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.

Interested parties typically want to know the competitive opportunities for a business so instead of writing 1,000 words, here’s a picture for 360-2020:

This is the only strategy slide I’ll be sharing on @T and it’s a snapshot in time.

A business plan, financials, IP filed and a demo are all progressing. The numbers focus on the US$450+ billion annual global expenditure in online advertising, the smart tools are designed to quality filter and contextualize content and the marketing model focuses on how to service diverse cultural groups. Since I’m Chinese and speak several languages, 360-2020 has cultural perspective seeded into its systems DNA.

Additionally, one-click capture is what 360-2020 will aim for.

Now, I’ve analyzed enough case studies in business school, gained insights into dotcoms from direct experience and blogs, and even incubated-financed some techco’s to know that for startups there are usually 3 schools of practice:

(1.) Plan nothing on the basis of “Build it and they will come.”

===> sell to Google / MS / etc.

(2.) Plan everything but fall apart in execution and marketing.

===> hope seasoned angels will nurture it.

(3.) Parallel project manage the coding and the writing of the business plan, but both end up out of synch.

===> liquidate and learn nothing.

There are issues with each of the three practices, even before we take into account that the tech sector is unpredictable and no one can predict anything accurately 100%.

In the first instance, there’s a big old graveyard of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 ventures that were built in haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways, attracted millions of traffic hits (mostly ramped by spambots), didn’t have any plans for monetization and burned through VC cash like Vesuvius hit Pompeii (scorching the earth and making it nigh impossible for subsequent start-ups to attract money).

In the second, SMART EXECUTION AND MARKETING DO MATTER. We can all pick out the Apples from the others that do professionally dumb things such as disrespect their beta community by launching with marketing videos like “We organize that s***” and then fail to deliver on those very organizational tools — despite core users’ support, collaborative troubleshooting and continuous patience. It’s no surprise that companies like these shoot themselves in the foot and through the head and sabotage their own market opportunities.

[As a Libran, I can use diplomatic euphemisms as florally as the next person but DUMB is an appropriate word when a Marketing Manager uses the word "s***" to describe a community’s carefully collected and considered information treasures.

That s-word and that approach to the community will have NO PLACE in anything I'm involved with.

^{360-2020 will endeavor to engage quality people and collaborate with strategic partners who understand and respect its community, their needs and are committed to working together conducively towards better, smarter, symbiotic solutions.]}

In the third case, what happens in parallel project management is that the executives and the tech team may be parallel but they’re on different levels where strategic direction, navigation, execution, communication and consideration for each other’s efforts are concerned. Hence they end up at the wrong destinations.

NO ORACLE, SIMPLY AN EXPLORER

I don’t have the definitive “Do this and strike digital gold” answers because:

(1.) I’m human and therefore as fallible as anyone else.

(2.) No single company has THE killer answers (and any who claim to are snake oil salesmen).

(3.) That company would own the universe and no company owns the universe.

(4.) There’s no room for discovery, fun and learning from mistakes if those definitives already exist.

(5.) I’m only at the start of a journey and I can only share my analogy of the Twain approach as I tackle 360-2020.

It’s like a……..FRENCH BRAID.

In other words, we treat the business plan, the coding and the parties involved (target audience, strategic partnerships, investors, etc.) as synergistic strands of the whole. We progress them not in parallel but with re-iterative integration wherein each contributes to the development of the others synergistically and synchronistically. Yes, it means whoever’s hand(s) are doing the braiding — i.e. the team of VISIONARY LEADER-DRIVER-EXECUTORS — need to be reasonable, smart, dynamic, collaborative and operationally pragmatic to appreciate how each strand fits in with the other strands.

It also clearly involves male-female-X-Y combinatory organic synthesis wherein input-output are aligned.

This philosophy of synching strands may prove to be productive; we shall see in the long-term if this is so.

WHY CREATE 360-2020?

Well, the simple reason is that in addition to gaining 360 perspectives it’s also important to have 20/20 clarity of vision and coherence of connected information. The challenge and fun is to build and aspire towards this.

The more complex reason is that it is a necessary evolution to the bigger economic challenges.

Here are some facts about whether we have 20/20 clarity online at present: 5-star ratings, recommendation engines and institutional ratings mechanisms (e.g., S&P/Moodys credit, bank reputation, Interbrand’s analysis) are flawed at worst and non-smart at best. We know this because if they were smart, reliable, insightful and contextual these events would not be true:

* global financial crisis

o the credit agencies rated the toxic mortgage assets from AAA to ABB which made them seem more financially sound than they actually were. In fact, some of the products were…….sludge at best (and slag at the bottom of the oil distillation process at the worst).

* consumers buying items that rate a 3 and 4 rather than items that rate 5

o quality, price, human perceptions and aspirations are not captured in 5-star rating systems so whilst a 3 may seem to mean “average” it may also mean “affordable” and “non-niche”.

* Virgin, Newscorp and Hutchison Whampoa not appearing in the Top 100 of Interbrand’s survey whereas Zara does.

o those three diversified conglomerates have a lot more established marketing presence and revenue streams than Zara.

Therefore, social graphs and quantitative surveys like the ones below are constantly churning in my head whilst 360-2020 gestates and is built.

I believe online content can be filtered and connected in a much smarter way to reduce the noise, spam and nonsense for us all so that we have more time to genuinely collaborate, enjoy ourselves and collectively innovate………….

So building 360-2020 is one way to “walk the talk”.

START SMALL & SCALE SPHERICALLY

There is a plan in place for each of the 3 levels of the 360-2020 tools. The entry-level will have over a dozen classifications compared with the 5 classifications in 5-star rating systems and the 2 in -1/+1.

Over time, the number of classifications in 360-2020 will be increased within a realistic rollout.

CONVERSATIONS WITH CEOS & CONCERNS ABOUT IP PROTECTION

Whilst I’m keen to propagate 360-2020 as a concept and to source people who can collaborate in its realization, I’m also aware that some of them may try to appropriate (read STEAL) my methodology and innovations. This is a risk for all entrepreneurs and inventors and I am by no means the first or last person to happen upon these situations.

That’s why it’s advisable to have some helpful conversations with IP lawyers, be mindful of what you disclose as the inventor and FILE IP AS APPROPRIATE.

Without breaching any confidentiality let me share what the CEO of a financial platform said when I met him for an informal chat recently about what I’m doing with 360-2020:

It’s not an easy problem to solve. There are so many variables and dimensions involved. Plus there would be a bias in the sample population — especially since there’s research to say that only 1 percent of online users ever even bother to rate content with 5 star ratings in the first place, so how would you get people to use 360-2020? You’d need it to be on a site with millions of users………

I’m not a programmer so I don’t know what you’d need to you’d solve it. The person you should talk to is [name of X, a US high-end programmer].

This was broadly my reply:

I can program and I have a sense of the maths behind it and, well, actually [Mathematical Formula 1 which I studied at university and won’t disclose] and [Mathematical Framework 2 which I’ve applied in a challenging project before and won’t disclose] metrics can be applied to deal with the variability and confidence issues so even if it is an initially biased population sample, we can account for it and normalize the tool to extrapolate.

As for market potential, it could plug into something like Amazon or eBay recommendations as readily as just on someone’s personal blog. It just replaces where the 5-star bar sits now.

Plus it would actually have less bias than existing 5-star rating systems since that provides almost no qualitative or benchmarking information around the 2, 3 and 4 ratings — only the extremes of 1 and 5 — so that’s an area of ambiguity which, historically, has led to people buying goods or hedging a market with incomplete information, on the assumption that 1 is a “don’t trade/buy” and 5 is a “go ahead, trade/buy”.

Now, we can either stick with the status quo where all of the known ratings systems and the emerging Semantic Web Stack’s classifications have limitations and are not providing us with the context that we really need. Ergo, we can all continue to be frustrated by our and the machines’ inability to connect the dots and make sense of silo information — which invariably results in scenarios like a global financial crisis because people are trading, investing and transacting based on incomplete information (3 out of 6 perspectives on a Rubik’s cube) or it results in scenarios where companies are inferring our consumption behavior and end up either over-stocking or under-selling……….

OR………

We can approach it with the 360-2020 methodology, which approaches information contextualization differently — along DNA mechanisms rather than a Rubik cube’s rigidity. Yes, the computational mathematics involved is substantial — some of it will have to be invented anew — but it’s feasible and there are already components of it published. It’s just a matter of having the imagination and execution to synergize that.”

A week later and I’m still being a pragmatic optimist that that CEO will respect that 360-2020 is a proprietary solution and is covered by IP.

Moreover, only someone with my career insights, skills and knowhow would even originate and then attempt to executive such a solution! That’s not complacency, myopia, narcissism, delusion or bravura on my part. It is what it is……….

360-2020 = TWAIN

I did get 99% in my Probability + Statistics exams and the highest mark in my university class for my Econometrics project on Tiger economies, so…………………………….I have some sense of where and how to source the computational mathematics and the AJAX / PERL / PHP / SVGML / Flash AS4 / JSON / jScript / Pascal / Fortran / LISP / Squeak / Semantic Web Stack components etc. to solve and synch what is a non-trivial model and code challenge.

That and the fact that I can code means that 360-2020 is shaping up progressively. Importantly, I’m factoring in the need for the business model, reward reciprocity between company-consumer, neuroscience and other core components to fit into the whole so — in all seriousness — I am a critical component in 360-2020’s realization and potential success.

Now, returning to the relevance of what I’m trying to do wrt. the bigger economic challenges…………

BETTER INFORMATION => BETTER MARKETS

Now, without going into too much Adam Smith, what I realized whilst working in consumer-side companies and in banking is that the basic assumptions of capital markets and information about consumers are somewhat awry. This may partially explain why various global financial crisis happen.

The prime assumption being that there is so-called “perfect information” which we all have equal access to and choice over. The second one is that humans are “rational and make objective decisions” — so, for example, we don’t borrow mortgages we know we have no realistic chances of meeting the payments for. The third is that exchange between two parties happens following long distance and lengthy time negotiations.

Actually this is true:

* Market information is non-optimal.

* Humans are complex and make decisions based on ambiguous information, subjectivity and their emotions, which includes the emotions elicited by risk-return serotonin.

* Trading can happen instantaneously. We have been in real-time straight through processing for well over a decade. We swipe a credit card or press a button for “Buy” and the money is taken from our account immediately, it’s not like when there was a 7-day clearance for a check.

Anyway, I can either perpetuate the “market is perfect”-“Earth is flat”-”humans+machines-are-destined-to-stay-suboptimally-smart” stance or I can say:

ADAM SMITH WAS NOT AROUND WHEN THE WEB WAS INVENTED, SO NONE OF HIS THEORIES OR MODELS COULD POSSIBLY CAPTURE THAT THIS TECHNOLOGY WE CALL WWW CONTRIBUTED TO THE SPREADING OF IMPERFECT INFORMATION ABOUT THE US MORTAGE SECTOR BEYOND BORDERS AND TRADING JURISDICTIONS. MOREOVER, THE INTERDEPENDENCY OF NATIONAL ECONOMIES OVER THE SAME TOXIC ASSETS IS A PHENOMENON SMITH’S THEORIES COULD NOT POSSIBLY ACCOUNT FOR SINCE IN HIS DAYS THERE WAS NO WTO, GATT, NAFTA, EU ETC.

HE COULD ALSO NOT POSSIBLY HAVE PROJECTED HOW TECHNOLOGY WOULD FACILITATE THE VELOCITY AT WHICH MORTGAGE PRODUCTS WERE TRADED AND INFECTED THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM.

So…………………yes, as much as I respect Adam Smith as the godfather of capitalism, it is worth examining some of his core tenets to reflect the changes that the Web has brought.

Importantly, to contribute to the position that “We need tools to improve information quality” and “Humans+machines-can-become-smarter!” Since machines can only be as smart as their human inventors, we may have to “think-out-of-the-box”, “from left field”, “throw curve balls”, apply our imagination, cross-pollinate some concepts and innovate some tools to deal with……….

THE IMPERFECT INFORMATION SCENARIO

Now, when I look at the Web it’s obvious that there are all types of occurrences of imperfect information and this is manifested in everything from Google’s PageRanks algorithms to 5-star rating systems with their two extremes and through to recommendation threads where we have to plough through hundreds of non-consequential comments to get to any gold nuggets.

Then when I reflect on my experiences with semantic technologies and conversations I’ve engaged in with leading thinkers and practitioners on the issue of topic clustering rather than time stamping, this keeps distilling in my brain:

IMPERFECT INFORMATION PERSISTS because we haven’t yet built the tools that coalesce, contextualize and make sense of that information in a way which is coherent and inheritable in a way that’s also parseable and has dimension and extensibility.

A way that mimics the way DNA operates, actually. Hmmm……

Here’s a reminder of how the Linking Open Data group drew their own connections and then how I redrafted it as a DNA-esque model:

See? Even before any coding is involved, I visualize and architect the way objects and structures are related and interact in a different way from how some others see the same space.

So I have some choices:

(1.) Sit back and say, “Let’s hope that some brainiac guys from Harvard / MIT / Stanford / Imperial / Cambridge / Apple / Google / MS / FB / W3C figure it out before I die………..

So that my kids aren’t forced to use the same non-smart, imperfect information which means their generation will also cause another global financial crisis on the scales of 1939 and 2007” and corporate ignorance about their own consumer base and how to service culturally-diverse consumers persists; or

(2.) Go on vacation, catch a tan and enjoy long lunches.

(3.) Invent the solution for my generation and my kids’ generation.

They say that innovation is “borne out of necessity” so………..there it is and here we are.

360-2020 IS SO SIMPLE EVEN MY MOTHER GETS IT!

Given that my mother is a tech novice, the fact she says 360-2020 makes sense and is easy to use (from what I’ve shown her) is reassuring. Of course like that CEO she’s also said, “It’s not an easy problem to solve”.

“Yes, but when 360-2020 is fully realized, then imperfect information online will be reduced and whole new forms of computational mathematics and economic modeling that can marry with neuro-biochemical mechanisms will be invented!”

Surely that’s worth committing Twain knowhow and a lifetime to.

THE COMPUTATIONAL CHALLENGE + CAVEMEN

Well, when the tools don’t exist it’s our challenge, our imagination, our pragmatism, our collaboration and our journey to build them.

Otherwise we simply wouldn’t leave the caves!

Caves can offer us warmth, but the sun outside offers that, light, photosynthesis, Vitamin D and a whole world of opportunities and Enlightenment beyond the cave!!!

To close this blog post, below is a funny spoof video on how cavemen learnt to trade, followed by a link to a scene from ‘A Beautiful Mind’ in which Nash’s equilibrium is explicated with Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ to provide more clarity on HOW and WHY people make trading decisions and tackle Prisoner’s Dilemma-type issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Z_UnshDlY

In a sense, we’re prisoners of the Web and its current limitations. There are three doors and here’s what’s behind them:

(1.) More of the same structure and Bayesian approaches to information ranking.

(2.) The same structure with information tagging (e.g., semantics) and scalar clustering and ranking (e.g., 5-stars) that don’t enable us to QUALIFY the context or meaning from the content — merely to quantify frequency of occurrence.

(3.) A revolution of structuring, contextualizing, quanti-qualifying and coalescing information that makes sense and coherence.

Since humans are intelligent and have life choices, I choose to build 360-2020 as a key for Door (3). Even though I’m not in the league of thinkers of the stature of Smith, Nash and other greats I’m hopeful that some people of that stature and those smarts will guide and support me along this journey.

(1.) There’s no point filing anything.

(2.) Let’s just build it with no project plan, no contractual responsibilities between the founder(s) and maybe look at filing something after the product launches.

(3.) File everything NOW.

It really boils down to the founder(s) preferences and how much they’re prepared to spend to file IP and enforce it. It also varies according to whether the founder(s) believe their product is unique, the market opportunity is sizable, whether they want to use the IP as leverage to attract investors, the likelihood of the patent being enforceable and how much they could earn from licensing their product. For example, there is little point IP filing a typewriter in this day and age when people are migrating towards touch mobile devices where they don’t have to change the ink ribbons or to buy paper or swap the carriage. Equally, there are valid reasons to IP file any pharmaceutical which can cure cancer, aging or diabetes. The different applicability and the sizes of the markets means that the IP considerations are different.

There is no black+white, hard+fast, do-this-and-you-will-become-billionaires rule about IP or about Internet entrepreneurialism. As with Life itself everything is in shades of gray or rainbows and some things simply happen out of coincidence rather than deliberate planning.

Still, I read with interest that Facebook has had patents granted for its newsfeed and user affinity towards applications:

*  http://gigaom.com/2010/02/25/facebook-granted-news-feed-patent/

* http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-awarded-patent-for-measuring-use-affinity-toward-applications/

*  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_granted_patent_on_the_news_feed_-_this_co.php

I know that some of my friends don’t believe in IP so the Facebook patent may give them some pause for thought, and maybe they’ll realize that when I say that it should be considered I do so in the interests of protecting them from themselves.

Serious investors are unlikely to be interested or to get involved if what to do about IP has not even been considered.

That’s what’s happening out there.

This was after I met with some smart technologists and investors.

“Well, I stated clearly that 360-2020 is a registered trademark and the patent application for the system itself is filed,” I replied. “Also, without my involvement there is NO way anyone can replicate the 360-2020 system or business model since the most important and critical core of it is something only I know and can do.”

Unfortunately, this is the negative side of business: some unprincipled types try to steal your ideas, pass off your hard work and innovation as their own and then make money from it. Ideas and brainstorms themselves have no trademark, patent or other intellectual property rights. However, actual logos and systems do so wherein possible find a good IP lawyer and ask them for advice.

Yes, it costs quite a lot of money but may prove to be worthwhile.

As for being realistic about our inventions and the potential timelines involved, I refer to James Dyson the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner:

The Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner came from a simmering frustration that took nearly twenty-five years to boil over. I channelled this frustration into something practical. I started with a crude cardboard cyclone which appeared to work and this led to machined prototypes as I refined the design. Fifteen years and 5,127 prototypes later I had perfected a vacuum cleaner that didn’t lose suction, the Dual Cyclone. It took 15 years of swearing, struggling, creating, being knocked back by several short-sighted companies and inventing to get to this stage today — James Dyson

The positive aspect of sharing ideas with the RIGHT PEOPLE (i.e., smart, honorable and trustworthy) is that they can either help you accelerate and achieve the realization of your invention and / or they can introduce you to other people who can. The negative risks of sharing with the WRONG PEOPLE (i.e., clueless, dishonorable and untrustworthy) is that they will either steal your ideas and defame you in the process and / or they waste your time.

The latter has happened to me which explains a certain amount of wariness even if I am, by nature, an optimist and enjoy sharing knowhow.

It should also be noted that inventors can take measures to safeguard their brands and inventions but even the likes of Twitter can’t trademark “tweet”:

* http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/tweet_trademarked_not_so_fast_124860.asp?c=rss

So what arose from my interactions with those smart technologists and investors?

They suggested some helpful options:

(1.) Computer algorithms worth looking into.

(2.) Some people to get in touch with.

(3.) HTML5.

* Chinese New Year celebrations

* BAFTA 2010

* London Fashion Week

These are some of the reasons London is such a diverse and vibrant city to live in!

Typically Chinese families gather on New Year’s Eve and have a family feast; the Chinese need little encouragement to cook, eat, converse, wish each other fortuity and enjoy ourselves — LOL. Amongst the dozen or so delicacies served at the family meal, the centerpiece is always……….the fish (our two were braised with shallots whose homophone in Chinese has links with “smartness / intelligence” — what a language, hmmn (?) when even shallots have semantic meanings, LOL):

Anyway, I wish everyone a “新年快樂!”

At the moment there are no Chinese MPs so attendees were and are hopeful that 2010 could prove to be a breakthrough year for the community.

A by-product of the evening is that a BBC World Service producer wants to include me in various program strands in the lead-up to the general election. This is because she asked why people are so apathetic to the political process in the UK and how the Chinese community seems to be part of that apathy and lack of engagement. I shared with her that my family isn’t representative of that apathy; as soon as the electoral registration forms appear I ensure that we register and on polling day we make time to put our ticks in the ballot boxes. In fact, there was one recent occasion where there was a local council election and an anomalous oversight meant that my mother wasn’t able to vote and she was upset about this.

So……..MY FAMILY ARE REGISTERED AND WILL DEFINITELY BE VOTING IN THE MAY 2010 ELECTIONS.

Now, as a general rule we are apolitical — in the sense that we each have our own political affiliations (independent of anyone else in the family), we vote and we discuss global politics, but we don’t get into political stand-offs with other people. We respect that perspectives and political philosophies are diverse because the nature of human experience varies, culturally and ideologically.

Moreover, in our family history, politics has been the source, cause and solution of various situations. Without going into too much information, on the maternal side of my family there have been some important Chinese community figures.

In my own case I would say that I was more involved with political processes and interests when I was younger. At college, I was elected Chair of the Political and Social Studies Group (even though I wasn’t a humanities student like the other participants) and Treasurer of the Student Council. Later, at university, I was elected to the Student Council and subsequently to the Academic Board. All of these experiences involved listening to fellow students about improvements and changes they wanted, ensuring their interests were appropriately communicated to the teaching body and/or providing a platform for students to explore issues that mattered to them.

What I will say is that anyone who is elected into a position of responsibility and representation needs to be genuinely committed to their audience’s interests and to convert any concerns into implementable actions.

The reason people disengage from the political process and elected officials, I noted to the BBC producer, is for the simple fact that the operational turnaround of policy manifesto to legislative passing typically takes at least one term of office (4 years) and the small progress steps are rarely and inappropriately communicated. Ergo, people question what the point of voting is if they can’t directly EXPERIENCE any policy changes. This then makes them perceive politics and politicians as abstracts, removed from them, rather than as realities implementing solutions.

Anyway, amongst the 6 PPCs, there was one candidate I thought represented their party and themselves in an articulate and coherent way and has a good chance of being elected — despite campaigning in a constituency which is a long-time stronghold of another party. They also seem to have a smart online approach to communicating and engaging with their potential voters which will make a difference. People want candidates and information which are accessible, easy to track and comprehensible.

Now here are the pictures and some accompanying comments. Yes and, alas, the iPhone doesn’t take great pictures at night.

(1.) To enter the Westminster complex, there is a thorough security process to pass:

(2.) This is the Great Hall which has recently been renovated:

(3.) The speakers in a group photo and the 11-year-old girl is standing for Junior Parliament:

(4.) The photographers and press show their presence:

(5.) A side room for press and video interviews:

(6.) Simon Woolley, Chair of Operation Black Vote, tells the audience, “The Chinese Barack Obama could be in this room!”:

(7.) Later I open the Chinese fortune cookie handed out to me:

(8.) The message reads, “The opportunity to show your leadership will soon be here.”

LOL!

No, I will not be standing as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in 2010 and have no plans to become the first elected Chinese MP in the UK.

I’d much prefer to be the person who contributes to cracking the conundrums of synergizing global human and machine consciousness to interconnected on+offline spheres of coalescence, coherence and contextualization.

(1.) My mother discussed how English dictionaries, whilst seemingly logical in their alphabetical listings, are actually incoherently ordered.

The same is true of Chinese dictionaries — albeit there we’re dealing with the number of brushstrokes which demarcates where a character is listed rather than any alphabetical primacy.

Even online resources are not as coherently ordered as they could be.

(2.) My friend GC and I discussed the difference between doing something for fame and doing something with purpose: the instant gratification versus legacy principle.

(3.) I showed my mother some of the Italian grammar tables I’ve been constructing and converting into an online database — which I’ll write a search and structure script for once I have all 5,000+ verbs captured.

We’ve been comparing the learning challenges of different languages and about semantics/semiotics generally. Her position is that the English language is the most difficult. This is quite LOL since most Westerners believe the Chinese language is impossibly oblique to grasp. My position is that neither English nor Chinese are as grammatically complex as the Latin languages.

Since my mother doesn’t know any Latin languages she kept fighting her corner for English.

Anyway, whilst I was taking her over the 15 (FIFTEEN!!!) different tenses in French-Spanish-Italian-Portuguese and their rules about subjunctives, imperfect tenses, gender agreements, progressives, prepositions and……..CONNECTORS………

(And watching her eyes enlarge and then glaze over because it was simply mind-boggling to her that with Latin languages we’re dealing with 15 different tenses that affect the verb conversions — one each for the 8 objective pronouns of I, you, etc……)

I HAD THIS EUREKA MOMENT THAT’S RELATED TO SEMANTICS AND THE 360-2020® TOOLS: I NEED TO CODE A DICTIONARY THAT’S DIFFERENT FROM THE WAY SAMUEL JOHNSON AND GOOGLE INDEX THEIR WORDS!!!

(NB: As shown above, Google Translate is wrong yet again. I wrote: “I am a dictionary of life.” GT gave: “My life dictionary.”)

No, the dictionary I have in mind is not about adding semantic layers on top of existing structures or even FOAF. It’s about taking those original logic root alphabetical structures apart and converting them into natural, organic context mechanisms. Logic root approaches are pre-determining what we can currently do with FOAF and is actually making it limited as a contributing framework, from my perspective. “The Semantic Web is a step in the right direction but we’re carrying a sub-optimal tool kit to venture into foreign language terrains…..” that’s my analogy for the situation. Even in an English-speaking terrain the compass can only tell us which is North-South-East-West (direction) and therefore where the wind’s coming from, but the compass has no perception of how cold that wind is or why we keep walking into the wind.

LOL!

The legacy principle is a simple one:

Fame is fleeting, synchronicity is timely and realization is progress — (C) Twain, 2010.

Chinese New Year in 2010 coincides with St. Valentine’s Day, btw, so maybe we’ll all receive love and prosperity!

(1.) Project ART — I need to translate some material from Italian-English and vice versa.

(2.) 360-2020® — I’d like to incorporate some Italian idioms into the system.

(3.) Personal reasons — my boyfriends tend to be Italian or somehow connected to Italy, so it helps if we can communicate in Italian as well as in English; it would be asking too much for them to be able to speak Chinese, French (and enough German and Spanish to find restaurants and order food, but so long as I can we won’t starve on vacation)! Moreover, Italy is one of my favorite countries in the world and I love visiting it and it’s a lot more fun to be able to speak with the locals!

Anyway, I’ve been allocating some time to constructing my Italian grammar tables and an example for AMARE (to love) can be viewed here if readers click on the image; Firefox is better since Safari seems to exclude the table borders:

I discovered two beautiful phrase examples to use:

(1.) Ogni persona che abbiamo amato è una pianta che fruscii nel vento nel giardino della nostra anima — Every person we loved is a plant that rustles in the wind in the garden of our soul.

(2.) Si amarono fuori dagli schemi ma dentro la loro logica, si cercarono più di loro stessi — They loved outside the box but inside their own logic, they sought more than themselves.

Now, readers can search the entire Internet and all the Italian grammar books out there and they’re unlikely to find a single source, one-page overview of every tense related to a verb and how it’s constructed with examples of usage the way that I create my grammar tables.

This is because I learn languages (and do most things like most people) in my own unique, specific, rational and synergistic way so it makes more sense to draw up my own grammar tables — particularly since most online and book resources contain useful albeit disjointed information, and not what I need:

* logical, stranded timeline of tense applicability

* English equivalent of and equivalence with the tense

* Examples that allow clear differentiation between tenses, notably where the subjunctives are concerned.

My languages teacher in high school (who spoke French, Italian, Spanish and English) wrote in my report: “Twain has a natural flair for languages!” At the time I scored either 100% or high 90%s in English, French, German and Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) exams at school. There’s no magic or genius to this; an effective memory, some simple learning strategies and consistent application are helpful to the curious child. Later, she was fairly upset when, against her hopes, I decided to choose Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science as my electives and only French as a language. She believed I should study Modern Languages at university and then go and work for the UN or a diplomatic service.

Clearly, I’m not perfect (linguistically) or an AI robot since I didn’t get 100% all the time — ha ha. Additionally, it’s obvious from reading this blog and some of my online musings that I’m experimental with the grammatical structure, lexicon, vernacular and idioms of languages (whether foreign or code). Still, just because I do this doesn’t mean that I wasn’t properly educated and didn’t earn the appropriate educational qualifications.

I was published in a leading finance trade journal aged 22, was Editor of e-Intelligence and responsible for writing Strategic Investment reports, equity research reports, policy papers and business plans so when I need to write “professionally” I apply a different set of language rules to the ones I use on this blog.

There’s an adage for rebels / anarchists / groundbreakers that flows something like this:

YOU HAVE TO KNOW THE RULES TO BREAK THEM!

My philosophy and approach is more: We have to UNDERSTAND the rules to evolve something smarter.

Now, in recent years, there’s been an educational backlash against the established “rote learning” methodology of education that can still be found in most Oriental classrooms towards “creative learning”, as commented upon here:

· http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5270092.ece

All I can say is that if readers examine my Italian grammar table, it’s an example of CREATIVE ROTE LEARNING. The main reason I can be creative in my approach now as an adult is because as a child I learnt the rote foundations whether it was a language, a times table or the order of a recipe / equation / chemical reaction etc.

For some current educationalists to say that the Google generation doesn’t need to learn by rote at all and can simply go online and google answers and somehow make the structural connections between discrete points of information and “facts” is LAZY, MYOPIC and risks endangering the development and achievements of future intelligence.

There is NO WAY I will let my own child loose onto the Net without any rote learning structure, ability to contextualize and discern genuine facts from threaded untruths to back them up beforehand.

Now let’s make this observation in situ. If I hadn’t benefitted from the rote learning of grammatical structures in English, French, German and Chinese that now help with my accelerated acquisition of Italian, I would just go onto Google Translate, type in a phrase and accept the translation wholesale without any ability to discern its translation accuracy or knowhow to correct any mistakes myself. Why? Well, because those key reference points and structural connectivity that I’d normally develop during rote learning would be missing.

I like Google Translate and it’s good for some but not all uses. Hopefully, Google’s engineers will be able to refine the language filters and grammar construction codes towards more nuanced (semantic) meaning and understanding.

Here are some examples of Google Translation’s “lost in translations”.

(1.) Quando in profumeria vi venderebbero anche la luna.

* Google Translate: When you sell perfume in the moon.

* My human interpretation: (When you’re) in the perfume store they’d also sell you the moon.

(2.) Anche nel caso in cui abbiate venduto tutto e non avete piu’ nulla da riportare in Italia…

* Google Translate: Even if you sold everything and you’re out ‘nothing to report in Italy…

* My human interpretation: Even if you sold everything and you have no more to report in Italy…

(3.) Abbiamo venduto le nostre parti l’anno scorso.

* Google Translate: We sold our shares last year.

* My human interpretation: Abbiamo venduto le nostre azioni l’anno scorso.

(Parti is the literal translation for the plural share of a pie / house. The LATERAL translation of stock shares are azioni and Google Translate’s software interpreted literally, not laterally.)

(4.) Tu mi vendesti per pollastra!

* Google Translate: Thou vendesti for chicken!

* My human interpretation: Thou soldeth me for a chicken!

(Google Translate hasn’t quite mastered antiquated historical Italian idioms yet, :*))

(5.) Non me la sentirei di non farla più la politica.

* Google Translate: I do not feel like it no longer Policy.

* My human interpretation: I don’t feel like doing politics any more.

(Google Translate struggles with direct articles “il, lo, la, i, gli, le” associated with the verb that’s acting on the subject.)

(7.) I Greci sentirono ben presto la necessità di trovare allo Stato un fondamento intrinseco.

* Google Translate: The Greeks soon felt the need to find the state a basis intrinsic.

* My human interpretation: The Greeks soon felt the need to find an intrinsic base for the State.

(Again, this is the Italian literary past tense at play and interpretation of precedence relating to the adjective associated with the subject. The direct object are the Greeks, not the base.)

Readers will note that I refer to Google TRANSLATE whilst my own abilities as human INTERPRETATION. Interpretation embodies with it contextualization and the perceptual reading of sentiments / emotions / intent.

There are definitely challenging tenses for Google Translate and readers won’t be surprised that these tenses involve the expression of hope, desires, emotions, probability, doubt, uncertainty and undefined (non-specific) timelines. Principally:

* imperfetto (imperfect)

* congiuntivo (subjunctive across the board: present, imperfect, past perfect, present perfect)

* trapassato remoto (preterite perfect tense)

It’s well-known that translation software deploys some of the most sophisticated AI and NLP (natural language programming) out there. The fact that the software can’t semantically distinguish or derive tenses involving human emotions and ambiguity (whether in terms of sentiment probability or timeline) is a reflection that there is some way to go before AI agents will make human operators obsolete.

I also want to remark on the fact that Google is a US company and the majority of its employees’ mother language and mental orientation is English. Ergo, it’s not surprising that Google Translate’s reference structures for the imperfect and subjunctive tenses aren’t fully developed. This is because English — whether American English or English English — doesn’t make much use of it whereas in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese it’s “de rigeur” to know it and use it properly.

Also, it may be worth noting how Google Translate is performing with Chinese. My mother’s helping me interpret my ‘ Global Brain’ knol into Chinese (simplified) and Mandarin — her technical Chinese is stronger than mine — and she’s said more than once, “This Google translation makes no sense at all!”

LOL.

Yes, it’s possible that I may contribute to cracking the conundrum: “What can we program into machine code to enable them to understand human emotion, intent and multi-stranded (and not necessarily consequential) verb events?”

I believe that the answers will arise from people who can code at a high-level and are also multi-lingual, so their natural radars can spot where the bridges between machine rules and human context still need to be built and developed.

However, despite Google Translate’s offer for us to contribute to making their translations better, I’m not personally going to sit and spend time manually inputting all my human interpretations and corrections of Google Translate’s various faux pas and faux amis! I use the term “faux amis” deliberately — how can we sense someone is our true friend / language navigator / experience explainer or another human being? There’s some hype about AI agents attached to the Cloud making human customer services redundant. yet there are also voice-to-text translation services out there which have been uncovered and alleged to be little more than thousands of humans in a call center in India / Brazil / China doing the translations rather than the machines.

Let’s also reference back to our experiences with Elbot and the Turing Test:

LOL.

So here’s the reality check: a woman who believes in the Internet and its wonderful tools and is digi-savvy, still goes into a physical rather than virtual classroom to learn and prefers to interact with other human beans rather than online language bots.

[Note to my kid(s): 如果你正在閱讀這篇文章在2020年，媽媽說：“請回到您的公式 / 元素周期 / 表文法的工作了。謝謝。我愛你。理由的所有在這裡!"

Google Translate gets this wrong too, both sides of the translation, i miei bambini. That's why you have to go to Chinese school and be taught it properly. Also, please listen to your 姥姥 when she's explaining the nuances between logic and rationale! ]

:*).