My review of Total Recall: How The E-Memory Revolution will Change Everything

Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell authored Total Recall (ISBN: 978-0-525-95134; http://totalrecallbook.com/) and it was recently published (Sep 2009). I ordered my hardback copy from Amazon.com. It was delivered to my home Sat, 17 Oct 09. I read the foreward by Bill Gates and Chapters One and Two so far. Eager to see the layout and graphics, I flipped through the book and was disappointed by the absence of graphs, tables, and charts. Hoping to reuse some ontological modeling artifacts, I purchased the book certain it would contain some samples of artistic design to ingest, query and/or output points and patterns of one's life. Oh well, the writing style is great--conversational, simple, and light hearted.

Something in Chapter one lead me back to Wired.com's article on Gordon but I clicked on a couple of related links at the bottom of the web page this time. And to my surprise, I read a couple of articles Wired.com wrote on the 2003 DARPA LifeLog project that was never awarded because of public criticisim--privacy and big brother concerns if the technology developed was to proven to be successful. The Pentagon even had its version of LifeLog project, PAL, in the same year. So I checked the index in Total Recall to see if Gordon and Jim acknowledged these efforts and compares the Broad Area Announcements that explain the projects objective to potenial bidders. If you read this post last night, I wrote there was not a reference to DARPA's LifeLog Project. Well I read Chapter Four - Work this morning before going to my office and sure enough, Gordon writes about the DARPA's LifeLog project and names the New York Times reporter who wrote the magazine article that sparked a public outcry over the BAA.

When I conceptualized LifeGraphs, I never considered vacuuming up the digitized inputs that my visual, auditory and tactical senses experience because doing so is outside my paradigm of a mobile mirror world, which is founded on ownership. I see way more things than I own. The same goes for what I hear and touch. I do forsee Virtual Environment and Augmented Reality Cloud-like services that will provide the mirror objects that are adjacent and in proximity for a given date-time group to ones mirror world. I think the complexity of LifeGraphs is less than LifeLogs because LifeGraphs as a system of integrated information flowing over interoperable electronic exchanges (e.g., INTERNET), pushes the harmonization of ontological models of traded and computer-aided designed goods and services on the commerical entities of digital content creation versus the end user. After reading the internet archive of the DARPA BAA 03-30, I can see how the LifeLog innovation and/or inventions in Cognitive Science and AI seek to put a reasoning algorithm at the sensor head or close to it.

Data Integrity, Information Integration and Institutional Intelligence

I'm working as a program management consultant in a governmental agency's Office of the CIO, and have been since early Aug 2009. Unfortunately, I'm not immersed in an organization of optimal maturity with respect to any maturity model. That being the case, I still foresee opportunities to proffer the ideas of LifeGraphs to the federal agency next year. The business case to fund the LifeGraph pilot, which will be developmental is cost avoidance with respect to data integrity, information integration and institutional intelligence.

In the short six weeks I've been consulting at the client site, I've seen spreadsheet after spreadsheet, powerpoint slide after slide, and word document after document where the data element and values are not referenced, no footnotes or endnotes, nada. With the LifeGraph pilot, data integrity will be conspicuous in every instance of data values under the cover of the many document variants for ad hoc workflows.

I haven't seen a single behavior pattern in writing since I've been there but I've asked about them. While I'm amazed at this situation (I haven't visited the right person or I don't know how to ask my question correctly), I'm confident the use of behavior patterns will lead to information integration and not just data correlation or integration. And when these patterns become near effortless to produce from LifeGraphs, the workers will consider them essential tools for decision making.

The idea of institutional intelligence is a bit of a stretch on words so collective intelligence might be more accurate. This organization's collective intelligence will be founded on individuals interpretation of 3D animations of structural patterns that reveal resources relationships, interfaces and inertia, and behavior patterns of the effects from employing resources. There are user friendly tools today to tap the collective and I want to merge the LifeGraph data structure into the statistical nature of collective intelligence.

The convergence - Triple Threat or Perfect Storm?

The Virtual Worlds Research Consortium has expressed interest in the LifeGraph concept in the last month. I wrote to the president of the Texas-based organization asking for connections after reading about their upcoming issue that features standards for 3D graphics over the WWW. Their interest will be clearer after we talk Mon, 31 Aug 09. Meanwhile, I have a new assignment (client) that is very Web 2.0 centric and will be for the next decade as far as I can tell. My intent is to engender a genuine X3D interest as I exceed their expectations managing IT projects for enterprise solutions.

I have not made progress documenting LifeGraph Solutions with Enterprise Architect v7.5. I think the creation of what a LifeGraph software is should be illustrated in UML and verbosely annotated since I'm not likely to prototype it in a programming or scripting language anytime soon. Beside the obvious UML diagramming of an architecture in progress, the business plan for LifeGraph Solutions has grown to little more than a cover page preceding a table of contents. Watching the iPhone developer videos on the Apple website is motivating. I see medical applications for patients and providers that are LifeGraph like and that is great. My email to William A. Yasnoff, MD, PhD, FACMI; Karen Trudel and CAPT Mary Forbes, USPHS asking for any baseline health, wellness, and/or medical information creation, derivation, and aggregation for the statistically average male and female who live to 100 years of age will probably go unanswered like most of my inquiries to officials. But I have to ask considering they are Senior Advisor National Health Infrastructure (NHII), Informatics Program Manager, and Federal Health Architecture Program Manager, HHS.

I attended the 2009 SIGGRAPH in New Orleans for a couple of days. My work schedule and budget could not support being there the entire week. The Web3D Consortium members in attendance were a great bunch to hang out with and talk business.

I have yet to cross paths with someone who has native XML database management system experience on mobile devices, X3D browser implementation skills and the abilities to integrate ontological models into XML schemas. The search for those few goes on and my passion to assemble a team or company that is willing to pursue the same possibilities with LifeGraphs as the nexus between Governments, Corporations and Citizens continues.

DC ACM Talk w/Nick Polys was a success

I opened, closed then answered several questions in front of an audience of 35 computer enthusiasts and professionals 10 Jun 2009 at the AAAS Building from 07:30 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. Nick spoke for 25 minutes on the technical history and outlook of the Extensible 3D specifications, implementations and emendations. Many in the audience wonder about the societal effects of LifeGraphs if they were to emerge under the conditions I described. As expected, a few opinions were negative from the perspective of "Big Brother" issues. These opinions were balanced with questions like, "Are you going to write a book?" and "How do you plan to develop this?"

I continue to query CIOs in health and medical centers about a womb to postmortem health maintenance data (reference) model. And I continue to get no replies to what I think is a simple statistical question. I have enlisted someone from CSC Healthcare to ask the question whenever the opportunity arises. I was surprised to discover I emailed the Harvard Medical School CIO 12 months ago asking the question and just a week ago during a call with my CSC Healthcare colleague, he said he will pose the question to the HMS CIO. I completely forgot about my cold email when he mentioned their relationship, and I haven't heard back from either of them.

Just yesterday, I watched a Webinar on healthcare semantics where dbMotion's prominent employees presented a great story about their virtual patient record that could have womb to tomb medical information/records. But when I asked my data reference model question during the Q&A, the speaker had no clue how much data might accumulate over 100 years of life for an average patient in the US medical care system. I don't know when I'm going to let this question go and just start estimating myself then publish it for comment. That decision is coming as I turn my attention to the natural resources data reference model challenge.

Speaking to the DC Chapter of Association of Computing Machinery

I was invited to talk about X3D for Enterprise Applications to the DC ACM after talking to the chapter president in Jan 09. Goto www.dcacm.org for the evening meeting details. It's a FREE event so please consider attending. This opportunity has forced me to speed up my investigation and creation of data models for natural persons' financial transaction profiles that covers a century of living. You might imagine NO ONE has such profiles to derive the data volume generated from that so transactions, let alone the data volume of the goods and services that would be captured in X3D formats for their mirror world database! But that is exactly the tone and twist I will deliver in my 40 minute talk. Data, data, data! It's all about the data and the information technology to manage it comes second. The graphical, acoustic and haptic user interfaces to the data are implied in the phrase "information technology".

I have yet to read an article, paper, essay, book chapter, brief, etc. that describes the data generation, accumulation and correlation of individuals' non-discretionary transactions with corporations (e.g., grocers, employers, churchs, schools) and governments (e.g., County land records office, State motor vehicle administration, internal revenue service) from womb to tomb. The publications I read that discuss the services provided to clients, customers, consumers and/or citizens focus on the information technology costs, energy consumption, security, and other IT characteristics but not the data in quantitative and individualistic terms. None of the publications I've read present even a sketch of the data dynamics in quantitative terms on an illustrative diagram of the data lifecycle in the content of the service offering or the person's life span. It's like the reader (everyone) just knows the details of the data elements, formats, values, etc.

My objective speaking to what I hope to be a standing room only audience (of 75) is mobile mirror world technology like Lifegraphs are a great idea to be the information nexus between the supply, value and customer chains of e-commerce/government/health/etc.. It's an old idea depending on how close to similar ideas you consider mine. I intend to create a desire in the audience to speak up and demand lifegraph components from the parties the do business with. I hope someone in government (legislative and regulatory) will be present because this idea goes no where fast without legislated/regulated demand created at all levels of government.

There is a book entitled "Mirror Worlds" by David Gelernter that I intend to read (256pp) before the talk so I can reference it in my opening remarks. The book was written soon after I graduated from USAFA, 1991.

What's taking so long...

I've been home from Baghdad, Iraq for two months now. I haven't finished home inventory, my SysML diagrams are incomplete and I'm not clear what kind of business person or government official I should look to for help to take what appears to be a great idea of integration and invest resources into implementation. With so much "homework" to do and be available to my 9-mo old son and loving wife, it's going to be nothing less than challenging to expend the sweat labor into learning data and document-centric native XML database design, mobile edition APIs & OSes, ECMAScript, etc. to create that Blue Ocean I wrote about in my grant proposal.

I have a plan to incorporate LifeGraph Solutions LLC in the state of Maryland this month. I've been advised to do so and protect what little intellectual property I might be freely sharing with others while surveying the market. It only takes a couple hundred bucks to incorporate but the time to write the business plan and other legal documents takes more clock time than it does for me to earn that cash to file. Lucky for me, I managed three $150K 6-month Cooperative Agreements in Baghdad, Iraq that were exclusively dealing with planning Iraqi industrial operations using western styled business plans.

I do struggle with the idea of monetizing LifeGraph solutions with the consumer. I mean, I don't envision governments, corporations and citizens using their paypal account or their payment card to download LifeGraph basic or whatever version of a feature/function set. Maybe that will be a revenue stream someday. As I think about the way I want information accessed and presented to change the way and speed of my insight and investment, I foresee a need for professional services to author X3D scenes for LifeGraph software. Those who trade goods may want or their customers might demand the product in the X3D file format so it can be included in their LifeGraph. And when transactions don't have the X3D file, getting the product implemented in X3D better and faster than anyone else will generate more revenue than the competition. I wonder if I'm thinking the reinvention of accountants and bookkeepers core competencies as I write this. Since I haven't have any serious and open-minded conversations about LifeGraph Solutions with accountants or bookkeepers, I don't really think so.

I will be presenting LifeGraph Solutions to the Distric of Columbia Association of Computing Machinery (DC ACM) the first week of Jun 2009. I've accepted an invitatoin to do so as an impetus to complete a few grant related tasks I opened this post with. I joined the DC ACM recently and attended their Jan 09 program on Internet Forenics. There were 40 people in attendance for the hour-long brief at the AAAS building on New York Ave, NW. I just hope my talk attracts that many members at 7pm on a weekday before the start of summer.

11 Dec 2008 Webcast was a success

More than 50 CSC employees dialed in or logged in and listened to me for 45 minutes Thursday morning (EST) 11 Dec 2008 brief my investigation of X3D for Enterprise applications. I was in Baghdad, Iraq and most participants were from the USA. Only a few Europeans participated. I don' t know how many more CSCer's have downloaded my presentation from the Leading Edge Forum Library since the recorded event was uploaded on 12 Dec 08. I haven't received any inquiries to date:-( And I didn't steer my audience to this blog nor my portal center on the CSC portal.

I owe the LEF a technical report and that will take many more hours than the effort to pull together the brief. A lot of Enterprise Architect diagramming using the UML and SysML will fill that report. I plan to incorporate a LLC for developing Life Graph software solutions in late 2008. A software application named Debt Dog software will precede Life Graph software because the profits of it will fund the development of Life Graph. And the profits of Life Graph software are tagged to fund the development of my Web3D Laboratory for Space Traffic Management and Control research.

I shared my LEF brief with the CEO of a Singapore virtual world (mirror world) company and he wanted to know my Go-to-Market strategy for Life Graph software. I could not provide him with it because I didn't have it. After reading a few PPTs and PDFs about Go-to-market strategy, I can say I have it but haven't documented it. Basically, I will make inroads with the DC Mayor's Office, Prince George's County Executive, MD State Governor's Office and the White House on the government side, while doing the same with small, medium and large manufacturers, service providers and value-added resellers; and male and female groups that are non-working minors, working adults and non-working retirees/elderly people. The strategy is marketing to all three sides of the triangle in the cycle of life graphing (government, industry, citizenry).