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October 11, 2000

04 00067 61 00101101

Mr. Pat Lincoln
Director
Lincoln@csl.sri.com
Computer Science Laboratory
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
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Subject:

Studies and Pilot Test Agenda

Dear Pat,

Events this past year have galvanized national attention on the need for better management, called out by Doug and SRI over the past 40 years. Public demand for improvement actually reflects a deeper need for moving from information to a knowledge based culture. Expanding complexity within industry and government, fueled by the rush to build information infrastrucutre, is causing a crisis in health care, the nation's space program, and now the debacle unfolding with Ford and Firestone. These high profile indicators of havoc, that lies ahead on a growing scale, provide an opportunity for moving decisively to empower people and institutions with a stronger means of converting information into knowledge, so that the information infrastructure being put in place, will become an asset, rather than continue the current path toward entropy.
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Legislative attention on health care, the space program, and now autos, offers a window of opportunity for SRI to lead the way in solving the core challenge of the 21st century: the growing disconnect between limited human mental biology and an expanding complexity that threatens the nation's security, and economy, evidenced by recent dynamics in world markets.
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Health care poses a particular urgency because the baby boom generation will soon impact retirement demographics that dramatically increase the burden of delivering effective care to everyone.
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SRI can propose three steps through its contacts in Congress:

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1. $10M launch study over 12 months to identify the common cause of problems in disparate sectors, which the Congress has addressed this past year: health, space, and autos.
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   SRI can point to initial research over the past 9 months that shows SDS under POIMS technology connects chronologies of cause and effect based on context, which emulates human thinking that converts information into knowledge using a simple intelligence process of plan, perform, report, noticed previously by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
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   This study will establish the lineaments of meaning drift that permeates all human knowledge work, and comprises the hidden cause of entropy in human systems, cited in an earlier study by USAFIT, and which SDS avoids by maintaining alignment of daily work with requirements over long time spans. SDS directly redresses a core weakness of human cognition, i.e., people can only maintain alignment for about a minute, and traditional means of augmenting human cognition using alphabet technology in documents, can no longer keep up with the growing pace of human life. Therefore, it is essential that we move quickly to a deeper solution.
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   If there is a factual and scientific basis established by SRI's study that shows a common cause of failure in health care, the space program and the auto industry, then each of the separate remedies the Congress is pursuing are conflicting, and so cannot be successful. SRI's study will identify strategic and practical solutions that enable the nation to deploy SDS capability for managing complexity across all sectors, i.e., the proverbial boat that lifts all ships.
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2. $20M - $40M project to verify prior work by DNRC, PG&E and USACE that shows SDS is a direct remedy of meaning drift in human cognition. This study would be a 2 - 4 year program of rigorous pilot testing called out by Doug as central to organizational improvement.
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   SRI might be a test organization based on recent interest to improve internal management. Other organizations may need to be paid to participate in effective pilot testing to establish that adding intelligence to information saves time and money. Arrangements could be made for savings to pay for the testing, based on prior experience at DNRC, PG&E and USACE.
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   Federal support for pilot testing knowledge tools is justified by the record showing that without national leadership industry lacks the experience to discover the crucial role of intelligence, since, unlike the government, there is no tradition of an "intelligence" role in business, as further set out in a letter on October 4, 2000 to the DKR team, explaining the dilemma of knowledge management that prevents pilot testing to discover that intelligence saves time and money.
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   Since the Congress has recently focused on three specific sectors (medical, space and autos) enabling follow on legislation should be passed mandating pilot testing of SDS to accomplish accountability which prior legislation has already mandated. It will turn out that in aiming for a better finger pointing, target sectors will be forced to arm themselves with an intelligence capability for avoiding the mistakes that lead to calls for better accountability. This will help overcome fear of accountability by empowering individuals and organizations to get credit for better work, rather than worry about disclosure of mistakes.
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3. $100M pilot test to enhance basic education, and to discover the best level for introducing a fundamental advance in alphabet technology as the only way to prepare a citizenry for a New World Order of expanding complexity, more commonly characterized in the popular media as "information overload." Basic reading and writing skills of literacy will be significantly strengthened, as explained in POIMS. This is the crux of the issue, and the foundation that can lift the nation and civilization to a higher plateau.
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   In the same way that automobiles strengthen mobility, SDS strengthens cognition to enhance continual learning at the academic level, and throughout a lifetime.
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   This project will develop plans for full funding to move from traditional documents that will increasingly stymie progress, to a system of Knowledge Space that teaches our young, the most critical resource for a secure future: how to convert information into useful knowledge, routinely and accurately every day, all day long.
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   Communication Metrics may be a new management science that requires special skills and aptitudes that are shaped and endorsed through university curriculum. Attention to formulating dedicated support for adding intelligence to information recognizes a need for a new work role proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in its report.

   
   

1. National security - better intelligence strengthens the nation.

   How can military intelligence be strengthened by the addition of SDS for organization, analysis, alignment, summary and feedback? A report on August 15, 1998 showed continuing blunders caused by information overload.
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   How can the same capability strengthen the legislative process, industry and education?
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2. Organic Subject Structures - solving the riddle of human cognition

   Is there an underlying universal process, or structure of knowledge, that enables people to efficiently build and exchange organic structures (some authorities speak of an "ontology") to organize and retrieve knowledge sets, in much the same way that the alphabet and grammar enable the exchange of information through documents?
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   Like current research funded by Congress to discover the genetic code, this project identifies the process by which the human mind forms organic coding to retrieve information for sustaining life, growing communities, forming culture and building civilization.
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3. Integrating multiple knowledge sets - solving Pandora's Box

   The complexity of knowledge is clearly demonstrated by the the SDS record of one person over the past 15 years. In some respects this environment is "mind boggling" and overwhelming.

   Methods need to be worked out for efficiently integrating multiple sets of knowledge. This is an ideal issue for the DKR team to take up.
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   Up until now, only information is exchanged in documents. Knowledge that comprises chronologies of cause and effect based on context is retained in the minds of people. Speaking and writing filter knowledge from the subconscious mind through the medium of the conscious mind that makes exchange of information manageable, commonly called communication.

   The SDS environment under POIMS technology more closely entails an exchange of actual knowledge in the subconscious minds of people, which is a more expansive and complex exchange by several orders of magnitude. People unfamiliar with this are initially shocked and overwhelmed. If every person, or merely a large number of people, are generating this form of exchange complexity will necessarily explode.
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   How can this occur, and what are the legal and social ramifications of such exchanges?

4. Operating System, People and Organizations - public or private utility
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   The nation and the world are moving rapidly toward electronic information exchange, but remain rooted in traditional documents as the only means of communication and knowledge growth.
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   POIMS technology offers a stronger paradigm that integrates documents with human thought derived from daily experience. An example is the review of Andy Grove's book, Only the Paranoid Survive,. Initially, the environment appears confusing and overwhelming, but careful review reveals connections between Mr. Grove's book, analysis, prior history, and subsequent action that is not available by any other method, other than the human mind.
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   Over the past 100 years or so, the private sector, with government help, has evolved an efficient operating system for computers that enables a lot of people to benefit from technology. Now, however, in order to take the next step in the evolution of human cognitive capacity, a different model is needed, which makes the computer an efficient....
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   Operating System for People and Organizations

   The history of developing an operating system for the computer shows that focused study and public input is warranted to determine the best method for ensuring efficient application and growth of the capability for use by the widest possible number of people and organizations.
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   The following questions require focused research rather than left to the chance of market forces...

   1. Should this capability be a public utility, as an expansion of the alphabet which nobody owns?
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   2. Who sets the standards for implementation and who controls the growth of the technology?
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   3. Should it be done entirely by private industry, as occurred with the operating system for the computer?
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   4. Should a consortium be formed to establish guidance?

   5. What rules should govern the evolution of the capability?

   6. How can the engine of market forces energize deployment in conjunction with open source methods?

THE WELCH COMPANY

Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net

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Copy to:

1. Doug Engelbart