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

Metaverse for National Intelligence and the Enterprises that Acquire it

I've been pondering how to create wholesale demand for the integration of virtual reality technologies into the US Federal Government that address its problems of sustainable efficiency and organizational effectiveness. vGov is the latest government contract vehicle to virtual reality technologies and virtual world integration services in a trusted space. I'm focused on how the Intel Community can use these technologies throughout its enterprise and claim achievement of its 2015 Vision Statement faster because of discipline usage of virtual reality technologies.



When I say the IC, I mean the following in terms of Reserviors, Rates and Ratios (understand I have no access or reason to know the exact figures, especially the energy consumption, but these 10 parameters should appear to be common sense for sizing up an enterprise like the IC in the year 2009):


  • ~30,000,000 computers (= 100/user or 10/sensor or 300/target or...)

  • ~3,000,000 sensors collectors (includes humans)

  • ~300,000 TB data (<10%>
  • ~300,000 users (<1%>
  • ~30,000 installations buildings (service/data centers) platforms (...vehicles, ...)

  • ~30,000 targets targeted daily (humans, nature, and man-made items)

  • ~3,000 apps (operating systems, protocols, RT-embedded, mission-, business-)

  • ~300 GW (average; human calories/staff-hr and power for man-made items)

  • ~300 Billion USD (<3%>
  • ~30 TBps throughput (average: wired and wireless-SATCOM & terrestrial)

A cool graphic integrating this parameters and the values is needed here. I apologize for not having the artist skills to draft one for you.



I have two purposes. First, to integrated virtual reality technologies the IC's capacity to manage its resources--humans, land parcels, and manufactured goods, which include land improvements, fixed & mobile equipment, vehicles, petro/lubricants/oils, other consumables, and monies. Second, to increase the efficiencies of ...operations with the data, information and knowledge the IC creates, calculates, and collects on humans, nature and manufactured items. I don't know of any enterprise-level baselines or benchmarks in this regard so they need to be performed then recognized to continue this quanitative story. Remember to baseline or benchmark is one thing and the baseline or benchmark is another.



(performance posture) Baselines (measurements)



humans - biometrics, psychometrics, personalized digital human models for users and targets

nature - living and non-living things (way too much stuff to even start listing)

manufactured items - parts, ingredients, ... computer-aided designed, engineered and/or manufactured then those files repurposed for end users (what a third of LifeGraphs are about).



(performance posture) Benchmarks (measurements)


humans - qualifications, evaluations, violations, citations (for award or decoration), ...

nature - conservation, perservation, degradation, scaping, forming, ...

manufactured items - toxicity, lethality, efficacy, ...efficiency, warranty, utility, ...

I'll continue this story in earnest after completing Air War College next month. This document needs to become a virtual world in of itself. I will have to overcome my usual paralysis of writing when I get frustrated from a lack of examples to leverage. This happens when I cannot find germane enterprise storylines with quantitative bodies of evidence via the internet.