@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

A Knol contributor wrote a comment on my knol to say that it’s been nominated by other users as the “Best Knol of the Month”.

http://knol.google.com/k/andreas-kemper/best-knol-of-the-month/8bgikaqot3ts/46#

It’s really good to know that others are finding my analysis on the Global Brain informative / helpful / insightful / inspirational / visionary / coherent etc. I know I’m a nano-entity in a world population of billions and I also know that, as bright as I may be, I don’t know all the answers and collectively everyone else does. Admittedly, when I was a child the other kids used to do sing-songs about me, “Twain, Twain, super brain,” or “Twain, Twain, choo-choo train,” which was simply a reflection of their mischief and affection.

My mind and I were always on the go and I did think about the world around us…………A LOT.

This excessive preponderance may explain why the concept of the Global Brain is a paradox which has intrigued, enchanted and challenged me for quite some time now. I was exposed to Neural Networks during Web 1.0 in portfolio optimization of hedge funds as well as in companies at the very forefront of what is now re-marketed as “Cloud Computing” — which was then simply connective infrastructure.

My observation from more recent Web 2.5-wannabe-Web 3.0 experiences is that we seem to be looping back to previous constructs, and that the Semantic breakthroughs needed are still some time-space away. I’ve watched various videos, tested some betas, read the blurbs and the same missing pieces of the jigsaw shout out at me.

I suppose that’s why I wrote the section on CURRENT LIMITATIONS of the Global Brain and asked for Linked Data to be re-imagined. There are some people who may regard it all as “semantic differences and wordplay between the technologists and the marketers”, but if my knol is read carefully it becomes clear it’s actually about the structural approach and insight on the brain, language, perception, inter-cogency etc. that also need to be transposed to the computer and code.

In any case, I’m really glad people are reading the knol, finding it stimulating and engaging with it.

Who knows? It may even be seeding / catalyzing their own exploration of the Global Brain and its associated technologies. The more intelligence that can be brought to bear on this, the better, imo.

Our collective wisdoms and collaborations, shared via the harnessing of technology, are what will find solutions to universal conundrums about economic stability, climate change, poverty alleviation, educational democracy and more.

Season’s greetings to all @T readers!

This is a picture of a little wooden hut up Piz Nair, close to the chalet where I stay in San Moritz.

At the moment I’m in code bunker and have managed to develop these:

·      comment-moderated thread facilities

·      ability to edit text inplace

·      an Ajax/JSON IM facility

·      an auto-complete search tool

·      drag+drop widgets

In 2008, a certain party wasted 10 months of my time. They will NEVER be able to call upon my knowhow, friendship or goodwill ever again. They lost my confidence, my trust, my respect, my tolerance and my belief in their vision, their platform and their execution. They don’t and can’t “walk the talk”. 

In 2009 I’ll be focused on my own to-dos because I can.  

Dynamic rating systems are typically built with Ajax, JSON, php and an SQL database. For the Media Sensors it’s helpful to be able to track who’s designated a rating (so incorporate some type of log-in for each rating or recognition of cookie information), allow only one rating per user on any particular item on a site and to facilitate analysis of that rating on an ongoing and dynamic basis. Elements of semantic search querying will also need to be included.

Ultimately, the Media Sensors solution will be integrated with comments and rss feeds in an intuitive manner as shown by this example using a 5-star rating solution.

There are lots of ways to include comments in rating systems and what would be interesting is to investigate whether it’s possible to modularize comment panels so they can be propagated elsewhere to similar content.

In any case, I spent this weekend creating SQL databases. Here’s an example of an extremely simple one with its query:

//declare the SQL statement that will query the database
$query = “SELECT id, name, year “;
$query .= “FROM cars “;
$query .= “WHERE name=’BMW’”;

with its generated result:

It isn’t only the front-end UI / applet that needs to be user-friendly and simple. The back-end or database also has to be highly functional and enable accurate surfacing of previously input user-generated content so that it’s searchable, semantic, can be analyzed and serves to also calibrate 360-2020 insights on users’ tastes, preferences and perceptions — in conjunction with the front-end Media Sensors.

It’s shaping up, as they say………………….

Following is an sanitized version of an exchange I had with a friend of mine about taxonomies in relation to Semantic representations. 

First, a Google Tech Talk on ‘Visual Perception with Deep Learning’ — 10 April 2008 :

————————————————————————————

I do appreciate the value of taxonomies. It’s the way most scientific classifications are arrived upon. For example, we have a periodic table structure which provides:

(i.) high-level overview of each of the seven groups of chemicals;

(ii) information about how many outer electrons are in each shell according to their membership of a particular group (this proxies parent-child identities); and

(iii.) how they could possibly connect and interact with another chemical from another group. 

I also came across this interesting article on the ’10 Myths of Taxonomies’ which essentially highlights the risks involved in having to adopt someone else’s sets of taxonomies — particularly one in which we have no democratic voice or implementation:

* 10 Myths of Taxonomies — the Montague Review

IS THERE HOPE FOR HUMANS?

There seems to be this postulation amongst the Singularity brigade that

increased AI smartness ===> increased collective intelligence

The counter-argument would be…..

increased AI smartness ===> decreased collective human intelligence

(because they’ll have to think less)

AAAAARGH! QUICK! STOP THE GLOBAL BRAIN EXPRESS!

Personally, I don’t believe the proliferation of information pre-processed by AI necessarily makes each one of us SMARTER. It actually means the knowledge of how that AI was structured to pre-process the information is in the brains of a few select bleeding edge techies and everyone else is simply sheep-like or “dogs eat the dog food” like following whatever results are generated! (Incidentally, this is an anachronistic phrase from Microsoft circa 1988 still apparently being bandied around Silicon Valley — supposedly the cradle of avant garde progress, and let’s bear in mind we’re in 2008 and are supposed to be advancing humans not denigrating their intelligence or identities by ill-thought out associations).

It is possible we humans will erode our own capacity to perceive, to reason, to innovate and to communicate because some of us are too readily abdicating our responsibilities to do so to the machines!

However, we don’t have anything to really worry about because I’m going to share a simple truth…….

THE SINGULARITY IS A PIPE DREAM

The Singularity is unlikely to happen in the way the futurologists insist or according to their timescale of 2040. They all read far too much science fiction and need to more closely proxy terra firma.

Moreover, as evinced by my exclusion from a certain SemWeb some form of ideological eugenics and police state is going to apply to the Global Brain. Not everyone will be invited or have access to plug into it. As much as technologists bleat and spin on like autobots about open source and open house, Terms of Service and contracts (as well as undemocratic feudal warlord oppression of the serfs) will still apply as it has since land laws of C12th England.

TechCo SAYS it’s open this and open that, Google and wannabe minnows alike. However, notice how each tech platform imposes its (sometimes Draconian and contradictory) rules and evicts those whose opinions are different (or threatens to as per the unimaginative and inflexible mindset of the Administrator — please also see Kafka’s writings or Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’).

This is why the Global Brain is never going to be truly global, open or democratic. The controllers/owners can be dictators and the constituents are the conformists, not necessarily by choice or personal conviction but by consideration towards others which is not reflected in a similar equivalence of respect towards them.

Interestingly, it’s well-documented that it could be the unconventionals who “think out of the box” and may be touched by genius or madness, and create the quantum-level breakthroughs in thinking — please see Einstein, Dali, Dosteovsky, other artistic intellectuals and bipolarly brilliant but insane people (more often than not the world’s greatest comedians).

INTELLIGENCE: THE KIDS IN THE CLASSROOM + ONLINE

Let me make this observation. In a class of 30 kids who are 5 years-old they all have exactly the same access to the same stimulus, reading materials, toys, etc. Yet there will always be 1 kid who is knock out quicker and brighter than their peers.

In the same way, every teenager has the same access to the index of information on the Internet. Yet only 1% of those teenagers will actively go in search of the wealth of knowledge with the specific intent of increasing their own know how. 

Technologists and educators imagine that if kids get more tools this will make them smarter.

Not necessarily. It depends on their pre-existing mental orientation, character traits and emotional sense of reward about knowledge. Some of them assign 0 value to knowledge and +1 to Grand Theft Auto rankings. 

FUN+GAMES

Certain proponents of the Global Brain theories and the Singularity are probably breathing huge sighs of relief I’m nowhere near them to present obvious and prescient counter perspectives. They can postulate we’ll all have boosted collective IQs (by the osmosis of proximity to smarter AI) without my notes of pragmatic perspective. Oh and we haven’t factored in the ego element of consciousness and self-awareness yet either! 

Ack! Taxonomies is one thing. If the perception of the person doing the classification is not spot on or nuanced in the first place the mandolin ends up being related to a string instrument because it looks like violin (plus dyslexia or plain ignorance could be involved). 

It’s not the taxonomic tags that show Paris is either a city, a personality or a romantic aspiration which ultimately matters, imo. It’s actually what emotions it evokes and elicits in a person: nostalgia, disregard or longing which help each of us discern meaning from the world and intakes around us.

PERCEPTIONS MORE THAN TAXONOMIES

I’m leaving others to think out the taxonomies issue. The perception dimension has interested me more since childhood. In terms of semantics, graphing the connections that a grape is a fruit that we eat and make wine out of and grows on a vine is less interesting and challenging to me than trying to figure out WHY people like to eat grapes, to drink wine and designate all kinds of adjectives to it — sweet, succulent, tannin aftertaste, globulous, shriveled, meaty, aromatic, green, over-ripe etc. — which reveal their personalities, life aspirations and purchase decisions. 

It’s the perception dimension I’m coding a tool to capture…………………….