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



Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 00:00:49 -0700

03 00050 61 02082002




Unfinished Revolution
OHS DKR Project
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
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Subject:   3-layer Architecture Purpose of DKR?

Eric,

Per your letter today commenting on Murray Altheim's compelling analysis on August 15, and within the meaning of this subject on the purpose of a DKR, and how Jack's idea for a 3 layer architecture might be deployed to help people improve upon current practice, the first layer of the architecture contemplates that folks continue using traditional information technologies for stream-of-conscious communications in conversation and email, which you and Murray feel people like to use without links to original sources because everybody understands the context.
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The issue is not whether to abandon a life-style using spontaneous stream-of-conscious communication in meetings, calls and email, which Murray Altheim urges be maintained, but rather how to transform alphabet technology applied for conventional literacy in order to lift the capacity to think, remember and communicate by capturing a larger share of organizational memory and adding intelligence. This requires an architecture for human cognition that dynamically integrates time and information to continually create, maintain and refine a repository of knowledge, i.e., a DKR.
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Envision for a moment that we have a DKR. How do we empower people to invest a few seconds in layer 1 to create the resource in layer 2 that makes it fast and easy to create layer 3 so that layer 1 is more productive, as we discussed on May 30, for beginning the journey from information to a culture of knowledge? What would light the fire of imagination to transform a culture to a new way of working that takes a few seconds to convert informtion into knowledge for saving time and money, and solving world problems, as you discussed on 000120?
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The 3-layer architecture calls for everybody to continue working in about the same manner, with only a very slight adjustment between existing practices and the 2nd-layer, and requires no learning curve, not even 20 minutes. This is a bridge to the future.
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The second element empowers everyone to draw on a connected record, because someone is adding "intelligence" in layer 3 that makes it fast and easy for people to pick and choose parts of Knowledge Space to use for adding connections based on whatever pops into the mind at the moment. Explicit links make this faster and easier to accomplish within the time people have available for stream-of-conscious communication. This layer takes only a few seconds to empower people with ability to add value to the DKR by making a few connections to save time and money by reducing mistakes and increasing creativity from strengthening understanding.
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The third element is the DKR where there is an array of Knowledge Space that has organization, analysis, alignment, summary and feedback that refines accuracy through continual use of the plan, perform, report cycle which enables concurrent discovery of correlations, implications and nuance. This DKR work is made faster, better and so cheaper by the synergy of explicit links that empower people using the first layer to create a few connections that make up the 2nd layer.
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Synergy between these layers lifts the quality of the broader base of work in layer one for getting things done on time and within budget -- hopefully.
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Layer 3 requires a fast and supple method to organize conventional information, like this letter, or in a book, seeing a movie, attending a meeting, making a call, into chronology that imparts cause and effect based on organic structure that identifies and segments context beyond the limits for span of attention explained by professor Miller in his paper delivered at Harvard in 1955. A flexible structure makes it faster and easier to provide a first order array using traditional outline and forms management methods, sort of like a spreadsheet for knowledge. Automated connections link segments into chains of chronology based on context.
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Custom connections further triangulate meaning to avoid the drift that innately occurs in the human mind and is compounded over time in stream-of-conscious communication through the common practice of paraphrasing.
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Multiple summary descriptions of record segments aid the mind in recognizing alternate views of daily working information.
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Alignment and feedback "debug" understanding to reduce ambiguity of mental maps that occur through stream-of-conscious communication in layers 1 and 2, using a double entry process called "notice" in the law.
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Chronology, contacts, organic structure, objects like a letter, report, file, action items, and key words and connections provided in layer 2, all working together, like the mind uses parallel processing to draw on its memory of experience, make it possible to find most everything in real-time for growing Knowledge Space minute by minute, hour by hour, over days, weeks and years.
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How then to parlay purple numbers that bridge layers one and two into something that gets layer 3 done to augment intelligence for everyone, as you contemplated in your letter on 000423, and later was needed to fill the gaps in national security on 010911. Clearly, your specs for CDR, which Lee Iverson built upon to create NODAL, reviewed on 010620, and now Jack Park has advanced with Nexist, is the kind of evolutionary process that Doug Engelbart envisions.
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Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY




Rod Welch