January 28, 2008
Version 7
Table of Contents (hyper linked)
Additional supporting
materials [2]
The Resilience Project:
Preamble
Consequences of a US federal project
Personal knowledge editors and knowledge operating systems
The individual and sense making
Simplification of computer interfaces
Why usability matters in software products
Benefits
to be expected from the Resilience Project’s work
Introduction to the New Science
Request
to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
Focus on Resilience after Disaster
Political Justification for Federal Involvement
Computational Models of Resilience
Appendix A: First-school/second-school controversy
Appendix B: Category and Perception
Appendix C: The Aspects Framework
Appendix D: International Standard
“U.S. federal investments
in government IT spending increased steadily from approximately 36.4 billion
dollars in 2001 to 59.3 billion in 2004.
According to OMB estimates, eighty percent of this spending is for
consultants. Technical expertise and
human capital in the federal government is being greatly weakened as a result
of the "competitive outsourcing" policy and lack of human capital
with IT expertise in the federal government.”
K. E. Fountain,
"Prospects for the Virtual State (2004)
The Resilience Project seeks to renew information
science by coordinating broad scale collaboration amongst scholars, community
leaders, business leaders, innovators, democratic institutions and
international agencies. A founding
process has been under way since 1994.
The Resilience Project founding process has
developed a firm foundation in natural science for community centric
information propagation. This means
that individual control over information spaces will become better
supported.
As the project founding process moves forward, we
expect that a technology based on this foundation will become available to the
public using free and open standards for representing human knowledge. We feel that this technology will be
unburdened by third party ownership, and that information propagation using
these standards will not require consulting contracts of software licenses. [4]
The global climate change debate brings much more
than a concern about carbon emissions.
Increasingly, individual people are expressing concern that
commercialism drives our private lives far too hard and often in the wrong
direction. Television programming is
seen as often debasing, for example.
The massive amount of funds spent on the advertising of drugs is often
improperly influencing doctor decisions to prescribe medications. Upon meditative reflection we understand
that advertising driven consumerism is a core problem, but that capitalism and
free markets need not be. [5]
As part of a near future social-economic system,
a type of “green” consumerism is possible.
The core feature of green consumerism is the presence of transparency on
certain aspects of the manufacturing processes. Social institutions are hard pressed to deal effectively the core
problems related to manufacturing and the several other related problems. Again, the issue of ownership and
transparency is critical. However, the
precise measurement of all commodity transport worldwide is entirely possible. [6]
Such a measurement would make us safer on a number of fronts, as well as reduce
the waste that develops when larger cultural or environmental issues are at
stake.
Thousands of groups, small communities, are
organizing around the issues related to sustainability, and ecosystem based
design. The Resilience Project will
empower these groups in certain ways related to the representation and sharing
of a community’s knowledge. New types of
service industries will develop.
The Resilience Project improves national
security, while not increasing the intrusiveness of existing communications surveillance
systems. The development of
transparency on commodity markets and manufacturing also reduces threats from
terrorism.
History is teaching us a lesson. Over the past several decades, and in
particular since the year 2000 elections, the federal government increasingly
has changed from citizen centric to business centric. We should be clear. The
potential for this shift has been building for some time. The foundation for a social world ordered
and controlled by lines of business is established in our educational
systems. Many people believe that this
single social order is to be feared if left in the hands of the few extremely
wealthy individuals. On the other hand,
a world order that is governed by diversity of culture and respect for life and
property is to be anticipated with excitement about the progress of the human spirit.
Our educational institutions suffer from an
absence of focus on what makes the good life.
For example education, in general, supports television use and related
commodity consumption. Our television
programming takes thought out of the selection process, as we give up our
rights to make healthy choices. Our
medical systems serve a few well but are not aware of many healthy practices,
including the use of natural substances as preventative medicine. Most Americans are underserved by the health
care system. Economic security can be
swept away unexpectedly and in a fashion that leaves us without friends or
family. The social world is ordered for
the purpose of supporting lines of business, and those who are aggressive about
forcing as many as possible into that order.
What is not as yet factored into the lines of business thinking is the
social value of ecosystems that are balanced and thoughtful. The rejection of interest in this social
value, by the current dominant business trends, is where the battle lines are
drawn. The results of this battle will
determine one of two types of globalization: hierarchical and governed by
wealth or distributed and honoring of cultural diversity and respect for life.
So with institutional resistant now entrenched, how
can we move from the age of almost blind consumerism to enlightened
consumerism? The answer is
“transparency” over the commodity markets worldwide.
Transparency is related to “resilience” and
sustainability. So why is transparency about
the markets so difficult to achieve? We
believe that this problem starts with the absence of transparency over our own
selves. What do we each want, how do we
achieve a more quality life for ourselves and for those we love?
We believe that knowledge of self and knowledge
of the natural and social world is brought into question by many of the
consequences of information technology, as currently defined. Information technology unjustly and
incorrectly shifts the authority over moral choice to lines of business that all
to often happen to not care very much about consequences other than self
centered short term profit. By removing
the unjustified authority that the current information technology paradigm has,
we open up a new horizon of opportunity.
Specifically, many of the lines of business that now enjoys damaging
society, like the tobacco industry, will be de-selected either by consumer
choice or lawsuits over damages. New
entrepreneurship will arise that is focused on business that can withstand
transparency over consequences.
Fortunately, a different type of information
science is available.
In order that this new science be properly
introduced into the university system, a broad based scholarly collaboration is
needed at a finer level than we find in our current situation. The supporting literatures are already
published and the principles gathered together. These principles are related to fine control over biological
growth, including learning and cognition.
Using these principles, our individual knowledge of our own health can
be acquired as a private property along with an increased awareness of our
individual strengths and natures. This
possibility might startle many who deeply believe in the current lines of
business and social reality. To others,
the question arises about how can we manifest this more reasonable and
enlightened reality.
Private “conceptual” property, sold as digital
content, can be provably secure using internal software self-monitoring that easily
provides, when requested, legal review of any reasonably claimed breach of
personal privacy. In the lines of
business social order, privacy is now so deeply violated that the concept of
provably secure conceptual property seems absurd. However, economic security can come from the development of
sustainability at a personal level. This
sustainability directly appeals to the Constitution and to protections afforded
by the Constitution. The simplicity of
the new technology (see home page of www.ontologystream.com) creates both an enforcement
mechanism and strong oversight on the use of this enforcement mechanism.
A more balanced and sustainable cultural and
economic world is being presented for our choices. There is a hope shared by many individuals. Human collaboration could establish the
foundation for interactions that are both resilient and sustainable. The single most important enabler of
collaboration is clear communication and respect for diversity. Does the current information technology have
grounding in human knowledge exchanges in context where diversity is expected? The answer is no. Think about this, the uniformity of the presentations of mass
media, the imposition of an almost state religion regarding the rules of
capital formation and use, etc.
Ultimately individual collaboration with other
individuals is what spiritual discipline is all about, be this discipline
exercised within an organized church or within an individual discipline. Collaboration depends on communication and
communication depends on spiritual aspects of social reality. The core concept is that human intention should
have an unencumbered communication infrastructure where information can be pushed
and pulled under some type of responsibility.
This responsibility is developed only when there is empowerment of the
individual and transparency.
Resilience Project scholarship is
interdisciplinary and focused on gaining specific new capabilities related to
understanding the natural world and bringing this world into various kinds of
balances. We make this effort during
this special time in history. Spiritual
communities around the world are attempting to interact based on sets of
principles that come from meditative experiences. This interaction is guided, in most cases, by a profound
understanding that multi-culturalism is an essential element to a peaceful
world. The emerging new real time
measurement of social discourse is a new foundation for the sharing of positive
information. The measurement of the
social discourse will occur, and is occurring.
If this measurement is conducted and hidden by lines of business;
then we have all of the frightening aspects of “big brother”, a merged big
brother consisting of government and business with no boundary between.
We cannot turn back. We must accept what the present is in order help build a positive
future.
The Resilience Project founding process advances
a finding about current funded scholarship.
What we find in American IT programs, both in the university and in the
corporate world, has moved away from correct information science. At first this incorrectness is merely
something observed and to puzzle over.
However, there is now evidence that the incorrectness serves another
master. The root cause of many of the
essential natures of academic information science and of commercial information
technology is a strong dependency on funding from the current economic order. We do not find that capitalism is inferior
to any other economic system, the opposite is asserted. We find only that excesses in political and
economic control has distorted many lines of scholarship.
In particular, the foundation to the current
information science is materialistic and not acknowledging of any sort of
spiritual nature.
The spiritual issue is controversial, so I will
frame this in other terms. Information
about certain categories of private experience is missing. To be specific, we observe the firm
establishment of a system of Internet control centered in the hands of IT
consultants. We see also information
science shaped by the advertising industry, which uses every sexual and deviant
spin to sell product. The result is a
society that has lost touch with the essential natures of being human. Confusion has been intentional. A false set of “human natures” is asserted,
so that the lines of business society can place all of the blame for
difficulties on “human nature”. The
current business sector “best practices” are the greatest obstacles to our
collective effort to meet modern challenges.
It is part of a large “singular coherence” that taps almost all
available personal energies and natural resources.
The promise of this White Paper is that by
correcting information science and eliminating a large percentage of hidden
control from the IT sector, we are able to tip the scales and allow the Old
World Order to rapidly collapse under its own weight. As this collapse occurs we may find relief in a new sense of
optimizing and personal empowerment.
What is available as a replacement is a humanistic planetarization of
consciousness, empowered with the deep realization that various cultures can
and should live in peace, and be respectful of each other.
In follow-on material to this white paper we
examine the role of individual human knowledge in building sustainable
systems. We observe that the current
economic and political system is driving us toward more war and has been
supporting a predatory economic structure with less than moral business
practices. What we characterize as
predatory behavior is not always the case, but is often the case. Corporate raiders, hostile takeovers, and a
cultural of CEO greed ravish business processes that hold social value higher
than the bottom line. Capitalization
does not work for those types of business that have long term goals related to
improving overall economic balances.
The capitalization processes are singularly controlled by short-term
greed and these predatory practices.
Capitalism, as practiced, has turned to feed on society. This is not necessary and is not the kind of
capitalism that the modern world requires.
In spite of the corporate culture, we see that a
new political and economic system is supported on the margins by a new understanding
about what being human is. This is the
sustainability movement. We propose a
transition route that is seen as a counter-trend. We move in the opposite direction from the current communications
infrastructure. The public is finally
well aware that huge investments support poorly designed IT and power
consumption systems that ignore obvious alternatives. We observe that consumerism is out of control.
A central thesis of Resilience Project is that
specific corrections to information science lead to a simplification of
products and services in technology sectors.
The simplification leads to open source software that is many times more
useful than the current costly software systems. The simplification leads to community-based use of computer
science as a means to bring balance where imbalance, greed and self-interests
now reign.
As a counter movement we see strength to be
gained by removing ownership from the best part of computer science, and making
public knowledge about how this best part functions. We advance moral and legal justifications for a proposal to make
all information science public property.
The argument is based on an incorrect notion of justice that supports
war over reconciliation and waste over collaboration.
How can an advanced intellectual position be
communicated to everyone? We can start
with something that is a simple assertion.
The assertion is that the notion of “artificial intelligence” is a
myth that serves to confuse almost everyone.
The AI myth has been the leading edge of computer
science for over three decades. How can
everyday people understand the issues, say as raised by Sir Roger Penrose [7]
in this 1987 book, “The Emperor’s New Mind”.
Sir Roger uses classical logics and mathematical sciences to argue that
AI is like the Emperor in the fable “The Emperor’s New Cloths”. We characterize the situation in a much
harsher way by suggesting that the academic discipline called “artificial
intelligence” is not an objective and principled science. In every sense AI is a prostitution of the
academic environment and the principles of natural science. The evidence is available merely by asking
the average AI profession about the biological roots to their profession. In almost all cases, one will hear a lecture
regarding man not studying how birds fly in the design of airplanes.
AI is the product of the information technology
business sector working in concert with the military industrial complex. The purpose of AI programs is to support the
profitability of the military industrial complex. This purpose has seen great success.
Today, the IT consulting industry and related
industries, many of them components of the military industrial complex, own the
ability to interact with the U.S. federal government. Since the year 2000, this ownership over IT procurement has
become a legal monopoly. The evidence
that industry intended to develop a body of law inhibiting alternatives to AI
is also available. The IT monopoly now
serves a non-sustainable cultural reality and quickly punishes any individual
who attempts to expose the mechanisms now written into federal law.
This is about the change.
Ownership by the business sector over IT
procurement has been made a matter of law due, in part, to the recent
expenditure of 338 billions of dollars on the single federal program called
“e-Gov”. As such the entire expenditure
is perhaps one of the largest instances, in all of our history, of fraudulent
waste of American taxpayer’s dollars.
Additional expenditures at DARPA, NSF, CIA, NIST and others have clear
value in the context of fighting wars, but less than clear value in terms of
social values other than those directly related to war fighting. Social value related to the health and well
being of everyday citizens has suffered, as we continue to see in the responses
to natural disaster.
Our fraud claim over simplifies the
circumstances. However, we make the
point that a deception of massive proportion has occurred and this deception
has consequences to the nature of information science and information
technology. Note that if information
science was working for the intelligence community that we would not have gone
to war in Iraq. [8]
It is easy to note that the U.S. federal
government, the military industrial complex and the entertainment complex
resonate as a single coherence. We
claim that this coherence attempts to block out dissent through economic
motivation and in structuring the public debate. The causes of mistaken assertions are complex and rooted in
historical processes. Many are related
to the pursuit of warfare and some are related simply to the intended control
over information exchanges sought by information technology consulting
corporations and subsidiary business processes. The secrecy in both cases has created a situation where no
official oversight, with the People’s interests in mind, is occurring over
government procurement. This is about
the change.
Then came the Congressional elections of
2006. The
elections are evidence to some of us that the American People seek a better
life, a more complete, balanced and engaged humanity in a far more transparent,
respected and trusted world. The
mistakes of the past seem to make our intentions crystal clear. People are hopeful.
There are well-defined alternatives. However, the major alternatives to
artificial intelligence still face an entrenchment of powers. These powers are those that pursue a non-sustainable
consumption of the Earth’s resources.
The same powers lead us into wars of our own choosing. It is important to not minimize the dangers
of terrorism, but a great deal of our problems with others does seem to be
related to imbalances created in commodity use and our own national arrogance. The greater social problems, often stemming
from historical conflicts between ideologies would be far easier to address if
we have the national resources to provide our children with knowledge of these
historical conflicts.
We fight a war without understanding the
consequences. Why? One answer is that our political and
economic system is oriented towards war fighting. We consume natural resources without comprehension of the
consequences. Why? One answer is that our political and
economic system is oriented towards consumerism. To wake up one morning and understand this is to damage one’s
profession, one’s ability to have a home and one’s family life. This was my experience and the experience of
others that I know.
This is about to change.
At first glance, the means to communicate has
been the written and spoken language, up until radio and television and now the
Internet. However, over thousands of
years of history, there has also been a class of formal languages based
initially in arithmetic, algebra and geometry.
Mathematics has been the formal language of economics and of many, but
not all, of the natural sciences. A
history of formal systems will not be developed in this white paper. [9]
However, we point out that the promise of classical mathematics was to develop
a precise explanation of every physical process using the language of
quantification and the methods of science related to observation and
validation. It must be said that during
the last century this promise was to run up against a number of profound
issues, including those developed in the scholarly work in logic by Kurt Godel [10]
and the work in category theory by Robert Rosen. [11]
These profound issues are now resolvable as part
of a new information science based on natural swcience.
If this White Paper comes into the public light,
the first major battle will be over the rights of the IT sector to continue to
control the ownership of federal procurement processes. Our strategy is to avoid the battle by
developing a functional alternative information infrastructure that is simpler,
more powerful, using existing hardware and infrastructure, and unencumbered by
ownership.
We seek an Act of Congress to fund the Resilience
Project so that this alternative information infrastructure may be provided
quickly. More importantly, we are
calling on professors and scholars to review the spectrum of software patents
and to create as public property data structures, operating systems and
algorithms within a common collaborative system. The system is called the “Knowledge Sharing Core”. [12]
The Knowledge Sharing Core is only now an empty vehicle, but could be the means
to free the public commons of third party ownership over the mechanisms
supporting modern public discourse.
The path of direct confrontation is not
useful. The current information systems
fully justify themselves to themselves and confrontation only places us into
the category of “enemy”. In these times
of wars and rumors of wars, this is not a good category to be in. However, let no one misunderstand the depth
of violation of our sense of right and wrong by a hidden industry that extracts
for its own benefit great wealth under these new procurement arrangements. The word “graft” seems entirely
appropriate. However, and again; the
path of confrontation is not constructive as confrontation simply feeds into
this system.
A simple claim is made. We claim that because of hidden natures, the current computer
technology is far more complicated than necessary. We are able to easily prove that computer technology could be
more powerful and more useful if a far simpler use of computing were made. As a direct and immediate implication of our
work, simplicity and non-proprietary go together.
Given congressional assistance, we predict that
the IT sector will undergo a rapid transformation, a downsizing that will
displace over a million employees. A
two trillion dollar per year sector will vanish and be replaced with new sectors
focused on green energy production and related opportunities. These are big concerns for the founding
process, and will be an issue of considerable public debate. There is good news, however. The employment transition of these
individuals is likely to be directly into the green energy economy. Thus a major part of our initial effort is
to develop designs and plans that aid IT workers in smart manufacturing and in
setting up home solar installations, coupled with wind and elevated water
systems. This is existing work and uses
many of the skills developed in the IT sector.
Major programs will be defined for universities
and colleges to participate in; deconstructing and eliminating powerful IT
schools and departments, and replacing these with departments of knowledge
science. [13]
Colleges and universities in the U.S. make huge
expenditures on IT software and consulting services. An internationally recognized standard on the use of web ontology
and web services will be developed so that an estimated 550 million dollars per
year in external IT consulting can be eliminated from college budgets. [14]
Overall expenditures on IT consulting, not including hardware and software
products, could be as high as 300 billions per year in the U.S. alone.
We observe that the current information
technology does not allow a level of usability that enables individual control
over the personal computing devices we own.
We observe very real, and legal, external control over private lives
enforced by our media systems. There
are; however, many dedicated groups whose shared awareness is leading to the
use of information technology in new ways.
Wikipedia is perhaps the single most important early sign of deep
transformation in how information will be shared.
The Resilience Project is already underway as an
implicit part of many initiatives made in all countries around the world. The tipping point has been reached and
passed. Individual control over one’s
information space is empowering and the importance of this control
recognized. This private control is key
to making a rapid transformation from the IT sector to the green energy
sector.
Why is a simplification of current information
technology important? The answer is
simple. The current technology is not
designed to be in general useable; it is designed to control the information
spaces and to acquire future contracts for services. We are not being purposefully cynical, merely pointing out
obvious facts. These facts have been
hidden only due to a kind of mass blindness.
Like our addictions to gambling and smoking tobacco, we have been lead
into unusual situations by the economics of greed. We see state sponsored gambling as a way to support a public
education system. How interesting?
The keys to the next wave of computer technology
are personal knowledge editors and knowledge operating systems. These systems will be communicated by
wireless devices, be small in storage and processing requirements, and will be
separable from large software systems. Very useful computing systems will be
“off the grid”. Each individual system
will have an internal monitoring mechanism that will measure who and how it is
used. [15]
Legal sanctions for using someone else’s personal knowledge system will be
defined in ways consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Privacy rights will be enforced through the
use of measured instrumentation. See the
footnotes for a description of this instrumentation technology.
The decentralization of green energy production
and the development of sustainability as an operational principle will be aided
by personal knowledge editors and knowledge operating systems. The reality of this cultural transformation
seems inescapable. The near term
reality of the knowledge operating system also seems solid to those on the
founding committee. For additional
description see the 2003 proposal submission from Ontologystream Inc to DARPA. [16]
What usability “means” will shift as more
individuals learn how to develop digital knowledge representations. Standards have evolved that, when presented
as college and school curriculum, will help individuals use these new
tools. Representational standards
include the topic map standard and the web ontology standards. Additional standards will soon be
revealed. Again, the primary problem is
in the poor state of computer science, and the cloud that software ownership
has placed over academic work. Digital
knowledge representations have a confused academic past, with positives and
negatives inherited from the research communities in artificial intelligence
and semantic web representations. So
before the new standards can be expressed and used, we have to clear the air in
the academic environments. [17]
No one underestimates the challenges in this
undertaking.
The Resilience Project is forward looking. We seek to establish a refinement of
economic processes based on an advanced usage of digital information. We provide
evidence that a simplified and yet more powerful human communication
infrastructure is possible. The objects
that are to populate this new space will include specific ontological models
over small production systems, systems that reduce the cost to maintain a good
living and knowledge objects developed by single individuals to understand her
or his self better. The Resilience
Project seeks to establish public transparency and governance for this
infrastructure.
At the center of our concern is the right of
privacy and we offer provable technology that ensures that when these rights
are violated, that law enforcement will have the evidence it needs to take
corrective action. Within this context,
global management of commodity flow can be established, the measurement of
which will create the basis for an international cap and trade regime on carbon
emitters and consumers. [18]
A primary challenge is related to making
available technical information about how to develop sustainable
communities. This information should be
in the form of curriculum supporting life long learning and standards for the
use of digital technology.
Additionally, direct exchange of complex information is needed within
the context of creating and managing sustainable communities.
It is possible to build a free computer
technology that is based on optimal principles. These principles reflect spiritual and moral concerns, related to
the need to know ourselves and to use this understanding proactively to bring
harmony and balance to the cultural and physical worlds.
The Resilience Project founding process
identified existing elements of several simplified infrastructures, and has
defined curriculum around principles defining optimal use of computers and
computer systems. The context is a
de-centralized social system where a significant portion of the population
develop small independent green energy production facilities and use the
Internet to reduce the need for travel by car.
Paradoxically, perhaps, the de-centralization creates increased
dependency on precise knowledge of things at a distance. Commodity exchanges will be one area where
complete transparency will aid in reducing waste in commodity production and
distribution.
Models of resilience should be easy to find and
to study, allowing individuals a greater degree of choice.
The “sense making ability” may be seen as an
ability of rugged individualism, a person living within oneself, making
interpretations about patterns that the natural world presents. Sense making is also applied to living in
the many social environments, and in contributing to those environments. In all cases, an interpretative act is
involved in taking perception and making sense of perception.
Sense making is part of what being human is all
about. The current historical setting
places specific challenges on each individual.
We have talked about some of the issues in the previous sections. The challenges are for each person both
unique and having shared elements.
To meet the challenges, the individual may seek
to gain increasing awareness of consequences.
Should I move to the country and develop a small farm or can I figure
out some way to participate in the green revolution while living in the city? How can I be a positive force while at the
same time fulfilling those things that I envision? To gain increasing
awareness, socially and economically, the human self might usefully seek to
have recourse to a rational model of her or his experiences.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the school curriculum gave
us a clearer understanding about how we find personal and private knowledge,
and how we as individuals might over a life time come to find clarity in one’s
own appreciation of one’s own self?
Our analysis suggests that the individual human
person's control over private and public information spaces will be empowered
by the provision of perceptual transparency related to the consequences of
behavior. Stratification is a new
principle that promises to separate the particular instances of an individual’s
experience from archetypal knowledge in the form of ontological models.
We do not speak about others’ ability to see what
we do; this right of privacy is protected by the Constitution. We speak about an increasing knowledge of
self and of the natural world around us.
We argue that social value is revealed when our
information systems support individual human investigations by increasing the
quality of awareness about ourselves and about the world we live in. A new economic model can be based on
individual entrepreneurship, focused on sustainability and high quality of
living. This model provides control
over individual experience to the individual working within small and perhaps
distributed communities.
The Resilience Project suggests that a
simplification of computer technology is possible. This simplification arises from a small number of provably
optimal algorithms and data encoding structures. A key issue related to ownership of sub-optimal algorithms and
data-encoding structures is addressed by identifying optimal algorithms and
data-encoding structures as elements of discrete mathematics. This strategy creates public property rather
than private property, thus making public the proper foundation for information
science. [19] Compensation is paid to human individuals
who create new property, of course.
However, the issue before us now is in selecting a covering [20]
for foundations in a way that empowers a de-facto standard.
Let us pause and consider some general systems
theory. We hold, as a matter of
objective science, that sustainability depends on knowledge of systems. The principle of transparency is
simple. To exist within a sustainable economic
system each person must have an understanding of consequences.
To acquire knowledge one must find
transparency. To find transparency
there must be an open modeling process that depends on action into a complex
world and the perception of the consequences of that action. We assert that the science of systems and of
action-perception cycles is well established and can be applied
methodologically to support individual initiative. We assert that this methodology can be facilitated in
non-proprietary algorithms and data encoding processes. We assert that this facilitation can occur
rapidly, within six months. See, for
example the outline of a worldwide commodity control system designed for U.S.
Customs in 2002. [21] Also see a proposed architecture for
anticipatory computing made in 2004 to the agency ARDA. [22]
From theory one might suppose that clear
knowledge is the single most essential element required for
sustainability. For example, if a
specific sustainability effort is based on manufacturing and distribution then
clear and specific knowledge is required of the input and output flow that
connects that system to other systems.
Sustainability and localization of production and consumption leads to
the types of economic and social systems that are widely discussed in the
sustainable communities movement.
Paradoxically, localization may lead to increased lines of interactions
between physically distinct locations.
These issues arise out of opportunities produced by increasing local
sustainability and in connecting physically remote locations using the Internet
and knowledge based models. [23]
So what is missing? Knowledge of consequences arises naturally, but proprietary
interests heavily burden transparency.
Creative control can be made to conform to a social order, but the
issues of ownership have to be addressed in a reasonable fashion. We often can, as individuals, see what might
be done to make things better, to increase social value, but have decreasing
actual capability to effect that change.
Can we turn the current situation around?
The answer is yes. Given something like the Resilience Project, control over
computer processing will shift from the software community to the larger
community of everyone. This is not
really a big deal, technically. Third
party control over the design of computer processes can be minimized over
several short years. The most difficult
subtask we face is a required shift in job skills for IT professionals. But as mentioned above, there is good
news. If the first year budget is as we
have requested, a new generation of wireless “knowledge devices” will appear in
the marketplace. These devices will
have a program that presents measured quantities. Individuals, the generic “human individual”, will be empowered to
gain transparency and knowledge about systems and systems of systems. New industries and new serve sectors will
arise based on the use of semantic desktops [24]
and knowledge operating systems.
A single set of examples is most
illustrative. Why cannot any individual
human configure sensors and control elements so that one’s own home can be
securely viewed over the Internet or wireless cell phone? Why cannot any individual develop a control
system that allows the viewing and control over a home gardening system? The answers seem obvious.
What follows from the Resilience Project is
public transparency into what is possible and what has been actualized by
sustainability innovations. At the core
of our objectives; economically and culturally, a social movement may soon well
specify capitalization processes of a new type. The entrepreneurial work will develop sustainable manufacturing
systems connected by a knowledge system.
Such a future would be bright indeed!
Think of it in this way. A computer system is like a machine with
energy inputs and outputs. If third
party software designers take some of the energy outputs as a charge on the
system, there is less energy output available for use in creating sustainable
work directed by the user of the software.
If the user of the software constantly must attend to software
maintenance issues such as firewall security, passwords and spam; there is less
energy that can be applied by the user, and taken by the user to sustain his or
her intentionality. If the user is
constantly having his or her attention re-directed by advertising then the
intentionality of the user is tapped.
Again, there is less energy available to the purpose of the user.
Before we go into examples of users creating
sustainable processes we would like to review some scholarship on the nature of
human awareness. We mean to review the
psychological dimension to intentionality and spirituality. We mean to open access to literatures or to
lines of social discussion that have been peripheral to entrepreneurial
computer science. We mean to access
knowledge of the social world, as well as to increase an ability to reach out
and find others with like minds. The
“purpose” of sustainability entrepreneurship will be defined by principles
discovered within this review.
The goals of the Resilience Project are to be
achieved using competitive strategies consistent with market forces, but using
a public trust to own this foundation.
The nature of the public trust is still to be determined.
Perhaps the reader will have some thoughts about
this and make some contributions to our web log. [25]
The benefits from public trust ownership over
computer sciences include a lowering of the overall cost of information
infrastructure, world wide, as well as in allowing new and profound
capabilities such as mediated by collective intelligence. Even in the case of an individual, the
knowledge sharing core design capabilities promise means to evolve context
landscapes. Such viewable structures
measure and provide control influence over complex environments.
An example of a context landscape might be an
information structure that indicates the growth potential from a vineyard. [26]
We believe that formal theorems establish a
foundation for demonstrating optimality and that optimality in itself deserves
to be revealed as public property, available to all. We argue that a small set of optimal algorithms and data encoding
processes will soon form a foundation for all computer technology.
The arguments we make are similar to arguments
that one hears in the various “end of natural science” [27]
arguments. Our argument is that
computer science, unlike natural reality, has a lowest level of organization,
the bits that are either in an up state or a down state. A computer science is defined as a specific
realization of an abstract construction called finite state machines. [28]
Finite state machines have a specific structure that is optimized to do “what
it does”. We argue that a system of
computer science optimizes functions that are designed into that system of
computer science even if the design features are not known explicitly.
We argue that there are in fact many possible
computer sciences. The existing
computer science systems are evolving under a design constraint collectively
imposed by those who build these systems.
Other “systems of computer science” are possible, CoreTalk [29]
being one of these. In any of these
systems, or possible systems, Groupthink, social expression and collective
intelligence is the system “designer”.
It takes some time but it seems clear after a while. The designer may be a collective
intelligence, such as the community of all software programmers. The Resilience Project would shift the
origin of design from programmer specialists to the everyday use of learning
devices.
We have developed a language to talk about
distinctions between computer sciences.
“First school” computer science expects the user to accept designed
features as products. Information
technology is a business sector and will always be a business sector. The “second school” computer science makes
available devices that exercise human intentional control by providing
transparency on how computers function, and reduces that complicatedness of
that computer science. First school is
one “group think”. Second school is a
very different other “group think”.