Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 20:42:31 -0700

03 00050 61 01100401

Mr. Garold L. Johnson
dynalt@dynalt.com
Dynamic Alternatives
http://www.dynalt.com/

Subject:	Alliance on Advanding SDS
	Thinking about communicating

Dear Gary,

I sent a letter a few months ago suggesting we discuss your interest in technology for knowledge work, including engineering management that is common in your business. Recently a friend at Intel volunteered some insight on why folks are having difficulty making progress in KM.

You have expressed over the past year important insights about the core issues to be solved, as in your letter on August 20, 2001. This indicates potential for making a meaningful contribution.

Unless people with such insight can coalesce, there will be no progress.

For example, Morris tells me in a recent discussion on September 24, 2001 that so far engineers and researchers in mainstream organizations have failed to design next generation technology for capturing a greater share of organizational memory, loosely called Knowledge Management, because nobody else has ever done this work long enough to grasp the architecture of human thought. This aligns with understandings from a meeting on September 27, 1995 reporting that Intel has given up on solving the problem they identified in 1991 as the purpose of their technology. More recently, Intel's Chairman, Andy Grove, in a broadcast on the Charlie Rose program that the next wave in the march of technology will be merely to apply what is already available. In particular, Intel has given up on the goal to advance beyond wordprocessing, spreadsheets, email and pictures to formulate "killer app."

Recent traffic on OHS/DKR similarly expresses gloom, which is justified by the fact there has been no progress on understanding the issues to be solved. This reflects the fact that the design for technology to aid human thinking is hard to understand. As a result, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, SRI, LANL and others pursuing KM have not progressed.

Since you seem to have in mind some parts of the picture, I am making another stab at drawing your attention to a productive path.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY

Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net