THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 19:53:59 -0800
04 00067 61 03030901
Unfinished Revolution
ba-ohs-talk@bootstrap.org
OHS DKR Project
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
..
Subject:
Principles and Learning KM
Not Enough Time Review Links
Dear John,
Thanks for the pointer to Bob Wilensky's important work at UCB,
shown in
your letter
today.
..
I have done a fair amount of review and analysis already, which resulted in
SDS. For example, on May 23, 1989
issues on
flexible structure
were reviewed.
..
On March 3, 1990
connectionist theory
in cognitive science was reviewed
in relation to building knowledge through "stories."
..
On March 19, 1990
reviewed cognitive science in relation to the role of
time
in understanding human memory and the process of
constructing causation.
..
Won't list it all, but there is a considerable body of research
that underlies the design of SDS, which is summarized in POIMS,
NWO, etc. SDS enables pulling this research into a coherent
report in about 10 seconds covering some 15 years. SDS enables
assembling several hundred primary views and thousands of
subsidiary views that place research in useful contexts. From
what I can see of the main headings in your letter, Bob's class
on library management addresses this objective.
..
On November 30, 2000
Jack Park wrote a letter to the group saying roughly
that SDS has the
right structure
for knowledge
and the
interface
that makes the structure useful for people.
..
So far as I know, there is nothing else available that does
this. Jack has done a lot of research, and he has not mentioned
anything else.
..
Apart from Jack's generous comments, there is a body of SDS
records demonstrating that SDS enables a routine intelligence
process for converting information into knowledge, explained in
POIMS. Under Drucker's criteria in his article on October 25, 1999
technology to
routinize
the application of cognitive science,
like SDS does, is a useful solution.
..
As you and Eric Armstrong point out, SDS takes more than 20
minutes to learn, which is understandably
discouraging,
as reported on August 9, 1989.
..
People have difficulty moving from IT to a new way of working
with SDS that integrates a whole range of tasks, because, in the
beginning,
transformation seems overwhelming,
but is none-the-less essential to augment intelligence for
saving time and money and lives. Bill Gates seems to agree,
pointing out on November 8, 2002 that Microsoft is working on
integration
so that people can use more than 5% of the commands
he has come up with over the past 20 years, which studies
indicate is about what most people are using now.
..
In any case, this is a side issue relative to your suggestion for
me to look at some links. Since I am a proponent of links and
crashed on opening links in your letter today, there is a burden
to attempt an explanation that reconciles the disparity between
offering links and not opening other folks links.
..
First, I clicked on a couple of links in your letter, maybe all
of them. These turned out to be more Powerpoint presentations.
Limitations of Powerpoint for doing knowledge work were explained
in a letter several days ago. At that time, despite limitations,
I bit the bullet and spent a couple of three hours or so
analyzing the material you cited on
MyLiftBits,
as reported yesterday.
The only reason
I did that was to demonstrate what "analysis" means. Some months
ago Jack suggested using
constructivist
methods, rather than
hammer away trying to be instructivist. ..
I thought possibly demonstrating how to do "analysis" by taking
specific language in source material and placing it the context
of objectives, requirements and commitments, and then listing out
relevant experience and commenting on correlations, implications
and nuance, as shown by the few examples listed above, that this
effort would be less instructivist and get closer to Jack's
suggestion.
..
The question of whether to invest time for anything always
entails a cost benefit consideration. Where people are just
learning because nothing that has been tried so far has worked,
as indicated by
Jack's letter
yesterday, Bob's class might be useful.
..
There is a different
calculus where there is a system in place. In this latter case,
the core issue with respect to investing time for reviewing Bob's
work at Cal is whether there is available work product
demonstrating that anything he may present can advance the work
already performed. This places a threshold burden on people
recommending new material to show relevance and potential for
improvement.
..
An example is USACE the report that SDS implements
Com Metrics that
saves time and money
at the rate of 10:1, which
lines up pretty well with the general concept that knowledge is
more powerful than information. Your letter today would excite
interest, if it said that something in Bob's class can reasonably
be expected to increase the return to 12:1 or 15:1, etc.
..
Another
issue that would be attractive is that Bob's class will help
people grasp the power of deferred rewards, or overcome fear of
accountability, or laziness, which Jack cited on September 8, 2001 as
restraining transition
to a new way of working. If there is
evidence that Bob knows anything about these big ticket issues,
then that should be presented to support investing time for me to
make the review you are proposing
..
This is nothing new. Recall that Eric Armstrong raised this issue
on 011003. At that time, Eric requested guidance on when to go
off and invest time clicking on a link to something or other.
One criteria proposed is demonstrating some preliminary alignment
with objectives, requirements and commitments. Another criteria
is
analysis
showing that people can save time and money and lives
by implementation to replace or supplement whatever is being done
currently.
..
These criteria suggest focusing research on things that have a
demonstrated track record, under the general rule to: study what
works. Recall Jack raised this idea on May 4, 2000 and worried that
for some reason there is
reluctance to make that study.
This leads to the proposition that transformation from information to
a culture of knowledge begins with study and ultimately requires
opportunity to gain experience using a new way of working that
integrates the gift of time with the power of knowledge.
..
Sincerely,