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,



Rod Welch
rodwelch@pacbell.net