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December 6, 2001
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03 00050 61 01120601
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Mr. Jack Park
jackpark@thinkalong.com
Street address
Palo Alto, CA Zip
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Subject:
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SDS Progress Requires Focus
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Dear Jack,
Your continued interest in SDS is gratifying, and reflects the need to advance
Knowledge Management (KM) by building on a foundation that is effective.
Following up
your letter
on December 2nd, pursuing grants to fund research, and inviting investor
participation are worthwhile strategies for expanding deployment of SDS. These
steps lead to better technology by assembling a team focused on SDS for
enabling a
culture of knowledge that grows a new market for
"intelligence" that complements email and wordprocessing.
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Fostering a culture of knowledge requires....
- Communication must focus on issues that advance the work, otherwise
work will not advance, as seen the past two years; so, we have to talk
about core issues of
intelligence and
knowledge
proposed on January 20, 2000, and find a group of people willing and
able to contribute on these issues, as
you pointed out on May 3, 2000, and later in
your letter on November 30, 2000.
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This entails using specific language in POIMS for correspondence that
explores and challenges propositions in relation to demonstrated
ability of SDS, as seen from the record on the Internet, and from
actual use under para 2 below. POIMS and SDS provide a foundation to
build alliances for advancing technology and work practice together, as
seen from the record the past two years showing
people are attracted
by SDS capability, i.e., given the chance to interact with the record
people sense SDS is a new way of working that saves time and money.
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Discussion should relate in large part to
to
saving time and money.
This means
correspondence
should focus on implementing specific
objectives in POIMS, and explain how a reference to another source will
save more time and money than current methods, as set out in the
record on October 3, 2001.
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-
Deployment of SDS among a wider group of people correlates
theory with practice through actual experience, and is essential for
fruitful discussion that builds a culture of knowledge under
paragraph 1.
More people putting SDS records on the Internet will expand the hits
others get
bumping into SDS
that grows awareness about a new way of
working by adding intelligence to information. This will foster a
culture of knowledge that gives people incentive and
courage to move beyond IT for saving time and money.
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Open source needs to be worked out as a
predicate to
your support,
so you feel comfortable, per your letter on December 2nd.
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One idea is to agree that after a specific period, say 20 years,
some portion or all of the code should be released.
In the meantime, people contributing to SDS would earn ownership stock
in an entity that sells SDS and support, and the usual salary and
benefits.
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There are likely a thousand scenarios to get this done. My
feeling is that spade work on creating a stable next generation
technology needs to be accomplished by a core team, and at some point
the garden will be robust enough to continue growing, as seen from the
example of
alphabet technology,
which we seek to enhance. Nobody owns the alphabet, but neither is
anybody tweaking it because it is the underlying tool that everybody
uses to do the tweaking. That is what we want to accomplish: improve
the underlying foundation for improving everything else.
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Your letter on December 2nd pointed out the need to
explain advantages of SDS,
rather than difficulties. This is another KM dilemma reflecting binary forces
of existence. Our aim is to move civilization forward, and in the bargain reap
some reward for the effort. The strategy is to strengthen human cognition by
moving up from information to a culture of knowledge. Giving
people
control over lower levels of organic structure
accomplishes this objective. Like
alphabet technology that enables IT, KM comes at some cost and risk, but the
net result is positive.
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For example, SDS is
fast, easy, fun
and rewarding to use. Knowledge Management
without SDS is hard work, essentially impossible, as reported by
Eric Armstrong
on October 3, 2001.
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People can work as hard as they want with SDS, because it provides a flexible
structure that enables a wide range of
applications and scenarios
in business,
government, education, health, science, etc.
Some applications using
SDS are
psychologically demanding,
but the consequences of not doing
the work is even more stressful, painful and costly, as seen by events on
September 11, 2001. Therefore, on balance,
SDS is the easiest of the two choices. People are not flocking to use
SDS now, because they are ignorant about the power of intelligence, and
hope to get by avoiding accountability, since the consequences of failed
intelligence are deferred and transferred to others, as seen by events on
September 11, 2001. However, those events have created a temporary mood that
intelligence may be necessary after all. We want to capitalize on that mood to
teach people the power of intelligence is worth the effort to learn a new way
of working, so they can get by at a higher level of cognitive power, i.e.,
knowledge rather than information. Faith and belief in
intellgence
is a new paradigm that will move civilization forward.
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SDS is hard for some to learn because you have to do a lot things by pressing
buttons that you are used to doing by guessing, i.e., remembering the gist of
things that, up until now, has been good enough to get by. Learning SDS to
generate "intelligence" is awkward in
the beginning, because like learning to drive a car, you have to learn how to
coordinate hands, eyes and hearing to manipulate levers for accomplishing tasks
that can be done simply by walking around and talking to people.
However, there is a lot
of satisfaction in exercising command and control of the record that leverages
mental strength for navigating
Knowledge Space,
like a car leverages moving
about in dimensional space. For some, it can even be
addictive
like playing a piano for long hours to enjoy the music.
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Summing up, progress requires alliance to foster a
culture of knowledge by
focusing on SDS and POIMS, because this is the only foundation available for
building KM. Ownership participation in SDS should be allocated based on
contributions. Open source needs a specific agreement. Deployment of SDS must
expand use of SDS to correlate theory to practice.
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A core group of 5 - 10 people who are disciples using SDS and able to
make the case for moving from IT to a culture of knowledge within the
meaning of POIMS will enable advance of technology.
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This group of core people might qualify for research grants, as you
discussed in your letter on December 2nd. Who are the 5 - 10 people ready,
willing and able to contribute?
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One thing on which to make immediate progress should be reaching
agreement on open source. The next thing is to identify other team members
toward creating a business that can carry out the work. Then formulate a
business plan that can include seeking grant funding, as you suggest.
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Sincerely,
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
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Copy to:
- Morris Jones
- Gary Johnson