15 January 2010

Comment and Response to Think Piece (DRAFT)

Don Brutzman and I met for 2 hours recently in SW Wash DC to discuss the draft think piece I wrote the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Consortium. I missed the 30 Nov 09 deadline and the 31 Dec 09 extended deadline so I will not be published to say the least. My effort was helpful because it drew out my shortcomings to communicate a message I have been trying to deliver for months if not years. Please consider the Don's comments and my initial responses if though you have not read the think piece on LifeGraphs: Mobile Mirror Worlds for Governments, Corporations and Citizens. http://mobilemirorworlds.blogspot.com has the think piece posted.

Goals - why does reader / sponsor care?

Ans: Reader / sponsor cares because they want an e-memory solution that is built to last as long as they live, not as long as the latest information mgmt/organizer fad/trend survives.

Outcomes - overall & intermediate; how are they measured; costs & benefits

Ans: The overall outcome is the capability to graphically, acoustically and tactically render the nDimensional digital versions of one's traded items and planned trades (remember my 2D chart with age on the vertical axis and time (past/future) on the horizontal axis). For natural persons their human body will probably be the most viewed and mashed up scene graph for health maintenance. Remember the trading entities: natural and legal persons, which breaks out into many combinations including

government-to-government (aka G2G; all levels)
government-to-corporation
government-to-citizen (i.e., a natural person)
corporation-to-corporation (aka B2B)
corporation-to-citizen
citizen-to-citizen (C2C)

The intermediate outcome is the creation of demand for nDimensional digital versions of traded items (goods and services) to be made instantly available at the point of trade. If not at the point of sale then sometime later offered by some legal entity other than the OEM, which will be odd if you ask me.

The outcomes are measured by the number of traders and traded items in the market offering a nDimensional digital version of traded items that is semantically compliant to a global standard for 3D graphics/acoustics/haptics, of course! There are ~6.7 B human on the planet so there are potentially 6 B lifegraphs (and traders) theoretically possible. The Global Traded Item Number (GTIN) is designed to accomodate approximate 10 trillion items at once so there are approximately 10 trillion nDimensional digital versions to author in X3DEdit or some DCC tool. A question I have is how many different traded items does the average government, corporation and citizen who live a century come to own?

The costs are too difficult for me estimate from my desk so I won't try considering you should be skeptical of any attempt since I'm not in the business cost estimation. The benefits are too numerous to list here. I know I will relish having instant access to the cumulative effects and amounts, totals, sums, whatever of anything I have owned or done with little effort to query it. Moreover, being able to plan in nDimensions with digitial versions of traded items or items I design on the same platform is appealling.

Strategy

- incremental (vice leap of faith into utopian future)
- mutual incentives for large variety of participants
- show logical outgrowth of existing initiatives
- medical records?
- personal lifelogging?
- some patients are successful; will spread to other domains

Ans: My strategy is to demonstrate the possible to an audience of local/state/federal government officials/employees, small/medium/large corporate executives/employees and high/middle/low-class citizens/residents all in the same room at the same time. The demo will cover a 100 years of trading between all nine types of people mentioned but compressed a 100,000x (i.e., 8 hrs of running demo per perspective in a 12-hr day for breaks). Imagine a nine-sided room with 90 people in the audience (10 per type that represents the best cross-section of their class) all centered on their screen that's split to show the 1) their user interface and 2) the user interface of the person they are trading with.

Ans: Mutual incentives are lower acquisition costs, faster information access, digitally signed (trusted) content, and richer content if person is willing to sell it.

Ans: Logical outgrowth of existing initiatives, huh! You let me know when your healthcare providers give you a personalized 3D model of your body that is driven by a native XML database of values for your systems, organs, etc. that you can query and use in a collaborative session online. You have got to be kidding me, right. Do you think we are anywhere near the day that patients will be videoconferencing with their providers based on a common view of their digital/virtual anatomy/physiology overlaid with charts showing trends of test results? And then watch the provider submit prescriptions to be mailed to the patients home during the same session? Don't hold your breath.

Audience
general public
technical experts
standards bodies
industry companies
academia

Ans: I don't recognize many of the thousands of categories used in marketing. For LifeGraphs, you are either a natural person or a legal one, period. All those roles we play as natural persons are ephermal in the context of a 100 year lifetime. I think folks will have some difficulty embracing the idea of a LIFETIME OF TRADES planned and executed, and TRADED ITEMS owned, used and dispositioned at their instant disposal. I do.

Importance of Standards

+ commonality creates markets; alternative is ...(balkanization)
- legal progress lags best practices rather than driving their requirements
+ success are technical & economic & social
- numerous negative forces opposing standards

Ans: This is self-evident so I cannot say anything new about this.


Comparative analysis of other approaches (e.g., Mirror Worlds et al. Metaverse Lifelogging)

Strengths
Weaknesses
Constraints
Synthesis

which might help explain why the hoped for result might work

Ans: I don't know of any comparative approaches but I'm looking for something that's been around its owners for 50 years with legs to go another 50 years. There is nothing easy about this even though it should appear simple. If you design a good or service for trade, implement it yourself or have some else do it in 3D graphics, acoutics and haptics (and semantics) with the best digital content creation capabilities. When you trade the product (i.e., good or service) provide the digitally signed nDimensional digital product too. That's it, you as the seller are done! Let the software market provide a new class of digital content management tools so the buyer can experience total recall or total foresight (gotta think symmetrically in time), which is what LifeGraph software will be all about.

Backups - forward/backward compability, reliability, storage, capacity, access, encrypt/decrypt, etc.

Ans: Folks have to be responsible with their lifegraph (virtual/mirror life/existence) just like their real life. They only have one so there might be a new form of insurance to crop up for some who treasure their lifegraph.

Thanks again for hanging out at the Courtyard Marriott Monday evening. I look forward to our next gathering. Maybe I should explain how I plan to boil the ocean by writing a book and steer clear of shorter projects like journal papers. Do I have NYT best-seller in me, LoL?

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