THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 11:24:55 -0700
03 00050 61 02072902
Mr. Tom Mennecke
Vice President
munnecket@saic.com
Executive Offices
Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC)
10260 Campus Point Drive
San Diego, CA 92121
..
Subject:
SDS, Healthcare, GameSpace
Dear Tom,
Thanks for the bio showing work on improving health care. I am
particularly drawn by the question...
..
Can what counts be counted?
...from the references you submitted on July 26, concerning GameSpace.
.. Earlier this morning I sent a copy to you of a meeting agenda
scheduled for this afternoon with Pat Lincoln at SRI on endorsing the
SDS program as a good start on advancing beyond IT to a culture of
knowledge. SDS is generally explained in the record on 940901...
http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/94/09/01/105333.HTM#2929 .. A related effort has been to develop ways to "count" and measure the
price people pay for relying on "common sense" rather than paying the
cost of good management, as set out in the record on 900303 reviewing
Jeremy Campbell's book "The Improbably Machine"....
...but progress is slow in helping people grasp how to count the
things that count the most in human affairs. It is a continuing
challenge to help people step over the rubicon from information
technology (IT) to a culture of knowledge, as noted recently by the
director of a software shop who pitched the idea of using SDS for
saving time and money to his boss...
.. http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/02/04/15/094355.HTM#5N3M .. Getting an endorsement from Pat Lincoln, Director of Computer Science
at SRI may be helpful, which is the purpose of meeting today.
.. Your interest in network bookkeeping that tracks the binary structure
of debits and credits melds nicely with focus on improving health
care, as shown in the record on 020221....
.. Tom Munnecke wrote:
>
> Thanks for the connections, Rod... normally, I hyperlink everything I
> can, just missed this one.
>
> On the subject of bookkeeping systems, perhaps David Ellerman's paper at
> > http://ellerman.org/Maths/deb_math.doc would be of interest to you and
> Dan...
>
> Poking around your web site (what is the software which drives it?) I
> was interested in your notion of knowledge spaces and meaning spaces. I
> have been working on notions of HealthSpace and GivingSpace for health
> and philanthropy, respectively. The basic theme is that we have
> "transactional" systems which attempt to manage "transformational"
> activities, and end up in a never-ending rat's nest of interfaces. My
> goal is to create transformational "spaces" within which the "fuzzier"
> goals of transformation may happen... in the same way that Tim BL
> created a "space" within which information could exist...
>
> You may be interested in some of the discussions we have been having
> within GivingSpace... last May, we had a meeting at the Santa Fe
> Institute with Murray Gell-Mann
> > http://givingspace.org/May2002/overview.htm and are working on our next
> one at Asilomar in september
> > http://givingspace.org/sep2002/intro.htm
>
> Heather Wood Ion wrote a thoughtful paper relating to this, called, "Can
> What Counts be Counted?"
> > http://www.givingspace.org/papers/may2002/Heather1.doc
>
> (Quick background: I am a VP of Science Applications International Corp
> (www.saic.com) with a background in large scale software architecture
> (was one of the chief architects of the VA and DoD hospital information
> systems). I am taking a sabbatical this year as a visiting scholar at
> Stanford's Digital Vision project > Stanford's Digital Vision project http://reuters.stanford.edu)
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rod Welch [mailto:rowelch@attglobal.net]
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 3:34 PM
> To: Tom Munnecke
> Cc: Park, Jack; Palanza, Dan
> Subject: Network bookkeeping system
>
> Tom,
>
> Responding to your letter on 020725, shown below, it helps to get a
> link to the record for context in responding to inquires. Click on
> the double dots showing an explicit link and copy the address from the
> location bar, then paste it to your letter. It only takes a second
> and this small investment saves a lot of time and money for others to
> understand communication and take appropriate action. It greatly
> increases the chances of getting a response by lowering the level of
> effort.
>
> For example, today, it took about 90 seconds to get the records you
> seem to have in mind. However, that entailed interpretation, and then
> looking up a subject and calling a report. What if I made a mistake
> interpreting what you said, the time could have doubled, tripled or
> worse, taken up to 5 minutes. Some people might have said, "Hey, I
> don't have five seconds, to do a favor, must less 5 minutes, and as a
> result, just give up because it is too hard to find anything, as
> reported on 011003....
>
> > http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/01/10/03/160603.HTM#EC5N
>
> ...and earlier on 010916...
>
> > http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/01/09/16/213549.HTM#KA6H
>
> If you had supplied a link, as shown below, it would have taken only
> one second or maybe 2 or 4 seconds, if the system is slow today.
> That's within the worse case scenario for even the laziest,
> inconsiderate, apathetic interlocutor to respond. In addition, look
> at the cost savings of 900%, 450% or 250% at worst. Any way you look
> at it, multiplied across the nation of people looking things up,
> that's a lot of savings, particularly when combined with the cost of
> fixing mistakes when people just go by the gist of things, because
> they don't have time to find the correct information.
>
> Some people say nobody cares about cost savings because they get paid
> the same whether they work intelligently or not. But, eventually, as
> waste and mistakes build up a critical mass is reached and suddenly
> there is no job, like at Enron, Worldcom, etc.
>
> On the substance of your letter, Dan Palanza has done important work
> on network bookkeeping shown for example in the record on 990706....
>
> > http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/99/07/10/094631.HTM#LF5I
>
> Dan explained his ideas in more detail in a letter on 990804...
>
> > http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/99/08/04/085204.HTM#0001
>
> Recently, application of this method may arise in open source and
> "free" software development, and in various new models proposed for
> example by Jack Park on 020522 discussing micropayments, which implies
> rigorous accounting. By copy, I am letting Jack know of your interest
> in this matter.
>
> Also, providing a copy to OHS/DKR group who has been looking into ways
> to use technology for improving knowledge work.
>
> You may be able to reach Dan at the email address shown above.
>
> Rod
>
>
> > Tom Munnecke wrote:
> >
> > I noticed Dan Palanza's network bookkeeping paper on your web site.
> > very interesting stuff.
> >
> > I am interested in the notion of transformational information
> > systems. any updates to this paper?
> >
> > Tom Munnecke.