THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700



July 16, 2001

03 00050 61 01071601



Mr. Jack Park
jackpark@thinkalong.com
Street address
Palo Alto, CA Zip

Subject:   Peer Review KM in POIMS

Dear Jack,

The letter on April 16 expressed thanks for your comments on the explanation of KM that was added to POIMS on March 21. A few action items resulted from your review, which I have not previously pressed in deference to your busy schedule last April. No doubt you are still busy, but possibly there is time to address KM issues in relation to your work on Nexist, and/or to promote the book project you were discussing last March.

Did you see the explanation of advancing learning through better listening in the record on June 14? How does this align with your vision for using technology to improve education discussed in your letter on February 23, 2001?

Last week Stuart Harrow, a contact at DCMA, which is part of the Defense Department, mentioned that the study proposed in 1995 to show that SDS improves learning at the high school level, could strengthen marketing efforts in industry and government. This draws on the proposition that literacy is a powerful technology for augmenting intelligence, which is set out by Doug Engelbart as a goal for OHS/DKR. Stuart seems to feel there is renewed interest in literacy at this time at DOD. Such a study requires pulling together resources of money and research experts, plus gaining the interest of a school. Stuart at DCMA offered to support the effort. Not sure what this means, other than to comment on a proposal. His thought seemed to be that NSF or possibly the Department of Education (Federal and State) might contribute funding, maybe along with DOD. If so, some in the business community, might also support the effort.

In any event, does contributing to this effort interest you. Your work along a parallel path may justify investigating this idea advanced by DCMA.

Hope all is well.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net


Post Script

Doug Engelbart is striving to develop capability to manage complex, urgent problems. One of the most urgent and complex problems is limited span of attention amidst expanding complexity from expanding population, mobility, commerce and governments that provide fertile ground for meaning drift to grow into loss, conflict, crisis and calamity. Throughout history culture and geography, that physically separated people and organizations, contained the damage of communication occurring everyday, all day long, everywhere, by everyone, that causes bumbling in resolving the tension between doing and thinking that loses track of cause and effect, because the human mind can maintain alignment for only about one minute, and can only track at most seven (7) subjects.

Today, however, globalization and faster information technology (IT) is quickly reducing the safety valve of geography and culture by expanding the base of issues, and shortening the time for a critical mass of error to explode. The early warning is the report that too many people having too many problems is causing productivity, earnings and stock prices to implode. Perhaps this is mere Malthusian musing, not really an urgent complex problem that needs attention. And yet, there is no escaping the fact that preparing SDS records seems to uncover a lot of mistakes that are otherwise overlooked, within the meaning of organic structure, which you asked about on June 22. There is no reason to believe there are any fewer mistakes occurring in communications of government and industry, where high risk activity is occurring, and where even low risk activity is gestating. This adds urgency to augmenting intelligence that can maintain alignment beyond the limits of human mental biology.