@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Well, I suppose if I had a voice and a story like Susan “SuBo” Boyle, the Global Brain knol would have hit ten thousand views within 24 hours rather than two years — LOL. That will teach me about whether I should go for mass common denominator material or high-end, abstract niche topics like artificial intelligence consciousness — double LOL, :*).

In any case, even though the viewership is completely dwarfed by SuBo’s 300 million YouTube views for an obscure collaboration network comprised mostly of MDs, academics and techies a ten thousand view count is a fairly good result.

Anyway, this knol remains a philosophical grounding to the applications I’m developing themselves. Today I’m having lunch with the guy who led development of Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Answers. We’re going to swap notes on data objects and microformats and how inefficient existing ranking systems are which then affect the order in which search items appear on lists etc. etc. etc.

Am I loyal to Google or to Yahoo? Neither. I’m loyal to improving data efficiency, context and clarity on the Web.

Well, the revelatory incidents that happen to us are (more often than not) random, serendipitous and disrupt our previous constructs. Earlier today when I went in search of some iPhone codes I happened across some interesting sites and content:

• Artificial Intelligence – Natural Language Processing – Multiple formats – Christopher Manning, Stanford
• Artificial Intelligence – Machine Learning – YouTube – iTunes –Multiple formats – Andrew Ng, Stanford
• Computer Science 1 – Feed – UCLA
• Discrete Mathematical Structures YouTube – Kamala Krithivasan, IIT
• Introduction to Computer Science: Programming Abstractions- YouTube – iTunes - Multiple formats – Julie Zelenski, Stanford
• Introduction to Computer Science: Programming Paradigms -YouTube – iTunes - Multiple formats – Jerry Cain, Stanford
• Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming – YouTube – Deepak Gupta, IIT
• iPhone Application Development (Spring 2009)- iTunes – Stanford
• Multimedia Systems - iTunes – Surendar Chandra, Notre Dame
• Operating Systems and System Programming – iTunes – Feed – Multiple professors, UC Berkeley
• Operating Systems Principles – iTunes – Surendar Chandra, Notre Dame
• Principles of Digital Communications I - YouTube – iTunes – Profs Gallagher and Zheng, MIT
• The Future of the Internet – iTunes – Ramesh Johari, Stanford

The first thing which is noticeable is that these lectures are provided FOR FREE by US institutions, notably ones where the alumni include the founders of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Paypal, eBay and the other major Internet brands. Somewhat struck by this (and following a link from a site full of code from Applestore apps), I ended up at Harvard’s summer school website:

Then I decided to check what MIT has to offer:

This also made me wonder whether their UK counterparts offer similar summer school courses on computing or Internet entrepreneurship:

So…….whilst Ivy League schools organize summer schools and FREE ONLINE SEMINARS wherein adult professionals can hone their knowhow about computing (potentially with participation counting towards actual exam credits) the UK’s elite institutions don’t seem to provide these. For example, whilst Cambridge offers a wide range of humanities subjects like Egyptology and Landscape History it doesn’t offer any of the types of computing courses listed above from the likes of Harvard, MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Another notable differentiation is in the fee structure. A computing summer school course at Harvard costs US$2,580 for a (4 credits) course. The Entrepreneurial summer school fee at London Business School is GBP6,000 and the focus is on the business plan rather than the computing architecture or design of the start-up.

Hmmn……..maybe the two approaches to computer education (even at summer school level) explain why and how the US produces  the founders of Google, Facebook, eBay, etc. — i.e., THE CULTURE IS CONDUCIVE.

Now, let’s do some twaining here. I hope readers will recall my model for Consciousness which I included in the ‘Global Brain’ knol a while ago:

Perhaps in computing terms (particularly their ability to create the Googles etc.), the Americans are more conscious than the Brits because they have a better developed and enlarged culture of computing that originates from their education provision and comprehensive methods of digital distribution in the first place? Just as Americana culture has also proliferated via the movies, television and apps? Naturally, the Brits could present the case that they have better communication and creativity since it is where Monty Python wordplay, the Swinging Sixties and great Shakespearean prose sparked………………….

Hmmn…..and maybe it’s the Italians who can most claim the cognisance part of any global online consciousness since their word “cognoscenti” inspired the words “digerati” and “technorati”? Command/control would most likely be the contribution of the efficient Germans. Coherence the Chinese because of their natural ying-yang dynamics. Now let’s say collaboration is a Scandinavian trait whilst consideration has its origins from Greek-Indian-Arab philosophy.

Voilà, global consciousness and how each educational contribution from each continent potentially fits in……..(in Twain’s brain, that is) — LOL.

Anyway, over the next few days I’ll be in code bunker benefiting from the Ivy League professors’ wisdoms about mobile languages and architecture.

The BBC producer has been in touch and remains interested in featuring my family and I as a typical household that will be affected by this election and, yet, atypical since we seem to be less apathetic and more informed than most Chinese households. Awareness about global current affairs is a norm for us rather than an anomaly and we’ve had some extremely interesting and involved discussions over the dinner table. If we do take part it will be the first time a Chinese family has appeared on British media and not to talk about cooking, alternative medicines or feng shui but about economic policy, NHS reforms and education. That’s quite a responsibility to be entrusted with as a representation of the Chinese community. The 2010 election is particularly significant for the Chinese community because it’s the first time there are Chinese-origin candidates standing for MP.

As I’ve often highlighted on this blog, we are a family that registers and exercises our rights to vote — unlike the majority of the population who are either switched off from the politicians or simply “don’t get around to it”. Having said this, we are not the types of people who knock on doors or campaign on behalf of any party. There’s sufficient diversity amongst us that every party gets equal discuss-space at the dinner table. We’re less pro fluffy dogmatic ideology and more pro-smarts and pragmatism, so whichever party shows these qualities tends to be regarded more favorably. Generally speaking, we’re politically informed but also politically impartial; we try to critique the coherency of all parties’ policies on a level playing field.

Maybe this family practice explains why when I was at college the politics students elected me as Chair of the Social and Political Sciences Forum — despite the fact that I studied the natural sciences and was not even in any politics classes. Whilst they debated passionately about nuclear proliferation, whether Left / Right / Centrist ideology was the best and “how to revolutionize the world, end poverty and be good citizens” I simply ensured that the forums observed fair play and no one came to fisticuffs. Some people (including my mother and a boyfriend or two) would probably say it’s just as well that I didn’t study law or politics because I’d have natural advantages: articulacy, Devil’s advocacy, assertiveness that diverse perspectives have merits and absolute refusal to be bullied into accepting any position that makes no sense (this includes more senior people telling me mortgage CDOs and prop trading were the way forward prior to the financial crisis when my analysis suggested otherwise).

As it is, technology, science and business are infinitely more fascinating and open up avenues to innovation which is what ultimately makes me tick, so even though I can throw curve balls about Plato, Hobbes, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, et al for fun……Galileo, Descartes, Tesla, Huygens and Nash et al are the ones who throw curve balls at us and make me really think. I like it when curve balls are thrown that challenge existing concepts towards some sort of “Coherent Super-Smart Solution”, btw.

Anyway………….

Today, the Conservatives launched their election manifesto with David Cameron making a call to arms that invoked JFK: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” There were also obvious nods to President Obama’s successful campaign approach with his “Yes, we can” notes, tailored towards British vernacular and tastes:

“Some politicians say: ‘give us your vote and we will sort out all your problems’. We say: real change comes not from government alone. Real change comes when the people are inspired and mobilised, when millions of us are fired up to play a part in the nation’s future.

Yes this is ambitious. Yes it is optimistic. But in the end all the Acts of Parliament, all the new measures, all the new policy initiatives, are just politicians’ words without you and your involvement.

:

Together we can even make politics and politicians work better. And if we can do that, we can do anything. Yes, together we can do anything.”

This has been analyzed as a clear delineation between the Conservatives preference for a “Big Society” rather than Labor’s practice of a “Big State”. The details and implications of the Conservative manifesto have been picked apart by journalists on both the Labor and Conservative ends of the spectrum which makes for good sanity-checking:

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-big-society-corruption-warning

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7165000/Conservative-manifesto-2010-general-election-party-policy.html

Interestingly I paraphrased that JFK quote myself when I successfully campaigned for election to the Student Council at university. I designed a poster with a rocket launch pad accompanied by the tag line, “Ask not what maths can do for you. Ask what more I can solve for the students of the maths department.” This was after I created the Link-Up Scheme that meant third and second year students voluntarily mentored first year newbies (sold them their books; passed on lecture notes; provided tips on where to find good safe accommodation; which societies were worthwhile to join; etc).

Before readers assume that a mutual appreciation of a JFK quote means that  I’m gravitating towards the Conservatives, I’d say that a “Big Society” risks being bloated, even more bureaucratic, even more costly and is a bit “So what?” Now if David Cameron’s speech had said something along the lines of this:

“It’s time for this country to become a SMART SOCIETY again. A smart society that’s respected around the world for our strong economy, for our educational standards, for our democratic values, for our scientific innovations, for our ability to be tolerant as well as considered about our cultural diversity. A smart society that encourages world-class companies and entrepreneurialism and embraces success whilst also providing support for and reaching out with our hands to help the more vulnerable (children, the elderly, the under-employed) ….This is the opportunity and potential to achieve before us — as individuals, as members of our extended families, as contributors to our local communities, as citizens and shareholders in UK PLC.

Now…..To make this country worthy of its Triple A rating, we need to appreciate that we’re all in this together. That it makes sense to work together in order to achieve anything in life. That is… by our minds, our hearts, our hands and our collectivity WE WILL DO THIS. We will make our society better and become the benchmark and beacon of bright futures. Not simply that we can, but we will.

To borrow Mark Twain, he said that, “I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.” In the same way, this society — the people of Britain — have the chance to show that we have higher and grander principles than Gordon Brown. He could not deliver on previous Labor manifestos — whether as Chancellor or as Prime Minister; we can and WE WILL.”

Now that sort of speech would have more of a punch and commitment to action rather than what the Conservatives conveyed today at Battersea Power Station.

As for the Liberal Democrats, I read that Nick Clegg wants to ban bankers’ bonuses or at least cap them at GBP2,500 with any other benefits being payable as shares which have to be vested and cannot be exercised for at least 5 years. Hmmn…..let’s examine some consequences of introducing this policy:

(1.) Bankers would be less incentivized to competitively chase down those US$ billion dollar transactions that earn US$ hundred millions in revenue fees that go into a bank’s balance sheet ===> EARNINGS WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO CORPORATION TAX that then gets funneled back into government spending on public services;

(2.) Bankers wouldn’t be out there spending any of those huge cash bonuses to help drive the retail or housing economy (on client lunches, in wine bars, in clothes stores, on healthcare, in investment properties — all sectors that employ people for whom bankers contribute notable revenues); and

(3.) Brain drain because those bankers would simply relocate to Singapore, New York, Rio etc. and stimulate those countries retail and property economies. Their children would be educated in those countries which means those educational fees would not flow back to the UK and the next generation of professionals (who would otherwise belong to UK PLC) will belong to Other Country SA / INC.

I am as disappointed as the next person about the global financial crisis and I also believe reforms are needed. However, any poorly thought out / knee jerk populism reform for electioneering purposes is as unhelpful as any “business as usual” modus. We need to have the imagination, the knowhow and the commitment of purpose to properly examine the information that’s going into systems which affect the decision-making process and economic models — whether that is at global CEO and board level or at local Joe/Jane Public commercial level.

There was a lot of quantitative information available about a potential market for subprime mortgages, about interest rate movements, about debt repayment schedules, about the risk layers of compounded CDOs, about governments wanting to stimulate investment by foreign funds seeking higher returns from those subprime CDOs.

However, there was insufficient QUALITATIVE INFORMATION about the perceptions, tastes, emotional states and time dynamics of those subprime mortgage households, the bankers who constructed the financial instruments, the risk exposure of the banks and the culpability of governments, regulatory agencies and external consultancies. So if we are to get any cogent handle on the global financial crisis we need to grasp the importance of those missing QUALITATIVE ELEMENTS that drove and affected the quantitative value losses.

See? It requires more intelligence than simply pointing lazy fingers at the bankers and abjugating the contributions to the global financial crisis by governments, by those who borrowed to buy housing for which there was no way they could meet the repayments for, by regulatory agencies and by professional entities (accountancy firms, management consultancies, the media etc.). The latter group are mentioned since they’re supposed to form a sort of Fifth Estate that sanity-checks the strategic coherency of companies, governments and economies.

Most importantly, the contribution of INCOMPLETE AND INCOHERENT INFORMATION IN THE I.T. SYSTEMS AND ON THE INTERNET which —instead of enabling informed 360-2020 perspectives for sound decision making — only enforced blind spots and ignorance that resulted in the subsequent implosion of the global financial system in multiple ways and from different directions.

No reader should underestimate how much I iterate 360-2020 with these questions:

* What is information? Is it a mere series of 0′s and 1′s? Yes and no? -1 / 0 / +1? Or does it have dimension (quality, color, context, time and more)?

* How are we capturing information PRIOR to them being processed by the machines and algorithms?

* Where in the algorithms are the improvements needed?

* How will we include and convert quantitative AND QUALITATIVE elements into differentiation objects that can be read and processed smartly by the machines?

* To what extent will this affect and improve business, economic and decision-making models?

* How will this change in approach to information reduce the risks of another global financial crisis occurring at this level?

So……….it’s not “Big Society” or “Big State” or “Big Ban on Bankers’ Bonuses” which will revolutionize the future as far as I’m concerned.

It’s IMAGINATIVE, SMART, COHERENT THINKING AND REALIZATION on the nature of information as it’s applied to the Internet and the interfaces between humans and the machine algorithms which will affect all our futures (way beyond any national politics or cultural differences).

Today would have been my father’s 66^th birthday if he hadn’t passed away following a coma, induced by a fall and the resultant head injury. It’s also a year today that I posted the ‘Global Brain’ onto Google Knol, which has won every Knol community award possible. On top of that, Thanksgiving falls on this Thursday so it’s quite a day of triangulated serendipity and personal peace.

I was thinking about my father earlier this week because a story surfaced about Rom Houben, a Belgian engineering student, who was diagnosed to have been in a coma for 23 years and now seems to be communicating that he was conscious and could hear the entire time:

· http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,663022,00.html

· http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8378262.stm

· http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/24/coma.man.belgium/index.html

· http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Rom-Houben-Man-Trapped-In-23-Year-Coma-In-Belgium-Was-Conscious-Whole-Time/Article/200911415463106

· http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6930608.ece

· http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/lizhunt/6649381/Rom-Houben-and-the-human-spirit-that-would-not-be-denied.html

· http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/23/man-trapped-coma-23-years

· http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shermer/the-coma-man-hoax_b_371269.html

· http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/houben-communication/

As is clear in the Wired and Huffington Post articles, Houben’s story is not without its skeptics and detractors — particularly those who question the use of “facilitated communication” techniques and technologies and who liken his carer’s interpretations of Houben’s communiqués to be another form of Ouji board psychology.

However, personally, I’m a lot more interested in finding out about his neuroscientist, Dr. Steven Laureys’s, research and analysis at the Coma Science Group, Sart Tilman Liège University Hospital :

· http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be/home/steven.html

· http://fivanblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/conversation-with-dr-steven-laureys.html

· http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/5/916

Several of the news articles mention that the Glasgow Coma Scale is the current established methodology for establishing consciousness via checking physiological responses (eye opening, motor response to pain stimulus, verbal response), and it is this test that I openly challenge is INSUFFICIENT for establishing whether a person is conscious or not.

MY FATHER’S STORY: HOW I KNOW MORE NEEDS TO BE RESEARCHED

Let me share again my father’s story. My family entrusted me with the responsibility of visiting my father and dealing with the doctors AND THANK GOODNESS IT WAS ME because if it was a person less aware, intelligent and thorough than me, then the doctors would have gotten away with a pitiful letter in which they stated that my father was “completely unresponsive” during his coma state.

As a matter of legal record, they later had to apologize for this statement and also for the trauma caused to my family throughout my father’s situation in coroner’s court.

When the coroner notified us that this was the hospital and the neurosurgery team’s account of events (my father was unconscious the whole time, they claimed) and the basis of why they thought there was no need to appear in the coroner’s court to explain any further the medical situation that befell my father, I immediately sent the coroner mobile phone videos I’d made which clearly showed that my father WAS RESPONSIVE, was aware of our presence and could hear us. I also sent the coroner transcripts of the conversations we’d tried to conduct with him and the expression changes in his face.

Initially, there was to be no appearances in the coroner’s court by any professional parties involved. My father’s case was supposed to be a simple letter to the family and case closed.

Needless to say, after I provided the evidence and my account, the neurosurgeon, the hospital trust representative (they were concerned about us taking legal action against them), the ambulance staff and the policeman who found my father collapsed on the streets ALL had to appear in the coroner’s court and account for themselves, under oath.

It’s from personal experience that I know the Glasgow coma scale, the ECGs and the MRI scans are insufficient and that the medical profession needs to explore additional tools and tests to establish human consciousness (physiological as it manifests in the limbs as well as a neural phenomenon).

This is why in the ‘Global Brain’ knol I make a reference to a model of consciousness that challenges the orthodoxy of what neuroscientists think we know about the brain and consciousness. Just because my father had lost his command of communication and physiological control of his limbs, did NOT mean he was unconscious. In my model of consciousness, I list these characteristics to define consciousness:

To this day, I remain convinced that my father could sense our presence — whether that was via hearing our voices or sensing our touch. I believe this because no doctor or nurse in the world (who regards the patient as a number on a ward, only drops by a patient’s bedside to conduct some insufficiently informative tests for 5 minutes and have no emotional history with that patient) are going to spot changes in the coma patient’s face when he recognizes and is cognizant of either the face, voice or touch of cultural inputs he’s familiar with.

The doctors and nurses are ignorant and not there when that happens.

However, family members who sit with their loved one all the hours permitted DO KNOW even the subtlest changes in the person’s face. Then when the mobile video evidence is provided that’s when the doctors and nurses apologize for writing ridiculous statements like the patient was “completely unresponsive” and a level of care which was not what it should have been.

In all probability I’ll contact Dr. Laureys and share my father’s story because becoming more informed about states of consciousness is important and will affect how the medical profession takes care of coma patients and communicate with their families. For example, the neurosurgeons told my mother and I that they had little hope of my father’s chances of survival right next to his hospital bed. That’s one of many procedures I’d change. Personally, I always worked on the belief and principle that my father could hear and sense us. Therefore, in my view, that comment by the doctors should NOT have been said in the same room as him, much less right next to his bed. I included that in my statement to the coroner too, which got another apology from the lead neurosurgeon.

My family was slightly apprehensive when I said I was not going to accept the hospital’s original letter and that it was not only an inaccurate account of my father’s final days, it was also disrespectful to my mother because the information they provided could not help her towards closure or proper grieving. In the end, everyone was glad I did get the professionals to appear at the coroner’s court and the hospital apologized to my mother. That means a lot.

I hope that all readers, whoever and wherever they are, will cherish the time they share with people they love and who are important to them — particularly today at Thanksgiving.

As for my father, I know he’s happy and at peace. We were there beside him and did what we could during his final days and thereafter. We showed love, care, humor, honor and respect.

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……………..:*)

This week the inspirational people really make us think about the creation, meaning and value of life.

(1.) Families with loved ones fighting in Afghanistan

Last week was an incredibly sad time for service personnel and their families. Eight British soldiers died. Army families are an inspiration because of their forbearance and commitment towards their countries. For most of us, including the politicians who have no experience of combat and whose children are not in the front line, we’re several layers abstracted from events but for army families the horrors of war and loss of loved ones are very stark and very real.

For anyone interested in keeping abreast of the situation in Afghanistan (political aspects as well as casualties, analysis and military approach), please visit these sites which includes the one to the Combined Joint Task Force:

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/10/july-2009-british-troop-deaths

* http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tag/afghanistan/

* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/south_asia/afghanistan_pakistan/default.stm

* http://www.cjtf82.com/

* http://www.afghanconflictmonitor.org/2009/07/index.html

(2.) Lord Robert Winston

Lord Winston is Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, one of the world’s leading science institutions, and its first-ever Professor of Science and Society. He first sparked in my consciousness in the early 1990s when the IVF team he led at Hammersmith Hospital made pioneering breakthroughs in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, which identifies defects in human embryos.

His official website is available here: http://www.robertwinston.org/

It may seem strange that child Twain was interested in such things, but at the time my mother had plans I’d become a doctor, my beloved grandmother had passed away from cancer when I was 11 and I wanted to know how the human body and mind worked. It is because of Lord Winston and other scientists of international renown like him that, through books/videos/DVDs of the Royal Institution lectures and television documentaries, kids like me became more educated about science, technology and how it can be harnessed to help society.

The BBC documentaries he’s been involved with have included the BAFTA-winning The Human Body, exploring child development in Child Of Our Time and The Story of God. Here’s a clip examining creativity and one examining religion and belief:

His latest book is Evolution Revolution, published by DK (Dorling Kindersley):

This weekend, he popped up in my consciousness again because of a Times interview in which he reflected on significant people in his life. He included his father and men who had been his intellectual inspirations as well as his patients.

· http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article6648546.ece

Of his patients, he notes:

“It is easy to become too scientific about medicine, so my patients’ pain and anxiety have been crucial in helping me to deal with human problems. They have also helped me to listen more, which has made me a better surgeon and a better person.”

To me this once again highlights that machines can help us make diagnosis and interpret symptoms, but the emotional content and contextualization remains very much human-to-human. So in the case of the Semantic Web and the codes and KIR (knowledge image representation) to-date, we can TECHNICALLY tag concepts but we still have some way to go to extract what emotional meanings the content elicits in each of us.

It’s in the process of hearing, reflecting on the messages conveyed and then acting upon those messages in a constructive way that we become better people.

Ah, and the other reason Lord Winston is an inspiration is because he’s a………polymath. He’s a scientist, a musician and a politician, and someone interested in how the human mind works:

(3.) Tony Benn, MP

Tony Benn is a veteran Labor MP and the current President of the Stop the War coalition (http://www.stopwar.org.uk/). He is a socialist in words and in actions; he was a key politician in the creation of the Peerage Act of 1963, following the renouncement of his own hereditary title of Viscount Stansgate. His father was Secretary of State to India, which led to him meeting Gandhi when he was 6, and he himself served as Secretary of State for Industry during the Harold Wilson premiership.

Although his politics is not to the tastes of all, there was a ‘Words from the Wise’ article with him that made me stop and think:

· http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6648861.ece

Specifically, these two gems:

“Dare to be a Daniel/ Dare to stand alone/ Dare to have a purpose firm!/ Dare to make it known.” — from a hymn by Philip Bliss.

“Encouragement is the most important gift one individual can give to another…”

Anyone interested in Tony Benn and his politics can view him in interview action on YouTube here:

* http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tony+benn&search_type=&aq=f

Anyone who makes it their life’s work to represent the voices of the person in the street in the way Tony Benn has — against attempts to curtail his ability to do so, including from his own political party and the BBC — is simply something to admire and inspiring, regardless of whatever our own political affiliations.

Although, obviously, I can’t claim to have any of Benn’s fortitude of conviction and character, I suppose that the way I envisage the Semantic Web, the Global Brain and Web3.0: socially voiced co-creation is different from the orthodoxy that’s forming — wherein we risk AI and natural language and all the other tech tools we’re throwing at the situation to advance us no more forward than what’s happened over the last 40 years of since Turing’s tests for machine intelligence — and I do feel a need to “make it known”.

The concern is that semantics and increasing man-machine smartness becomes no more than more hype and marketing ploys towards more mass consumerism and calls upon our planet’s resources when, at its core, what we should GENUINELY be striving towards is the education/Enlightenment provision and solution-finding for the world’s challenges (over-production and wastage of resources, poverty, inequitable education provision, medical breakthroughs, etc.).

Maybe in what I’ve produced on the Semantic Web, the Global Brain and Web 3.0: socially-voiced co-creation I am applying Philip Bliss and channeling some of Benn’s words of wisdom……………….

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, :*).

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!

Further to my suggestion on my ‘The Global Brain’ knol:

http://knol.google.com/k/twain/the-global-brain-the-semantic-web-the/31fjy9fjsu1x2/19

that the Linked Data community should consider tidying up their LOD diagram and cross-pollinating it with the debategraph visualization tools, David Price has produced this initial version (please click on the image and you’ll be directed to the debategraph site):

Anyone committed to the advancement of the Global Brain, the Semantic Web and collective sense-making, please visit the debategraph site and help to populate and sanity-check the above graphic.

In seriousness, the debategraph’s systematic and dynamic wiki is a step in the right direction compared with LOD’s current static messy spore:

Bravo to David Price!

* http://debategraph.org/flash/fv.aspx?r=18702&sc=small

and definitely the Semantic Technology 2009 organizers should consider inviting the debategraph team to their event (14-18 June 2009, San Jose, http://www.semantic-conference.com/) to swap notes and move collective sense-making and semantic discern forward!

Oh and you may all like to know that my ‘The Global Brain’ knol has just been awarded the “Top Viewed Knol Award” (my first) to add to its “Top Pick Knol” designation. I’m really proud of this because “Top Pick Knol” is given for knols of the highest quality and it’s good to know that its quantity dimension is doing well too!