26 May 2010

My email to authors of Beyond Total Capture: A Constructive Critique of Lifelogging

10 May 2o10, I wrote the following to Abigail and Steve who wrote a feature article for Communications of the ACM. Neither has replied.

Abigail and Steve,I read your article yesterday with enthusiasm. The article was insightful and thought provoking because I'm eager to go to market with Lifegraphs. LifeGraphs are native XML databases (NXD) initiated by one's parents or guardians at the moment of embryonic discovery (for humans or natural persons) or establishment of legal identity (i.e., governments and corporations--legal persons) and terminated upon their last financial transaction or property disposition at or soon after death or disestablishment.

The mountainous hurdle to effective LifeGraphs is federal legislation to require manufacturers and service providers (i.e., legal persons) to harmoniously repurpose, digitally sign and securely transmit the computer-aided design/drafting files for the goods and services traded with legal and natural persons. To do so is herculean because it means millions of products (i.e., goods and services) like those for the human body, manufactured items and natural elements (e.g., parcels of land, mineral deposits, bodies of water and sectors of air--airspace).

The premise is very soon every good and service in the North American Product Classification System (http://www.census.gov/eos/www/napcs/napcs.htm) will have CAD/D behind it but they all don't get repurposed them for the consumer chain! If you discredit this situation and/or trend then LifeGraphs are a non-starter. If you accept this and think the U.S. Congress will pass an enforceable law for the "21st century e-receipt" then LifeGraph software might form the basis for a Blue Ocean (as in the book Blue Ocean Strategy--www.blueoceanstrategy.com).

Lifegraph software is vaporware today that promises to transform or make irrelevant bookkeepers, accounts, and many trades and professions that have little need for the senses of smell and taste. Those senses are the most difficult to render in an immersive, virtual environment. Using todays' (consumer) technology platforms as a host for the typical 100-yr LifeGraph at its midpoint (of 50 years), an 64GB iPad running LifeGraph software would allow a the 50-yo married Mom to plan, monitor and recall all of her health/medical info via her time-adjusted 3D body scan morphed by her personalized digital human model (PDHM) of all her bodily systems.

Her PDHM is tuned (like a Kalman Filter) with measurements taken by her home health equipment and her healthcare providers, and all inputs are digitally signed and date/time stamped via GPS time receivers on her network.

Say her backyard has a 4-meter wide and 2-meter deep sink hole the morning after torrential rains. She grabs her iPad and calls up the GIS data provided her at the closing by the land parcel seller "by LAW" to see if there has ever been a sinkhole on her property. The search reveals nothing has been recorded by the previous owner or the county. She hires a landscape contractor who uses ground penetrating radar to survey her sinkhole and surrounding land before repairing it. The contractor provides her LifeGraph with the digitally signed GPR data so the subsequent owner will have the subterranean view for a variety of purposes.

If not her body or her natural resources then its a manufactured good like her 2010 Audi Q7 TDI that has its presence in her LifeGraph. In accordance with the federal law, the Audi dealer emailed her a user name and password for her to download theVIN specific auto (assessories and all) she purchased. As she operates and maintains that vehicle that LifeGraph object grows with each good and service for the Q7.

The kewl factor is LifeGraph software providers compete on the presentation layer and cannot lock in customers via proprietary file formats of the primitive data (derived data are another story). I will spare you the dozens of buzzwords identifying the enabling technologies and harmonization of owners and stakeholders.

I am asking for you opinion about the LifeGraph concept. I've blogged about this idea since investigating one particular enabling technology--Extensible 3D Graphics (X3D), VRML's successor in 2007 at http://x3d4enterprise.blogspot.com and http://mobilemirrorworlds.blogspot.com

Thanks for contributing a well-written article to COMMUNICATIONS of the ACM. I can promise you I will reference your article when explaining how LifeGraphs differ from LifeLogs. LifeLog is a concept that has way more press so my listeners are likely to remember and compare it with LifeGraphs.

Regards,--

William O. Glascoe III, PMP
Program Management Consultant
CSC Federal Consulting Practice

No comments: