THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 14:34:52 -0800
04 00067 61 03030801
Unfinished Revolution
OHS DKR Project
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
..
Subject:
Obituary and Re-birth
Quiet No Activity on DKR Project
Dear UnrevII,
Glad to see OHS/DKR coming to life as spring nears, with six (6) or so new
letters after several months of little to no activity.
..
On September 27, 2000 Eric Armstrong wrote asking
why things had been so
"quiet"
for a week or so on communication about OHS/DKR.
..
This thought occurred recently in recognizing things have been
"quiet" the past few months following the holidays. I checked
the obituaries and was relieved to see OHS/DKR was not listed,
and now today suddenly a whole flurry of letters came in
suggesting things are springing back to life.
..
That's what happened in 2000. After Eric's letter,
Eugene Kim
wrote on September 28, 2000
explaining work going on for development of the
OHS/DKR.
..
Soon, Doug published guidance on October 25, 2000
for an
OHS/DKR launch
plan that illustrated
how to put
links in documents
on the Internet, and everyone was
off and running. In fact, Eric was ahead of schedule. On October 17,
even before the launch plan came out, Eric
reported
significant progress,
and a little later on November 21 he
urged others to contribute
because the OHS/DKR work is so critical.
..
Following Eric's example, Eugene Kim contributed strong
leadership on November 26, 2000
by urging folks to implement Doug's launch
plan
using available tools
with greater diligence.
and noting particularly Doug's call for
linking in email. ..
This showed good progress maintaining alignment because a lot of
experience shows that people, organizations and even entire
cultures drift off course due to "meaning drift." Eugene's
insight reminding everyone to follow Doug's lead by aligning
communication and work on the OHS/DKR code with the Launch Plan
was powerful medicine for keeping on track. At that time, Grant
Bowman pointed out that putting
links in email is not that easy.
He asked if people are supposed to change their tools from
familiar ways everybody likes....
..
At that point, Eugene went to work and on January 31, 2001
notified of good news that he had
developed new tools
which Grant and everyone can use to follow advice for
implementing Doug's call to link things up.
..
Well, the rest is history. Soon Jack Park had Nexist going to
improve education and help people with story telling through
narratology. John Maloney related startling breakthroughs with
Grove and Groove. Sergie Brin reported on how meta data and
other searching tools solve the problem Eric related on 011003
that nobody can find anything. Ray Ozzie offered ideas on using
Lotus Notes to avoid the "pain" people experience using email and
weblogs, or something like. Dave Snowden reported how Quickplace
and Sametime have been a big help at IBM.
..
There were some bumps. Paul Fernhout worried on 020530 that good
ideas and technology code was being withheld
by big corporations
and individuals that delayed progress because of worry about
licenses.
..
Just yesterday, however, John Deneen suggested looking at a
Powerpoint presentation by Jim Gemmell on something called
"MyLifeBits." Review showed that MyLifeBits is a project
sponsored by Gordon Bell, who is a senior researcher at
Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center.....
John said to examine the following Powerpoint file....
"MyLifeBits: Fulfilling the Memex Vision"
.. ...which can be downloaded free of charge at the above address.
..
In our discussion, I explained that
Powerpoint presentations are
powerful tools for bad management,
as explained in POIMS,
and citing the
Enron
case, reviewed a year ago on February 4, 2002,
because "knowledge" requires connections to context, which are
missing from pictures, as further related in POIMS defining the
process of
intelligence
that converts information into
knowledge.
..
John was in a hurray, and urged reviewing the MyLifeBits
powerpoint presentation in order to
understand his perspective on advancing Knowledge Management. I
was reminded of Eric Armstrong's perspective on October 3, 2001 when
Eric was worried about wasting a lot of time
directing attention
to sources without having evidence that information is
aligned with objectives, requirements and commitments.
..
But, realizing how frustrating it is when people ignore my own
ideas and requests to read this-that-and-the-other, out of
courtesy and against Eric's sound advice, I went off and looked
at the Powerpoint presentation.
..
Since there are no anchors, links are not available to verify
accuracy nor to understand context. Still, Gimmell says in
pertinent part....
..
Gordon Bell, like Doug Engelbart, wants to develop a "repository"
of information from daily life that includes books, photos, documents,
memos, legal papers, home movies, and everything to create a
"paperless" environment. This reminds of Doug's explanation of a
Knowledge Workshop
set out in Doug's 1972 paper which he
commended to the OHS/DKR group on March 27, 2000.
..
Gordon then poses the question that Eric raised on 010916 that
nobody can find anything in email. ..
Gordon says Microsoft is going to provide full text search and
collection with freedom from strict hierarchy. There will be
many visualizations -- he says "Don't metaphor me in." Better
search tools to find crticial details in time to be
effective was announced by Bill Gates on 021108. Microsoft
plans to make adding annotations that add value fast and easy,
and further will enable people to keep the links they author
based on a system of "transclusion." Microsoft's technology will
help the user tell a "story" with structure that positions
information in time and space. Gordon doesn't mention it, but
"stories" are a form of mental spreadsheet that position data and
information in relation to human values; so, lets agree that
support for stories are another good idea. Microsoft is planning
to support,
..
Ted Nelson's important work on transclusion is slated for
support, and Gordon says the key is "LINKS." That's right, the
presentation shows links in all capitals to emphasize this
requirement. Ted is quoted at length in the presentation slides
arguing for links.
..
Microsoft does not mention Murray Altheim's powerful analysis on
020820 showing that
everybody has voted against links,
and going on to emphasize that
accuracy and context
in communication, provided by links, do not move the conversation forward.
..
John Maloney joined Murray in a letter on 020823 explaining how
correspondence that is supported by the record is invasive and
unwelcome. ..
Then on 020929 Dave Snowden who is leading knowledge management
efforts at IBM explained how
links are difficult for people to
handle. ..
Careful review of Microsoft's planning shows nothing on helping
people transition from familiar ways to a new way of working
called out by Doug.
..
Microsoft does explain that the repository is a data base with
consistent, simple and logical structure, indexing, pivoting,
queries, speed scalability. They say backup is important as is
replication. They say "blob" and links are inherent.
..
Microsoft also proposes features to visualize document
relationships, which sounds like
dialog mapping
that Eugene Kim
is using to great effect for the OHS/DKR to supplement the purple
number system, as reported on September 17, 2001.
..
Jack Park's primer on
Topic Maps
published last year reported on September 11,
2002, also, would seem to provide critical guidance for Microsoft to help
people find information in the MyLifeBits knowledge repository.
..
In sum, John's suggestion to review the Powerpoint presentation
on MyLifeBits showed that Microsoft is working on goals for the
OHS/DKR and other initiatives to improve information management beginning in
the 1960s.
Review further showed plans for technology to support links,
metadata and analysis, which have been
expressly rejected by
engineers, executives and everyone in between, reported on
September 24, 2002.
..
Thus, the threshold question is even if lightening strikes, and Microsoft
breaks through the
barriers that stifle innovation
in a big organization, cited
on 910418, who is going to use it? If people aver "intelligence" because links
boggle the mind,
as Eric anticipated on January 25, 2000,
what will motivate Microsoft
to produce something nobody will buy? Not only are links and analysis
something people have voted against, as related by Murray and John Maloney, but
in many cases people fear the light of knowledge more than the darkness of
ignorance. The hope that ignorance is an excuse to avoid accountability, which
greatly increasing the time and cost of the work, as shown by tragedy and
mayhem on September 11,
2001 and again recently on March 4 a week ago reporting on NASA's
loss of the
Columbia Space Shuttle,
the fear of accountability inherent in the power of knowledge
dries up demand for better knowledge support. That is a question
that pops up from the record, which one hoped the Powerpoint
presentation would address constructively. Since top KM experts
are reticent about using KM, it seemed unlikely to expect the
Powerpoint presentation would show progress on transformation
from information to a culture of knowledge.
..
The second issue is performance. People have been making lists
of features for software since the 1950s.
Doug Engelbart
has come the farthest, shown by the telecon on December 22, 1999.
..
Others at Microsoft, IBM, LANL, DARPA, SRI, Oracle and so on have
made their
lists,
as reported at SRI on March 24, 2000. None of these lists, while
discussing useful features, address the
core issue
noted by Eric Armstrong on
May 3, 2000
and discussed by
Eugene Kim
later that year on June 15.
More recently on May 10, 2001 Steve
Balmer related that
Microsoft has a 5 year plan
to develop XML software to
improve management,
which means that design and implementation of knowledge management efforts
like MyLifeBits is still in the future.
..
A year or so later on November 8, 2002 Bill Gates reported plans for a
project to solve Eric's concern about
finding things on the
computer,
which, as seen from the Microsoft Powerpoint
presentation, is planned for MyLifeBits,
per above, and so is
useful.
..
Naturally, people hope that with Bill on the job, things will
start to move faster. Maybe that accounts for increased email
traffic for OHS/DKR. It is a welcome sign because progress
requires effort which is driven by hope, and talking is one way
to keep hope alive.
..
Another way to improve progress learning and developing new methods,
according to Tom Munnecke at SAIC, is to
study what works,
reported on July 26, 2002.
..
Re-birth requires faith and faith takes evidence that goals are
reachable; not only that something can be done, but, also, that a
new way of working makes a difference in the quality of work.
What counts is performance. Without evidence of performance,
nobody will invest more than 20 minutes required to learn a new
way of working.
..
Sincerely,