maybe it wouldn’t take much to translate that entire Google knol into Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian and German, and to ensure that colloquial Anglo-Saxon phrasing is suitably cross-checked to reduce “lost in translation” issues. Maybe then researchers from all over the world will have one source on the Global Brain which is written in all the major languages. At the moment, no single source exists.

[Note to self: must learn more Russian beyond "perestroika" --- LOL.]

See? All these to-do’s, to move Semantic Web concepts more spot-on along with Project ART commitments to disrupt online business models. Ergo, I’m a wee bit busy to join Facebook’s translation project group, particularly since (even in English) they can’t communicate it in a clear way that makes us understand what their request is!

* http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/07/15/facebook-im-rotflol/

Also, I know from translating M+A deal documents (French => English, Italian => English, Spanish-Italian => English) that translators cost GBP15-20 an hour. Obviously, I decided to translate those documents myself instead.

Hmmmn……Now, please can anyone explain, “WHY SHOULD ANYONE TRANSLATE FACEBOOK WHICH HAS A VALUATION OF US$10+ BILLION, ACCORDING TO THE LATEST INVESTMENT OFFER BY DIGITAL SKY TECHNOLOGIES, AND CASH IN THE BANK TO PAY FOR TRANSLATION SERVICES AS PART OF GLOBAL ROLLOUT STRATEGY? FOR FREE?”

There too the question about the paid content model, users’ contributions and who owns what copyright arises.

Suppose we help Facebook translate itself. Suppose that some of us even create an algorithm that flags similes and non-translate-ables. Or even a methodology for someone in China to grasp the concept that that there are quantifier conjunctions in English which don’t exist in Chinese. Then suppose one day Facebook decides to charge us to upload our content in the same way that hosting providers charge us for storage space and our ISPs for connection. That means that instead of earning per hour for our translation abilities, we’re giving away our time and efforts for free. It also means that FB owns the algorithm and the methodology. It means the users will have added to the valuation of FB, yet they own no shares in the company, they’re not management or employed staff on a salary — not even temp / agency / consultancy staff — and they haven’t been paid for their contributions.

See? The Internet model which is appearing (and which Chris Anderson argues for) is NOT democratizing at all if the traditional barters of trade (aka MONEY) is not appropriately distributed and has differing equivalence. It is actually……..Communist if the online user bee is expected to build the hive, pollinate it and their reward is only that their content is allowed to exist in the hive — rather than for their content to LIVE, propagate collective sense-making and be nourished by honey (money).

This is why paying users for their content contributions and any special skills they bring to bear on a site should be a consideration that ALL sites which genuinely believe in online democracy need to commit to and implement.

THIS IS WHY MALCOLM GLADWELL WILL PROBABLY PROVE TO BE RIGHT AND CHRIS ANDERSON TO BE WRONG.

Returning specifically to my thoughts on German, what’s the other great reason to be able to speak and read the language apart from improving our technical competence and understanding “Vorsprung durch Technik” (advancement through technology)?

Answer:

* Wittgenstein

* Nietzsche

* Hegel

* Schopenhauer

* Kant

* von Clauswitz

What do these great minds teach us? I think, therefore I am. The World as Will and Idea. The power and utility of logic. We fight wars to win and there is no such concept as moderation in a war (to me, this is a sad but true insight). And, We are Human, All Too Human.

Sprechen Sie Deutsche? Ja, natürlich.

Why do we learn other languages if not to become informed with the wisdoms of and appreciation in as many cultures as possible?

Das ist Die Wahrheit. No, that doesn’t mean “the height of war”. It means………the truth.

This week I had a catch-up with one of my former managers — the brilliant, dynamic one — and, naturally, we covered a topic that’s dominated the media over the last 18 months: the global financial crisis. It’s interesting how our views are evolving, his as an insider in the thick of it and mine as a former insider now outsider who is, frankly, shocked at the scale of writedowns and losses incurred by once great institutions and benchmarks for corporate excellence.

We both agree that things remain tough in the global economy and for banks particularly. The finance raising environment remains slow and this has the knock-on effect of companies not being invested in, which isn’t good for the economy generally. The recruitment and employment sector is also suffering as a result.

Thankfully, he and his team are now involved in one of the world’s largest and most important transactions, one that will contribute to getting one particular country’s economy back up on its feet. Knowing that his team is involved is heartening. They’re simply THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT WHAT THEY DO and in complete contrast to the dolts who got us all into the mire with mortgage CDO risks. This isn’t merely loyalty — or some may say “subjective bias”; their strengths have been independently recognized in established banking journals and acknowledged by competing teams from other institutions.

From a personal experience level, I know that portfolios and projects led by him have a higher probability of success than failure.

His leadership means that his teams are, often, at the top of their specialism and skills range. They’re called upon to trouble-shoot the most complex challenges in the tightest of times, against what appear to be insurmountable obstacles and they manage to do it, seamlessly. They invariably bring with them vital technical knowhow about balance sheet restructuring, strategic nous and interpersonal panache. That’s his modus operandi and it becomes theirs.

So now they’re in there, clearing up the messes in various institutions that they had no part in creating.

Now, for months on end, bankers have all been tarred with the same brush: hubris, greed, ego, dodgy, money-grubbing and stupid. In fact, 99 percent of bankers are hard-working, intelligent, competent and committed to the wider community (including charities). It’s just unfortunate that 1 percent was allowed to spoil the barrel and bring economies to the brink. It’s even more unfortunate that measures and mandates were not in place to empower appropriate senior management to prevent ridiculous levels of risk-taking and leverage. Equally, it’s unfortunate the regulatory authorities and governments did not intervene sooner and with more directed focus.

Just as in the case of Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, Alistair Darling the British Chancellor has this week laid out a White Paper on financial sector reforms:

* http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/speech_chex_080709.htm

· http://www.silobreaker.com/proposal-for-stability-council-totally-underwhelming-16_2262444519687454754

· http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Channels/Finance/login/919271/

· http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/tracycorrigan/5789173/White-Paper-marks-a-necessary-philosophical-shift—but-danger-lurks.html

· http://blogs.reuters.com/uknews/2009/07/08/financial-regulation-plan-white-paper-or-white-flag/

Here’s a personal observation and perhaps it’s a reflection on an area the government needs improving upon: communication and strategic think through. When we Google “Alistair Darling white paper” we don’t get any links to HM Treasury and the original drafts of the Chancellor’s speeches — not even by the third page of results (!). Nor do we even get any links to YouTube / Hulu / other video-sharing sites of those speeches. Moreover even when we Google with “Alistair Darling white paper HM Treasury” we don’t get the latest White Paper on the financial reforms. Instead, the top link leads us to some obscure 1999 paper on “Housing Policy Green Paper”.

Hmmn….weren’t we searching for a WHITE paper? How’s the government tagging its content for SEO?

If government places tackling financial reform as a top agenda item, then they should ensure the HM Treasury’s materials on the matter are at the top of all search engines and the public have ready access to direct source. Compare this with the American approach. Obama and Geithner’s speeches are linked to the whitehouse.gov site, barackobama.com or on YouTube / other video-sharing site.

As for the financial reforms on both sides of the Atlantic, it will be a challenge to make those reforms flexible, TARGETED and easy to implement. They should enable the brilliant and dynamic bankers to innovate and arrange the financing necessary to build homes, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, techco’s, etc. whilst also making it impossible for dodgy, incompetent bankers to operate.

I believe the transaction my former manager and his team is putting together will go some way in showing us what banking competence should look and be like. I hope they’re left to get on with it and sort it out rather than hindered by politicking and people who don’t know, technically, how to deal with balance sheet and structured instrument complexities.

Over recent times, my mother has asked the “What if…….?” question. What would have happened if I’d stayed under his leadership and in his team. Well, I’d now be part of the world’s #1 team in that specialism and my sleeves would be rolled up on the one of the most important transactions to tackle the global financial crisis. What an amazing experience that would be to have on a CV, at my age.

Then again……..I wouldn’t be contributing my wee bit to the Global Brain or constructs of the Semantic Web or presenting the case for “Web 3.0: socially-voiced co-creation”. I wouldn’t be getting excited about the possibilities of haptics, metaverses, mapping, knowledge representation, AI, natural language, source-binding, dynamic edits, P2P, the Cloud etc. etc. etc. to enable ordinary people to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas and materials towards solution-finding.

I wouldn’t be playing with code to make it do what I believe it should do.

I’d be forensically dissecting a bank’s decimated balance sheet and going, “???!!! How did people let this happen?”

Technological innovation is where it’s @ and it may yet prove to be the tool which empowers us all to prevent future global financial crises. We shall see…………

In the same week that the media moguls are gathered in Sun Valley to attend boutique investment bank, Allen + Co’s, pow-pow over how to monetize social networks, get consumers to pay for content and make their investors happy, the political leaders are in Italy discussing the global economic crisis and climate change.

The two events may seem discrete and unconnected, but actually they can be “twained”. Here goes……..

Yesterday news reports said that G8 leaders had hailed a “historic” agreement on climate change policies to try and set new temperature and CO2 emission targets for 2050 (lowering by 2 degrees Celsius and halving, respectively). This follows on from 1990 agreements to cut CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Here’s the website of the July 2009 G8 summit being held in L’Aquila, Italy and hosted by the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi:

News coverage on the G8 is available here:

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/g8/

Below are some useful links on what the UN Environment Program, Oxfam, BBC forum bloggers, Open Democracy, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the All Africa network believes needs to be covered by the climate change agenda at the G8 summit:

· http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=593&ArticleID=6242&l=en

· http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/g8-2009

· http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=6705&edition=1&ttl=20090709111737

· http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-g8-and-climate-change-towards-copenhagen

· http://www.panda.org.za/?section=News_AboutUs&id=191

· http://allafrica.com/stories/200907070060.html

CLIMATE CHANGE: TWAINING SOCIAL NETWORKS TECHNOLOGY WITH PRODUCTION STREAMS AND CUTTING CO2 EMISSIONS

Several years ago, I posted a broad overview of my business case for “Web 3.0: socially-voiced co-creation” onto slideshare — an excellent site run by an excellent management team, btw. In its time it was ranked #1 if you searched for “Web 3.0”.

Now, I’m not going to be one of those people who allows the “Why should emerging economies agree to cuts when it’s the developed economies who’ve been responsible for polluting the world ever since the Industrial Revolution for the last two centuries?” argument distract me from what is a CLEAR CHALLENGE AND SOLUTION we all need to find. Nor am I going to argue, “Well, emerging economies like India and China are actually churning out more CO2 because their factories are manufacturing goods to fulfill the consumption demands of developed economies. It’s actually them that’s causing us to pollute in the first place. Factories built because developed country economies wanted to take advantage of the cheaper labor and wage costs abroad, etc. etc. etc.”

There are countless objections all sides can put forward to why developed and emerging economies shouldn’t do something about climate change but all of these objections are, frankly, fatuous and don’t move human progress forward (and I like moving human progress forward, :*)).

What also needs to be recognized is that what all governments have yet to do is to make COMPELLING BUSINESS ARGUMENTS for companies and consumers to tackle climate change. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary remains a philosophical call to our conscience rather than a pragmatic program towards change in action — not simply attitude — of consumer behavior.

What we need is the model I propose in ‘Web 3.0: socially-voiced co-creation’.

At the moment, social networks seem to be little more than online meeting points where consumer herds are channeled into topic pens for marketers to push more information at them and increase their consumption habits. They then buy more goods (often not what they genuinely need but for momentary consumer satiation or fad reasons), cause factories to churn out more CO2 and other noxious chemicals to pollute the environment and then waste electricity on the gadgets and goods they’ve bought but don’t really need. Disposal of these over-produced gadgets with their harmful substances (e.g., mercury in monitors, aluminum smelting, etc.) further causes complications to the ozone layer which still need to be researched and mitigated against. Admittedly, there are political lobby groups set up on the social networks — including climate change activists — but still this is not the optimal harnessing of consumer intelligence, influence or active collaboration on a wider and more effective scale than some educated niche activists providing information and awareness rather than instigating actions which affect bottom line results.

In short, the non-virtuous cycle of climate concerns goes around: we’re marketed into wanting, we buy to satisfy this want and then we worry about what kind of Earth our children and their children will inherit (deforestation, ocean pollution, out of control weather, airborne chemicals which damage their lungs, etc.).

Now let’s turn the social network model on its head and think about a monetization model at the same time.

Imagine if, instead of registered users being pushed marketing at or lobbied, they were engaged in the production process. Imagine if they were harnessed as a gigantic market research pool to ask them:

· what products they’d like to buy

· what price point they’d be prepared to pay for that item

· when they plan to complete purchase (within 1 week, 1 month, 1 quarter, half a year, end of year)

· which distribution outlet they’re more likely to buy it from (online, boutique, super-store)

· who else they would recommend the product to

instead of the current market research methods which try to extrapolate purchase intent from demographic information gathered (e.g., if you live in a household where income is US$100K and you are a white, male professional who reads the New Yorker, you’re likely to buy the Apple iPhone).

Then imagine if they were enabled with tools to collaborate in the design of products, with a percentage share in the net profits of any sold for a defined period of time. Next, imagine that this market research and product collaboration feeds directly into a sophisticated inventory system so that the company produces a level of goods which more accurately reflects and meets consumer demands — rather than the current way this works which is whereby companies have to make projections 3 to 5 CAGR years in advance, based on consumption behavior gathered in reports from the likes of Datamonitor etc. which are only comparatively small sample populations with all their inherent skews, extrapolation inaccuracies and time lags rather than social network sampling which is instantaneous, targeted and more representative of sizeable populations. The way it currently works also means that there is a lot of wastage in materials used to market to consumers (e.g., flyers, billboards, paper cut-outs at consumer electronic shows).

Finally, consider how this change in engaging the consumer further upstream in the production process will change CO2 emissions and move the climate change issue towards a positive solution.

Companies will actually gain insights into what consumers REALLY need and want. They can better manage their inventories to produce at levels needed rather than over-stock. In this way, factories won’t be over-producing and churning out excessive chemicals to further damage the environment. Plus companies will increase their communication effectiveness and production efficiencies, and reduce the wastage and costs incurred in over-stocking of materials, labor, electricity etc. needed to produce goods to meet consumer demands.

Governments can support companies which foster this form of positive consumer influence by giving them tax breaks, emission offsets and assistance with factories abroad where the goods will be manufactured.

Moreover, the consumer can be incentivized and will be rewarded for their participation in product design process. They will also end up getting products they want: what, when, where and how they want it.

Now, THAT is the COMPELLING BUSINESS ARGUMENT governments, companies and policy-makers need to explore and implement.

These “2 degrees Celsius and halving CO2 emissions here and there, developed versus emerging economies claims to be allowed to build factories and use electricity” etc. are too ephemeral and theoretical to companies and to consumers.

What we need to do is transform the awareness of climate change into ACTION at the bottom line level. We need to engage consumers further upstream in the production process and not simply downstream where they’re pushed more marketing to increase unnecessary consumption (and, inadvertently, CO2 emissions).

There, that’s my “twaining” of the paradigms between technology, business models and government policy on climate change.

Now we just need Google to choose my GREENSPOT proposal (an Android / mobile devices application to develop a global social network for green consumers) in their 2008/9 Project 10 to 100th competition so that we can realize this vision of companies and consumers contributing positive action where climate change, changing consumption behavior and better production levels is concerned!

* http://www.project10tothe100.com/

Yes, we do need the commitment of tech giants like Google to do it — purely because they have the global resources to reach out towards corporate and consumer audiences and encourage them to convert to new consumption and production frameworks.

Yes and the ‘Web 3.0: socially-voiced co-creation” model is consistent with the Global Brain and Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web) constructs. The objective of any Global Brain is for us to collectively collaborate to solve the world’s major challenges which includes climate change. The usefulness of a Semantic Web would be for machines to be able to understand us and each other when, for example, there’s an inventory order out of Paris and we can work out that means from the capital of France instead of the Hilton celebrity.

Tesla is right: think through before we do. At some point, the theories and the practices will twain — LOL.

I’m really pleased to announce that my little knol has been voted ‘Best Knol, June 2009″ by other key Knol authors. This is super-cool because the award is a form of quality benchmarking by users who are responsible for fostering the ethos and culture of Knol, and it’s also great to know that the content in the knol is helpful and appreciated. It beat the knol on ‘Twitter and Tweet from the Trenches’ — LOL!

In seriousness, hundreds of thousands of knols have been published — by highly regarded medical and academic experts as well as Joe / Jane Public with some life experiences to share — so to feature well enough in Google Knol’s metrics to be on those key users’ nomination radar and then to win it for June 2009 means something. The voters included those who’ve consistently been top viewed and top rated authors.

The Global Brain etc. is obviously a topic that matters to me. We’re at the extremely early stages of the conception and realization of it, and it’s important to recognize how far we still have to go in our journey ahead as well as the challenges we need to identify and figure out how to overcome.

I’m mindful that our intelligence, perspicacity and contextualization abilities evolve over time. For example, what and how I think and perceive now is more nuanced and reflective-refractive-re-engineered than as a child — although there are instances where I believe my thinking on certain topics was sharper aged 12-17 than they were at any other time to-date in my life.

‘The Global Brain’ knol is a continuous distillation and synapse between different discrete concepts that have fascinated me since childhood. I just decided to put it down in a written record so that this generation (and my children’s) will be able to trace developments of the Global Brain and its associations (the Semantic Web, Turing test, man-machine congruences as much as disconnect etc.) and challenge whether the various constructs are valid, cogent, consistent, democratic and also whether they’re including the appropriate elements which will result in us, collectively, solving the world’s major issues by harnessing man-machine hybrids.

It’s possible that my concepts, insights and vision of the Global Brain etc. are completely wrong. It may even be the case that I don’t complete the journey and my contributions don’t help crack it. Nevertheless, I am prepared to put it onto public record that in my early 30s — here and now and of sane mind, wholly uninfluenced / aided / abetted by drugs of any kind — this is how I was considering and perceiving the subject matter and doing my little Twaining of it.

My main hope is that the knol will help us move the GB’s realization towards a good direction and with good speed. Already, thanks to David Price’s efforts with the Debategraph interface, what I wrote about the Linking Open Data diagram means that the landscape of participants in the Semantic Web is being re-shaped and conceived anew. This is another of our small steps of progress.

The next re-shaping which is sorely needed will be the evolution from the Rubik cube form of the Semantic stack towards a series of protocols which are much more organic and more closely proxy how DNA and neuro-transmitters actually work.

Perception and problem-solving is not about systematic processing alone or even semantic categorization. It’s about synergizing sense-making with sensory emotions, imo.

As I mentioned in a previous post (thanks to a flag by Rick “fish-head”), Forbes.com released their special report on Artificial Intelligence in June:

* · http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/22/singularity-robots-computers-opinions-contributors-artificial-intelligence-09_land.html

One article comments about how computers are no more intelligent or semantically-capable of understanding what we mean even in searches than they were 40 years ago. This may be because some of our definitions to date about what thinking is has overly concentrated on the PROCESS of thinking which then affects the way we convert this into computer algorithms. Perhaps the way to approach creating smarter systems is to assess how smart people make sense of and synergize the inputs their senses are subject to and also how those smart people randomly apply humor / relativity / emotion perception / experience-based prioritization rather than risk-based prioritization, and more in the ecosystem of their brains to generate innovative and creative solutions which may appear “off-the-wall” / “avant garde” but end up as the orthodoxy.

A few years ago I did suggest to a well-known tech entrepreneur that what would be seriously interesting is if we could continuously MRI the brains of the top 1000 talents in the world (Nobel Prize / Academy Award / Turner Prize / Pulitzer Prize / etc. nominees) and discover patterns in their brain activity when working at their optimal and at their troughs. Then we might gain better insights into how to improve collective and connective intelligence.

Unfortunately, MRI scans at the moment tend to focus on those with medical conditions: typically, brain cancer, depression or trauma to the head. Instead of unhealthy brains alone we should also be tracking healthy brains operating at top functioning capability, imo.

Of course, the logistics of that study would be fairly challenging so it’s not surprising the tech entrepreneur and I didn’t take it any further than merely a random idea I had! Who knows, now with the development of the EmotivEPOC we may actually have some form of tracking human thoughts and electronically converting them:

There’s another interesting Twaining of discrete concepts: MRI scanning smart people to track their brain activity and a headset which is used in virtual reality games. Hmmn…..

The Global Brain…………collective work-in-progress…………Here’s to its future, :*).

I woke up this morning with the thought, “I have to explain to non-Brit readers that “GUNK” is an ironic funny ha-ha acronym.”

In mereology, it’s the philosophical term for any whole whose parts all have further proper parts. In hair care, it’s a British colloquialism and denigration fired at teenagers when they put too much product on their hair which makes it look greasy, sticky or OTT. The product is referred to as “gunk”. It’s also a wordplay compound on “junk” and “goo”.

* http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

So now that I’ve used it as an acronym to cover Great Universal Neural Kinesis, we have to LOL — particularly since some of us believe humans have too much junk in our heads (from tennis scores to family memories to recipes), our brains are nothing but goo-ey matter, and yet that so-called “junk” and “goo” can be kinetically converted into the “gunk” of the mereological variety.

In other words, silo pieces of data can be and is naturally connected and cross-pollinated in our brains. Our own responsibility is to drive its frequency and velocity (direction and speed) so that we’re utilizing more than 10 percent of our brainpower and become more Enlightened.

Another thought I had as I awoke was, “No machine wakes up and is conscious of what they need to do to satisfy the curiosity and knowledge of another party when that other party may not even have provided input that they don’t know how ironic the word “gunk” is.”

This then led me to a stream of thoughts on whether Semantic technologies and their AI have progressed as much as we suppose and how much closer they are to consciousness than machines like Deep Blue which beat Kasparov in chess in 1997.

Now, over a decade ago, I worked with a leading authority on Neural Networks in an asset allocation company whose clients included the largest investment fund in the world. We developed 5 different smart AI systems to generate analysis that would enable us to apply human judgment and sense-making to decide where to put the money. The system was programmed to run overnight and first thing in the morning it generated results and printed tables of numbers out for us to discuss.

No machine I’m aware of activates itself in the morning and has either random, spontaneous or consideration towards others’ thoughts. Machines switch on and they churn through, according to a pre-set program and routine created by their developers. They don’t wake up and get any attacks of consciousness. This is how I know I’m human and not a cyborg or intelligent agent machine, even if it is a running joke with some of my friends. LOL.

Ten plus years on from those 5 AI machines I read about and experience the structures being implemented in the nascent Semantic Web, and I realize there are clues that some human contributors are not as consciously aware of how to connect or shape the nodes in semantic filtering or ontological classifications as we need. Yes, I mean something as simple as the LOD diagram:

It was a spore which did not follow Great Universal Neural Kinesis (GUNK) principles:

Of course, I mean gunk of the mereology definition and I genuinely do not mean to offend anyone involved in Linking Open Data. My objective is to highlight that with some GUNK we can help the velocity of the Global Brain. This is not and should not be an ego mission for anyone.

It’s about finding solutions to our universal problems: economic stability, educational provision, climate change, etc.

Part of human consciousness and the reason I reflect-refract within myself and my experiences as much as receiving reflection- refraction from others, is the consideration component. As I wrote late last night, at present machines connect and compute. They don’t consider. Consideration carries with it emotions towards others in our thinking as well as some form of catalysis between what we know and what we imagine.

In my case, the consideration that it wouldn’t be fair to non-Brit readers if there wasn’t some directed guidance on the word “gunk”. Additionally, for example, catalyzing what I know from the fields of organic chemistry with computing and imagining how debategraph would improve the LOD diagram.

So there it is…………..my GUNK first thing in the morning. LOL!

Ok now I have to go to this tech event and listen and learn some more about “The Cloud”. I hope it shapes up to be cumulus rather than cirrus or clogged up with fuzzy logic…………….ha ha.

Here’s an example of how serendipity and strange kinesis happens in Twain’s world. Tomorrow I’m going to a women’s tech event and these are some of the sessions I signed up for:

· Google’s MapReduce (distributed computing on large data sets on clusters of computers);

· How HP are dealing with Cloud Computing and the Law; and

· Financing your start-up

This was completely separate and several weeks prior to three events which happened today that I had no influence or control over:

(1.) Fish-head (aka Rick who’s a brilliant 3DMax-conversant marketer) sent me a link to Forbes.com’s special Artificial Intelligence report:

For those interested, here’s last year’s IEE Spectrum special on The Singularity, which is related as you’ll see later:

(2.) Wall Street & Technology, a site I used to track religiously — when I was a banker responsible for an investment portfolio that included consortia trading platforms, posted an article on IBM’s Websphere’s Cloud Computing and Low Latency Messaging Capabilities:

· http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/advancedtrading/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100846&cid=RSSfeed_TechWeb

(3.) Terrestrial television showed a documentary, Another Perfect World, which explored several metaverses from Second Life to Eve to Lineage (US, Iceland and Korea-based, respectively). Now, for those who aren’t aware Second Life operates on a P2P framework and there are cluster servers involved here too. There are also all sorts of issues involved with bandwidth, i.e. world creations take up a lot of server space which makes the system slower than it should be and……..occasionally crash.

If we join the dots between items (3.) and (2.) we start to see that IBM’s architectural breakthrough will have a knock-on effect on the likes of Second Life and reducing bandwidth load.

It’s then related to item (1.) because a key motivation of Artificial Intelligence developments is to enable machines to simulate similar processes to the way human brain works. Those processes and their content are transmitted via nodes and connectors. The pursuit of AI (or “thinking machines”) is tied in with the creation of the Global Brain where each one of us can call up to the “Thinking Cloud” and get answers.

See what I mean by strange kinesis in my world? This is “Twaining”.

THE TURING TEST: TWAIN’S TAKE

Can machines think? This was the question posed by Alan Turing in 1950 and what the Turing test provides parameters for us to find out. Previously in my Global Brain knol, I’ve written about my encounters with Elbot, which came close (25%) but………..no cigar to passing the Turing test (30% threshold). Here’s a reminder of how my very first question flummoxed Elbot.

At point of site activation, Elbot asked me, “What mood are you in?” I typed in “indifferent”.

Elbot then asked, “What put you in this indifferent mood?”

I typed in “You.”

Elbot replied: “Fatal Error 42: Omission of Superfluous Input.”

Yes, this was funny but my question was also posed with a purpose.

A real-life person upon reading the text of me writing “You” would probably have become either self-conscious, defensive or displayed some form of ego, super-ego and identity. These complexes are as much a part of human consciousness as the sensations we experience during waking life, our dreams in our sleep and the mysteries within us which are as yet inexplicable like pre-cognition and genius.

A probable human response to my feigned indifference would have been another question like, “We just met and hardly know each other. What have I done to make you indifferent towards me?” or “*&^#%! Who do you think you are?! How dare you be indifferent to me! Do you know how lucky you are to be part of this Elbot experiment and how clever the maker is?!”

Instead, Elbot couldn’t compute and crashed.

For me, Elbot — although an improvement on previous attempts — is not conscious. It wasn’t aware of the context of my question. It wasn’t able to decipher it aurally for clues. It wasn’t able to see whether I was smiling or grimacing. It wasn’t able to pick up and smell any pheromones which would indicate my interest instead of my indifference. It wasn’t able to shake my hand and determine whether it was a firm grip (interested) or loose grip (indifferent), and so on.

When we consider the Turing test, it’s vital we remember that the stipulation is the machine and the human provide and are provided with TEXT-BASED content. There are no oral, aural or other sensory clues which are what helps make humans conscious and aware of ourselves relative to others and our environment(s).

In the Forbes’ article, Professor Kevin Warwick suggests that questions of a topical or local nature can help us better distinguish between whether the answer is from another human or a machine. For example, questions about the weather or what color the wall is painted. Then we can assess whether the machine’s answer is plausible and would be offered by a human.

This is all very well, but here’s my issue with the Turing test. It sets out to answer the question, “Can machines think?”

The more perspicuous answer we should seek is:

“CAN MACHINES MAKE SENSE?”

To date in IT development (including the Semantic Web), the definition of thinking machines or smart systems is predicated on their abilities to do the following:

· link (as in hyper-text)

· connect (as in social nets)

· compute / calculate (as in Deep Blue and Wolfram Alpha)

· choose (as in what to display at a specific time-geolocation)

· sort, filter and prioritize (as in eBay lists of items)

· rank (as in YouTube videos)

· re-direct (as in cookies in browsers)

· visually represent (as in Flickr on Google Maps)

· synch (as in iPhone with iTunes store and Apple Macbooks)

· stream (as in videos and IM channels)

Now, some of us would argue that all of those attributes are the same as thinking so if a machine can do those things then it must be as — or even more than — intelligent as a human.

Evidently, this isn’t the case yet; no machine has even passed the Turing test much less tests where a robot can make sense the way we do with touch, taste, sight, hearing and smelling abilities to complement our neural, moral, memory, humor and relativism ones. We’re several years from The Terminator and Skynet (aka “The Cloud”).

Personally, I don’t want machines to be able to simply think. I want them to be able to MAKE SENSE. If we look at ourselves as a species, 99 percent of us can think (some form of brain activity / electrical impulses) with less than 1 percent of us incapable of thought because of coma or brain damage. However, not all 99 percent of us are making sense. If we were there would be none of the following:

· wars, crimes and non-natural deaths;

· climate change dangers;

· global economic crisis; or

· any other man-made catastrophe which stops, sets back or sabotages human development, achievement and advancement.

Hmmmn, and it’s now really late and I have a looooooooooooong day ahead of me.

Twain brain starting to switch off for sleep now. I’ll return to this “GUNK” another day soon.

LOL. G’night.

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

TURING: A CHILD TWAIN HERO

Alan Turing is undoubtedly a genius whilst I am being a Devil’s Advocate at worst and marginally bright at best. I have a lifelong admiration for Turing, actually. I first learnt about him and the Enigma machine when the Royal Society of Mathematics invited me along to their master classes for “gifted” children. One of our first exercises was to create our own code machine.

I’m no longer a “gifted” child. My (older, male) colleague at the bank who had a Harvard degree and Cambridge PhD in robotics wrote in my review that I was “prodigious”. One important thing I’ve learnt is that it’s not in the words others use about us that we discover who we are. It’s in the doing, the discovering and the democracy of collectively making sense that we realize it.

G’night!