CONTACTS 

SUBJECTS
Evaluate Market Conditions
Compelling Application, SDS Improves Productivity and Earnings
Wordprocessing/Spreadsheet Primary Useful
Compelling Application, SDS Improves
Usefull Technology Can be Used A Lot
Wordprocessing & Spreadsheets Don't Improve
Encyclopedia of Knowledge History
Remembering (Linked Records - Traceability,

1310 -
1310 -    ..
1311 - Summary/Objective
1312 -
131201 - Follow up ref SDS 49 0000, ref SDS 41 line 270.
131202 -
131203 - Discussed with Morris the event in France on efforts to expand the use
131204 - of computers so more can be sold to increase market penetration from
131205 - the present estimated 30% to the 90% that would signal the arrival of
131206 - the Computer Age in like manner that this is the Television Age,
131207 - because there is 90% penetration in the marketplace, ref SDS 49 line
131208 - 107.
131210 -  ..
131211 - Morris seemed to confirm my understanding from the event that there is
131212 - hope in the IT industry that fiber optics cabling will improve modem
131213 - access in sufficient degree to permit wider use of general servers,
131214 - and this will lower the cost and difficulty of using personal
131215 - computers.  He described the hope as getting millions of people to
131216 - subscribe for a monthly fee of $30 to $40 per month, similar to the
131217 - Internet, and they only have to pay $500 for a stripped down box.
131218 - Morris described the goal to get "Joe 'six pack' to switch from
131219 - watching a ballgame with a beer" to using the lower-cost NC.
131221 -  ..
131222 - He said the need to lower the cost, make simpler to use and create a
131223 - new broad based application that fills a wide generic need has been
131224 - studied in focus groups.
131226 -  ..
131227 - We discussed the market is right now broken down in about 4 major
131228 - segments:
131229 -
131230 -                       Wordprocessing
131231 -                       Spreadsheets
131232 -                       Games
131233 -                       Other
131235 -     ..
131236 -    The "Other" catagory is all of the many useful things computers do
131237 -    that require either or both educational training and consistent use
131238 -    of the program to maintain sufficient skill to obtain the value,
131239 -    like accounting, autocad, physics, chemestry, data base stuff.
131241 -  ..
131242 - Morris said there is a growing market for reference libraries, like
131243 - encyclopedias and cookbooks, for looking things up.  It is possible to
131244 - make the interface easy enough to apply general information look-up
131245 - where the catagories are establsihed. But, general reference sources
131246 - do not support the thing people really want which is to help figure
131247 - out what to look up and what to do with information once it is found,
131248 - i.e., an encyclopedia article or a recipe.
131250 -  ..
131251 - The marketing challenge is that for most of the people who have
131252 - purchased home computers they wind up being used for games and
131253 - collecting dust.  This entertainment value competes with televison and
131254 - doing other things.  Accordingly, it is not clear how to draw a wider
131255 - segment of the population to buy another computer.
131257 -  ..
131258 - My sense is that it would be nice to have the general servers for
131259 - sharing information, but they will have to be backed up by personal
131260 - computers that permit retaining certain stuff locally that is not
131261 - stored generally.  This permits deciding what to share, and also
131262 - maintaing the data locally for uninterupted service when the main
131263 - server has a problem for any thousand reasons.
131265 -  ..
131266 - I asked Morris if he is aware of any thinking from these focus groups
131267 - or otherwise about what the new generic application should be.  Is
131268 - anyone working on it?  He said that if he knew, he would create it.
131270 -  ..
131271 - I raised the prospect of describing SDS as a tool for generic
131272 - remembering and personal discovery.  The need to improve human memory
131273 - may be broadly enough recognized to fill the need for a new broad
131274 - based application that does this, under the guise of enabling people
131275 - to create an "encyclopedia" of their own knowledge, as previously
131276 - discussed with Ross on 940510 0744. ref SDS 8 8403  The growth in
131277 - market share of this application, suggests giving people the ability
131278 - to build their own encyclopedia might work.
131280 -  ..
131281 - The difficulty is that people have to do the work of capturing the
131282 - record of their activity and thoughts, and, second, they have to
131283 - figure out how to organize it, and, third, they have to apply the
131284 - organization they figure out.  Morris asked the other day about how
131285 - SDS meets the challenge of cross-catagorization, ref SDS 41 line 551.
131287 -  ..
131288 - My sense is that SDS has addressed these concerns, but has not solved
131289 - them.  Bill DeHart mentioned the other day on 970220 that he has
131290 - figured out how to use my subject index to look up stuff in my
131291 - records, but he has not done a lot to build his own subject index to
131292 - look up his own stuff. ref SDS 48 8448
131294 -  ..
131295 - This suggests that either or both dedicated training needs to be given
131296 - to developing subject indexing, and along with an infrastructure that
131297 - provides servers and applications, there needs some low cost experts
131298 - who can help people create subjects.  The difficulty with this is that
131299 - the source of insight is the struggle to assign meaning to
131300 - information.  We are not trying to give an off-page expert insight, we
131301 - are trying to give the user insight.  The user is saying "Hey, I don't
131302 - want any more insight, I don't want to think about subjects, beyond
131303 - whatever happens to pop into my head at the moment.
131305 -  ..
131306 - This might then qualify as a risk management issue, since the mind is
131307 - going to conjure up different things at different times.  The risk
131308 - greatly escalates as the nature of work changes from being product
131309 - focused (digging a ditch, chasing a pig for dinner) to being
131310 - information focused (e.g., where should the ditch be dug, how deep,
131311 - what lining, how will the envirnment be impacted, what kind of ham to
131312 - buy), as discussed in the New World Order paper, ref OF 9 line 738.
131313 -
131314 -
131315 -
131316 -
1314 -