Internet Operating System

Brilliant way to view the internet - as an operating system - where is our data and do we care? Do we really just want the freedom to compute without worry? Recently it was the CEO of Google on the topic of IOS and he is someone in a proud position to speak up on the subject - Text of Wired's Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/mag_schmidt_trans

"True. Google docs and spreadsheets don't work if you're on an airplane. But it's a technical problem that is going to get solved. Eventually you will be able to work on a plane as if you are connected and, then when you get reconnected to the Internet, your computer will just synchronize with the cloud.

Here's another way of saying this - and these are not my words. People call this an Internet operating system. And by "this" I don't mean Google, I mean the sum of this vision. And if you think about it as an Internet operating system, the Internet operating system will have to have all of the normal features of the older versions of operating systems. It will have to have security, it will have to have caching, it will have to have replication, and it will have to have performance."

I was reading an analysis of the forgotten war manual The Strategikon http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/strategikon/strategikon.htm when I decided to concentrate and prep for our guest speaker on Search:

wired has an article on Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments worth reading in the May edition p.172 - view online at--
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/mag_schmidt_qa

Schmidt so loves YouTube... its cute in a megabillionaire, don't you think?

I can hardly wait to introduce my Mouse Search idea to Alex Wade of the Microsoft Live Search Team, who is coming as a guest speaker to Lee Dirks class for:

Week 6: The Systems Behind the Services
Friday, 5/4
Topics:
* What Kinds of Services Can Technology Enable?
* Elements/Components of an Information System
* Managing Complexity: Integrating Systems & Information
* Modalities: Search (and Search Services); Dashboards; Wikis; RSS Feeds, Notification Systems; Physical and Digital Libraries; Records Management

I believe Alex Wade will see how it adds value (as Jaggi said... hen hen hen)

Still I find myself drifting back to basics in my mad romance with the information industry - Turing http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html

"I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words."

Is the Internet an Operating System? Yea it can be - and Google has been selling this idea for a while - a giant linked computer where all computers are yours by virue of your security.

See http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001689.html

Introduction to Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery

From this week’s reading I learned three new things and added a fourth from the class discussions.

1. Data and information is fluid to information managers in the same way that steel is a liquid to a steel worker.

Imagine a person holding a piece of data between their hands like someone might hold a basketball – but this blob of information is superflexible, and changes completely in shape or dimension while it is moved around -- because it is data it may be viewed from any position or shape changed as affected by a model or compared to other data.

2. Data has three basic states:
• Stored
• Processed
• Communicated

The original data should not be written back to its original source, so information once it has been altered, if it is going to be kept, and not just the results, needs to be reposited someplace other than the original source location. Storage is expensive.

3. Managing data and transforming it into information or actionable knowledge means moving the data, by applying different dimensions and techniques.

Storing data is expensive. Generally unless it is a secret, and retains value by being secret, like CIA intelligence, or a corporate secret like the Coca Cola recipe stored data is not useful.

Data in motion, that is data being viewed, or altered, or accessed is commercially valuable and can produce value and revenue.

The The Two Crows Corporation article "Introduction to Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery" was particularly engaging to me beginning with its definition –

"Data mining is a process that uses a variety of data analyst tools to discover patterns and relationships in data that may be used to make valid predictions."

Wow, sounds like software can do something spooky – as in supernatural – and that special talent is to "predict the future." But this is in fact what software can do – and it requires three things to do this –

+ data from a source
+ ability to munge data to information
+ a place to store either the data or just the results, but the data to be effective must affect some thing else.

All this means is that either you move and store, or you move and munge and never permanently store results. Data is currently stored, or moving, processing or mungeing, which includes modifying other data. ( see: http://www.twocrows.com/booklet.htm )

From this appears that the removal of one of these nodes might serve to improve speed – such as the uploading into memory, and logically this means that computers which never turn off and continuously churn data in some way, such as very refined "data supermarts" would be most efficient.

The illustrations provided in these articles were very helpful in visualizing and made the understanding of these models and concepts easy. Reflecting on this made me think about what a visual model for the entire process of Data Engineering into Actionable Information. What I envisioned but haven't had time to draw is a person holding a glob or blob of data between their hands like someone might hold a basketball – but this is superflexible, and changes completely in shapes while it is moved around -- because it is data it may be viewed from any position or shape changed as affected by a model or compared to other data.

Reviewing data to detect empirical patterns and so forth makes sense – but this section was particularly interesting:

"New techniques include relatively recent algorithms like neural nets and decision trees, and new approach to older algorithms such a discriminating analysis. But virtue of bringing to beat the increased computer power on the huge volumes of available data, these techniques can approximate almost any functional form or interaction on their own. Traditional statistical technologies rely on the modeler to specify the functional form and interactions."

"Data mining is a tool for increasing the productivity of people trying to build predictive models."

If this isn't the most interesting thing a futurist, a scientist, a medical researcher, or a sales team, can hear and understand about computer science and data modeling I don't know what would be. Predictive models in and of themselves are recursively fascinating. This may lead us to the question of what does that take?

"While the power of the individual CPU has greatly increased, the real advanced in scalability stem from parallel computer architectures. Virtually all servers today supposed multiple CPUs using symmetric multi-processing, and clusters of the SMP server can be created that allow hundred of CPUs to work on finding patterns in the data."

Yes, that is more exciting news, this is the same way that linked computers in off times are used to search as a massive array for unexplained patterns in space's background noise hoping to hear a signal. They are looking for alien life. Clearly such a method is helped by all that linked volunteer processing power. But that's the lesson, if you really want to find something out, it's possible, and lots of businesses and individual people use these techniques in all kinds of application because it's cheap enough.

"Visualization works because it exploits the broader information bandwidth of graphics as opposed to text or numbers. It allows people to see the forest and zoom in on the trees. Patterns, relationships, exceptional values and mission values are often easer to perceive when show graphically, rather that as list of numbers and text."

Another exciting wow when it comes to how to work with data to information to predictive modeling – how to represent it and what the most impressive thing about this is – the same as geniuses such as Da Vinci – he had the ability to visualize complex information visually, as did Faraday, and Einstein – they used visual models to create predictive models of behavior in the world. What this is telling us is that anyone with proper understanding and access to the tools can munge data so that it represents data in the same way that our greatest minds naturally accomplished.1

One of the interesting ideas which came from reading the information on link analysis, from mention of the two kinds of inquiry commonly used "association discovery" and "sequence discovery" (with the factors of support, relative frequency, confidence, association) is the idea that a database that links to an additional database besides association and sequence, over time might arrive at many expected detections in patterns of data – if for example the data base was the "Life Database of Patterns of Obvious Qualities". Such a database would contain many thousands of facts such as 'dead people do not buy anything', and corollaries such as, 'so there is no point in sending advertising to their residence.'

Such a mammoth database would be a unique scientific challenge to create, maintain and link to, of particular interest to me, is how much of the data collected would be true and how much be useful? We can not always tell how solving a problem may serve to inform something else, such as the discussion on Microsoft's edge checking algorithm, email scanning software in use to weed out spam from Microsoft email servers – as it turned out this edging method was used to sort through DNA in the successful search for a vaccine for AIDs going into clinical trials.2

Also of interest was the categorical explosion in data, as well as the concepts around pruning tree structures. I found myself wondering what would happen if processing power and storage capability exceeded our ability to create new data? What would happen if every tree was allowed to grow permanently and one branch contained no splits as part of the earlier described Obvious Qualities database? In a way this is similar to the rapid irregular growth of a smart internet, combined with such simple tools as cookies, and the analysis of purchasing behavior - what will that data come to predict if applied to a large model. What can be predicted will be of interest for a long time to come.

Even the acronyms at this level sound spacey – MARS – the Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines. This is a much more interesting field than I was prepared to encounter, and in summation, I come away quite curious at how far our creative intelligence and need and desire to know will be able to drive the technology to the computational limit, and over into helping humanity on a mass level.

1. West T, "In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity". Prometheus Books; Upd Sub edition (September 1997)

2.The application description from Phil Fawcett, Microsoft Research Liaison PM, in person presentation on "optimized applications" http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDGigapixel.htm, University of Washington, Seattle, April 17, 2007.

Week 5: Modalities of Information Delivery
Data Mining

The Two Crows Corporation, "Introduction to Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Third Edition" 1999. Accessed on 2/25/2006 from http://www.twocrows.com/intro-dm.pdf.

Witten, I.H. and Frank, E. (2000). "What's It All About?" In Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques with Java Implementations. (Chap. 1). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 1-35. (Focus on Sections 1.5 and 1.6)

Editorial Review & Delivery

McGovern, G. & Norton, R. (2002). "Editing Content." In Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage through High-Quality Web Content. (Chap. 6). Pearson Education Limited. pp. 109-122.

IT Help Desk

Clarke, S. and Greaves, A. (2002). "IT Help Desk Implementation: The Case of an International Airline." In Annals of Cases on Information Technology, 4, pp. 241-259.

Walko, D. 1999. "Implementing a 24-Hour Help Desk at the University of Pittsburgh ." In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services: Mile High Expectations ( Denver, Colorado, United States). SIGUCCS '99. ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 202-207.

Duhart, T., Monaghan, P., and Aldrich, T. 1999. "Creating the Customer Service Team: An Ongoing Process." In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services: Mile High Expectations ( Denver, Colorado, United States). SIGUCCS '99. ACM Press, New York, NY, 51-55. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/337043.337090.

Padeletti, A., Coltrane, B., and Kline, R. 2005. "Customer service: help for the help desk." In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services ( Monterey, CA, USA, November 06 - 09, 2005). SIGUCCS '05. ACM Press, New York, NY, 299-304. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1099435.1099504.

Understanding Business Intelligence

“Even though we live in the Information age, where ever increasing masses of data are at our disposal, we often struggle to understand what the data means.”

Describing Business Intelligence’s goals are three main items -
• “Making better decisions faster
• Converting data into information
• Using a rational approach to management
Making better decisions means improving any or all parts of the process; this also results in fewer poor decisions and more superior ones.”

It also seeks to analyze actions “resulting in progress towards company objectives.” Business who move too slowly “will lose out to their quicker rivals. There is a need to make not only better decisions but also better decisions faster.” In addition the “negative consequences of no information or old information can be huge” such as loosing customers or continuing to produce a product that no one wants.

Converting data into information” is a component of BI, the gap between large amounts of data and actual useful information is termed “the analysis gap.” Raw data which may be measured in gigabytes, terabytes and so forth needs to be processed to deliver information in “ relevant subsets instantly” in a form which people can relate to – “some call this ‘analysis at the speed of thought”.

Technology may be considered “a baseline definition of Business Intelligence, but this is “too narrow of a view” according to one author (Vitt, E., Luckevich, M. & Misner, S. (2002). “Understanding Business Intelligence.” In Business Intelligence. (Chap. 1). Microsoft Press. pp. 13-27.)“Often the hardest aspect of business intelligence is useful and relevant to a decision, such metrics are termed “key performance indicators (KPIs)… With advancements in e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactional systems, business intelligence is increasingly about delivering actionable information to people outside the organization – often as a revenue source.”

A rational approach to management can be characterized as:
• Seeking “measurable quantitative facts”,
• “organized methods and technologies to analyze the facts”,
• “inventing and sharing models that explain cause and relationships”,
• “experimenting with alternative approaches”,
• “understanding that people are not always rational”, and
• “running the business based on these characteristics.”

To me in all of the reading which explains the Business Intelligence model, this is the most key information being introduced. We can become educated on these business intelligence practices; we have known people who have astounding qualities and facilities of analysis and the ability to extrapolate beyond the data to its implications. But the key issue remains that we are people dealing with people’s needs, desires and wants. Both in business and in business analysis we need to remember what we are dealing with and for whom – so the closer we can get to allowing people to cleverly munge their own data, the closer we really come to real Business Intelligence, because the business of business is people.

Defining the BI cycle is “more than a attitude or enabling technology; in fact, it is a performance management frameworks, an ongoing cycle by which companies set their goals, analyze their process, gain insight, take action, measure their success,” and iterate. We call this progression – the BI cycle.”

Analysis is a filtering based on “our basic understandings and assumptions of how our business operates”, and as such can be referred to as a “mental model” or “tribal wisdom” and it can be a vision of what the business views as their goals.

Business Intelligence “systems that support freestyle analysis can help … break through the limits of … current mental models and even conceptualize new ones.” Step one of the BI cycle is to ask and answer many questions rapidly both the conventional and the unconventional. That is what real analysis is – the freedom to be curious and ask lots of really stupid questions until you ask a brilliant one.” Unfortunately in the real world not many business process analysts have a quality education, or a spontaneous or creative mind, so in the past in my own experience I have witnessed companies being lead down a garden path where there was no garden, and then cornered -- left without choices they made the only one presented, a bad one, which resulted in failure for both companies. Spontaneous reasoning, creative insight, and modeling using the open techniques described here could have resulted in more insightful investigations.

Even brainstorming has its uses in visualizing various aspects of business process analysis. “An insight is not always accepted because it is brilliant or even correct.” This being true what are the things that drive change into businesses and business modeling? – it appears to be time and success and failure. Sometimes stunning failure can be the only way for members of a company or unit to understand the results of their poor practices and decision making practices or lack thereof.

This brings us right to measurement – “key performance indicators” are fancy words for how you know you are right. Measurement is what keeps the iterative practices pointed in the right directions.

Moore’s Law corollary is that the computing power of microprocessors doubles ever 18 months but prices remain constant. For BI this means massive calculation power is increasing, and with the increase comes the ability to visual data in new and exciting ways. “The greater the quantity of data, the more certain the analysis and conclusion are correct.” This statement is humbled by two others,
1. Dirty data (quality of data), and so …
2. Asking the right questions.

By entering the “era of Information Democracy” we can hope that the privately funded research which may not have reached the right audiences does come out from behind the iron curtain of the Information Cold War, where companies zealous guard their research so that they make the profits they deserve based on their hard work – which unfortunately may mean that more friends like my friend Laura, who died of cancer two days ago in Fairbanks, Alaska will continue to die.

I am not suggesting that if "Sir Isaac Newton had observed more apples falling, he would have developed his laws of gravity sooner” because not many people were immediately and directly affected by his scientific statement of them, but in our case the potential good for data sharing of certain types is beginning to outweigh the relatively minor issue of money.

Even small businesses may soon not be able to navigate by dead reckoning any more if they could more easily afford some kind of Business Intelligence. Larger companies can afford more encouragement of “experimenting and tolerating good try failures” than smaller firms can.

To conclude, business intelligence is logical, communication, and analysis done in a timely manner to promote and provide for business needs, in a clear, rational and open way, using whatever tools are available to the practitioners, even if they are manual. There are many things that we are “dying to know” and I hope those needs will be met for ethical reasons if for no others.

Business Intelligence

Vitt, E., Luckevich, M. & Misner, S. (2002). “Understanding Business Intelligence.” In Business Intelligence. (Chap. 1). Microsoft Press. pp. 13-27.
Vitt, E., Luckevich, M. & Misner, S. (2002). ”Defining BI Technologies.” In Business Intelligence. (Chap. 3). Microsoft Press. pp. 49-63.
Vitt, E., Luckevich, M. & Misner, S. (2002). “Implementing a BI Solution.” In Business Intelligence. (Chap. 10). Microsoft Press. pp. 145-177.
Whiting, Rich, “Search and Business Intelligence: Complementary Tools,” Information Week, March 6. 2006. Accessed on 3/14/2006 from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181500684
Information Lifecycle

Goodwin, Phil. "Information Life-Cycle Management and Enterprise Content Management: The Confluence of Technology and Business." (2-18-2004) Accessed on 3/24/2006 from http://www.documentum.ru/pdf/analytics/reviews_meta_ILM_ECM.pdf.
Information Assessment

Outsell, Inc. “Information Management Best Practices: 2006 Product Satisfaction Scorecard – A Tool For Making Portfolio Choices,” InfoAboutInfo Briefing,Volume 9, February 10, 2006.
Knowledge Creation, Capture and Collections

Davenport , Thomas H., Thomas, Robert J. and Desouza, Kevin C., “Reusing Intellectual Assets,” Industrial Management, 4 (3), 2003, pp. 12-17.
Desouza, Kevin C., and Awazu, Yukika, “Maintaining Knowledge Management Systems: A Strategic Imperative,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56 (7), 2005, pp. 765-768.
Supplemental Readings

Business Intelligence

Vitt, E., Luckevich, M. & Misner, S. (2002). “Identifying BI Opportunities.” In Business Intelligence. (Chap. 9). Microsoft Press. pp. 113-143.
Whiting, Rich, “BI Spending to Increase,” Information Week, March 6. 2006. Accessed on 3/14/2006 from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181500685.
Information Lifecycle

Horton, F. Woody. "Government Information Life Cycle Management: The Mission, the Needs, the Operational Requirements, the Roles." (10-13-2002) Accessed on 3/24/2006 from http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.appen16.pdf.
Knowledge Creation, Capture and Collections

Awazu, Yukika and Desouza, Kevin C., “Open Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Open Source Revolution,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(11), 2004, pp. 1016-1019.

Reflection Paper Week 4:
Information Sources, Quality & Presentation

For Lee Dirks
520b
University of Washington iSchool
April 18, 2007

Liz Vitt (Intellimentum) spoke to the class on April 20, 2007. How do you know the data you are recieving is even reliable - data integrity.

Key term from Phil Fawcett (Microsoft) on "optimized applications" http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDGigapixel.htm

TechnologyVentres - from Idea to Enterprise
Richard C. Dorf
Thomas H. Byers

Ubuntu 7.04 is Born

Drums beat a mad jungle pattern to announce the arrival of a new god in operating systems as Ubuntu 7.04 crawled out from under wraps and greeted the bright new day!

"I stand on the back of Giant Turtles " said the spanking new youngster," speaking of his dominance in the free-to-you market, while gripping a snake in one hand (curiously labeled 'Windows') and a tarred and feathered Macintoch apple in the other (also labeled perhaps with affection - "Mac"). "Not only do I stand on the backs of Giant Turtles,' the cherubic Ubuntu asserted, referring to his universal appeal, "I stand on them ALL THE WAY DOWN!"

The crowd of bronzed gods and godlets cheered wildly as some of the goats swooned from standing in the heat for hours awaiting his magnificent arrival. His parents were on hand to usher the not-to-long-awaited Ubuntu 7.04 to his home on their Web page where he expects to be a rapid and popular download for many weeks to come.

Those who arrived by boat cast off into the darkening light to party long into the next day - meanwhile the rapid clicking of acceptance resounded on computer keyboards worldwide.

http://mako.cc/talks/20041126-ubuntu/ubuntu_gulev-talk_notes.html

Ubuntu is a Zulu word that in English means something like:

Humanity towards others.
Another translation would be:

The belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.

Desmond defined Ubuntu in the following way:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole.

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from "No Future Without Forgiveness"

Ubuntu is a pretty common concept in South Africa. There are pictures of billboards that people routinely send us about "Ubuntu this" or "Ubuntu that."

See - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntues/attachments/20051202/4abe3cb1/ubuntu_5.11.jpg

http://www.ubuntu.com/

UW Architectural Commission Meeting - April 2007

As a member of the UW Architectural Commission -- today April 16th 2007, I listened to presentations by 8 architecture firms from early to eve, with our 10-15 person Commission (I'm the student rep, but I am a voting member). There must have been 60-85 architects, engineers, architectural PMs, and architecture support staff, and so forth. They appeared and left in waves.

It was very exciting - the UW master plan calls for the renovation of -

* The Hub (we already approved the team last meeting) AKA the Student Union Center
* Clark Hall (already under renovation)
* Lewis Hall
* Denny Hall (the oldest building, Lewis and Clark are the other oldest buildings)
* Savery Hall
* a new mammoth UW School of Business building with a curved roof, long and L shaped like twin boats.
* a new set of south hospital buildings - ( sections are already old, and part will need to be redone soon - it's an amazing maze of linked and interconnected structures) - just the preplanning generally survey.
* and the south shore development of the UW campus down near the fish pond and half basketball court, old fisheries and oceanography buildings.

So we saw the folks from Denny, Lewis, Business Building, South Hospital (beds and service entrances) and south shore (which I call recreational).

I love working with these folks - they are so formal (Roberts Rules of Order) I need to reign myself in, but it is fun! Who doesn't like to spend other people's money? Especially when it's your job?

The last set of architects presenting I felt could have the most influence and discussion with in preplanning. Since the site was something I am particularly fond of -- I advised them to go to the south UW campus (it's the most romantic best kept secret in Seattle) waterfront park and play some basketball, and walk the paths. They just CANT build more giant structures along that coast it is much too valuable. Like the cutest of puppies it begs for recreational use.


I was also able to quickly bring forth my ideas for some variation in the coastline, more use of water. I mentioned it there for the south campus and in downtown Seattle along where those horrible old docks are - they should dig out the old fill from where they dumped the Denny regrade soil and return that area to the water that it used to be. It would be so great to have instead of dock, spits of land coming out, with walkways, restaurants, shopping, educational parks, museums and more - it would be a huge draw to our city if we made over that area.

The younger architect I was talking with could see the vision and the idea of negative spaces, and the shoreline and water ideas - he got fabulously excited about them too. We also discussed round spaces with buildings that reflect the shape, and including underwater buildings and a kind of - like a Seattle Venice (moats and gondolas ? ) with waterways and land where the docks are now. We were sort of jumping up and down and dancing with these ideas by the day's end.

We approved the overall design for the school of business' center and I commented to Mark Emmert, President of the University, that it will naturally attract money to the university because of it's central placement. An architect added - yes, it's close to the attorneys har har har.


I made several positive comments about the loveliness and flows of the designs. There was a bunch of creative and design energy and it was just a joy. My eyes must have been like saucers!

Unerringly we caught design ambiguities, or where the architectural planners sort of didn't mention what the outstanding issues were - like the wheelchair access placement is still an issue with the Business Building, but they are on top of that. Or that security is a serious concern, the loading docks are all at the same place on the South Medical Center and they just want to add more. How is that wise? How about making an alternative tunnel to support the medical center separately from the regular traffic. Keep the floor heights the same once you determine them so it's easier to link future building. What the heck is going on with those elevators?

I got to vote on the architects for Denny and Lewis, and vote on approving the design for the business center! How cool is that? Of course I shot photos - they were grateful I had my live wireless MacWin box with me so we could keep up with the news...

Architecture seems to be one place where age is an advantage... Really great experience, learned a lot, esp. about presentation and enthusiasm. Great people the UW architectural commission - love 'em. The local and regional architects who made presentations were wonderful.

I believe the state is going to receive the best use of the money with the best results from such a sensitive and concerned, educated and historically interested group as the present architecture commission and from the architects they both select and advise to perform the design, and accomplish the work.

I love this quote from UW President, Mark Emmert, being "elitist is not in our DNA".

Here's the link to the UW Architectural Commission's page:
http://www.washington.edu/faculty/facsenate/handbook/01-03-04.html


More info:
ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION STUDENT MEMBER:

GPSS Representative: Linda Lane
Committee Type: University
Chair: Daniel Friedman
Chair's Title: Professor and Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Meeting Frequency:
Description: The Architectural Commission Student Member is charged with the responsibility of reviewing significant matters relative to planning and architectural design of campus. It reviews and recommends general and specific planning and design policies, campus plans and the selection of building sites
Website Address:
http://www.washington.edu/faculty/facsenate/handbook/01-03-04.html

All photos used in this article are by Linda Lane.

- AGENDA -
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION MEETING
April 16, 2007
Location: UW (Faculty) Club Conference Room

REVISED AGENDA (rev 4/11/07)

7:50am Call to Order Friedman
Approval of Agenda
Approval of Minutes
Campus Landscape Advisory Committee Report (written) Cole

8:00am Savery Hall Renovation, Design Development Review & Approval
Project Manager/Presenter: Brian Berard
Architect: SRG Partnership

8:25am Denny Hall Renovation, Architect Interviews
Project Manager/Presenter: Randy Everett

8:30am Interview Firm #1, Bassetti Architects
9:30am Interview Firm #2, Mahlum Architects
10:30am Interview Firm #3, Thomas Hacker Architects
11:30am Break
11:35pm Lunch
Denny Hall Renovation Discussion and Recommendation
12:25pm Lewis Hall Renovation, Architect Interviews
Project Manager/Presenter: Randy Everett
12:30pm Interview Firm #1, Mahlum Architects
1:30pm Interview Firm #2, Mithun
2:30pm Interview Firm #3, Snyder Hartung Kane & Strauss
3:30pm Break
3:35pm Lewis Hall Discussion and Recommendation
4:15pm Break
4:30pm New Business School, Phase 1 and 2, Schematic Design Review & Approval
Project Manager/Presenter: Steve Tatge
Architect: LMN Architects
5:15pm UW Medical Center Expansion, Pre-Design Review and
Review and Approval of the South Campus Planning Study
Project Manager/Presenter: Will Smith
Architect: Anshen & Allen
6:00pm Adjourn

** Please arrive and be ready for your project presentation 30 minutes prior to your scheduled time. **
Next meeting – June 4, 2007, UW Club


ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION regarding UW Medical Center Expansion
April 16, 2007

PROJECT SUMMARY: UW Medical Center Expansion
PROJECT NUMBER: 201385
PROJECT MANAGER: Will Smith
ARCHITECT : Anshen + Allen Architects, San Francisco
ACTION REQUIRED: Approval of Pre-Design and
Review of the South Campus Planning Study

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Design and construct a new building addition directly south and contiguous with the Medical Center’s Mullenberg and Pacific Towers. This addition will support the goal of delivering world class care and educational space in a technically advanced and patient-centered healing environment for the Medical Center’s high acuity inpatient population. The expansion will be in two phases. Phase One (this project) is a four-story approximately 127,700 gross square foot building with a mechanical basement level and roof top penthouse configured to accommodate a future Phase Two vertical addition. Phase Two will add three levels and approximately 95,100 gross square feet to Phase One. Together, these two phases will provide up to the total maximum allowed 226,000 gross square feet approved by the minor plan change to the University’s Master Plan to address the majority of the need identified in the 2005 Comprehensive Facility Planning Study of 260,000 gross square feet for year 2015. An additional 350,000 gross square feet is forecast as need in 2025.

Level 1 accommodates Columbia Road, mechanical/electrical space, loading dock operations and future support space shelled for the Medical Center’s materials management and food services departments. Level 2 provides expansion space for Diagnostic Imaging and shell space to expand Surgery in the future. Level 3 houses a 32-34 bed Acute Care Nursing Unit, and Level 4 will house a 50 bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Future levels will house additional Acute Care Nursing Units.

A detailed Functional, Technical and Site program for Phase One has been developed as part of the Pre-design effort and a test-fit blocking/massing study with a project cost estimate has been completed. The Campus Landscape Advisory Committee reviewed and approved the Site Program in September 2007.

* Project Budget: $ 155 M
* Estimated Construction Cost: $ 116 M
* Estimated Construction Start: October 2008
* Estimated Project Occupancy: April –May 2011

DESIGN RELATED ISSUES:

Design and medical planning excellence are both critical for this project, given; a) the highly visible location of the project site; b) the project’s influence on the surrounding campus environment and existing southern views from within the Medical Center; c) the project’s organizational context as part of the Medical Center for patient wayfinding and patient care movements and; c) the importance and highly technical nature of the state-of-the-art medical functions and services within the building. The project will embrace sustainable design and green building principles so that this expertise is also very important

PREVIOUS ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION ACTION:
May 2007 – Architect Selection


ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION - New Business School Building
April 16, 2007
PROJECT SUMMARY: New Business School Building Phase 1
PROJECT NUMBER: 3673 Predesign; 201837 Phase 1 Building
PROJECT MANAGER: Steve Tatge
ARCHITECT: LMN Architects

ACTION REQUIRED: Schematic Design Approval

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The University of Washington Business School intends to place itself among the top-ranked business schools in the nation. The physical facilities of the Business School require significant upgrading and expansion to house desired program offerings. The Business School intends to supplement its currently assigned space in MacKenzie Hall, Lewis Hall, Bank of America Executive Education Center and Balmer Hall with a new facility funded primarily through development efforts. This new facility will join with a replacement for Balmer Hall, the existing MacKenzie Hall, and the existing BEEC to form a new unified Business School complex. MacKenzie Hall and the BEEC will not be modified under the current approach.

The major academic goals for this new facility include:
* Physically consolidate all Business School programs to the greatest degree possible.
* Provide large, flexible classrooms optimally configured for multiple teaching styles.
* Provide formal and informal interaction spaces that promote synergy and collegial interaction among faculty and students.
* Provide significant technological resources and access.
* Provide student support spaces.


LMN Architects developed the Business School’s original conceptual program in September 2001 and refined it further in a 2002-2003 Predesign. The 2006 Predesign Study identified approximately 123,000 gross square feet in the Phase 1 building and 61,000 gross square feet in the Phase 2 replacement of Balmer Hall. Program elements include undergraduate and graduate classrooms, faculty and staff offices, an auditorium, public commons space, and support spaces. Both phases will be designed to achieve LEED Silver certification or better.

* Project Budget (Total)/ Phase 1 Maximum of $80,000,000 (2009 dollars)
* Estimated Construction Start/ Phase 1 September 2008; Occupancy September 2010

DESIGN-RELATED ISSUES:

* Building massing, organization, and architectural expression
* Interior public spaces
* Relationship to nearby campus buildings, trees, circulation, and open spaces
* Approach to meeting both the design goals and the construction budget
* Implications for design of Phase 2 building

PREVIOUS ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION ACTION:

Site approval March 2003; AOR approval June 2002; Predesign Study briefing May 2006; Predesign Study approval September 2006; Early Schematic Design guidance December 2006


ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION -Denny Hall Renovation

April 16, 2007
PROJECT SUMMARY Denny Hall Renovation
PROJECT NUMBER 202039
PROJECT MANAGER Randy Everett
ARCHITECT To be selected

ACTION REQUIRED Architect Recommendation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Denny Hall was constructed in 1895 as the original University administration building. The last major structural and interior renovation of this building was in 1956, the exterior masonry was restored in 1990 and the slate roof was restored in 2005. The facility is approximately 89,745 gross square foot in area. Denny currently houses the College of Arts and Sciences’ Departments of Anthropology, Classics, Germanics, and Near Eastern Languages & Civilization with approximately 23,000 square feet of departmental offices and over 11,000 square feet of specialized classrooms and labs, including the College’s Language Learning Center. There are also approximately 12,000 square feet of general assignment classrooms totaling 765 seats in Denny Hall.

The purpose of this project is to completely correct the facilities deficiencies including those related to instructional, fire and life safety, seismic upgrades and accessibility. The project must achieve LEED silver certification per State mandate.

Funding approval is pending by the State Legislature for the design phases.

* Project Budget: $56,900,000
* MACC primary: $27,000,000
* Pre-design: July to December 2007
* Design phases: April 2008 to November 2009
* Construction December 2009 to September 2011
* Occupancy November 2011

BACKGROUND

Seven firms/teams submitted qualifications in response to the RFQ. Of these, three have been selected to be interviewed: Bassetti Architects, Mahlum Architects, and Thomas Hacker Architects.

DESIGN RELATED ISSUES

The evaluation team short listed the consultants based upon:

* Successful experience with higher education facilities.
* Experience in design and renovation of existing buildings.
* Proven ability to work within project budgets and schedules and for public institutions.
* Staffing plan and LEED certification experience.


ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION - Lewis Hall Renovation

April 16, 2007
PROJECT SUMMARY Lewis Hall Renovation
PROJECT NUMBER 202040
PROJECT MANAGER Randy Everett
ARCHITECT To be selected
ACTION REQUIRED Architect Recommendation
PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Lewis Hall, constructed in 1896 as the men’s dormitory, was later used as a women’s dormitory. This historic structure has never undergone major renovation. The 23,220 gross square feet building currently houses offices and program space for the Business School’s Dean of Business Administration, the Department of Accounting, and Educational Outreach program including nearly 13,000 square feet of offices and approximately 1,000 square feet of study and special use spaces. There are no general assignment classrooms in this building.

The purpose of this project is to completely correct the facilities deficiencies including those related to instructional, fire and life safety, seismic upgrades and accessibility. The project must achieve LEED silver certification per State mandate.

Funding approval is pending by the State Legislature for the design phases.

* Project Budget: $18,500,000
* MACC primary: $7,900,000
* Pre-design: July to December 2007
* Design phases: April 2008 to August 2009
* Construction September 2009 to July 2011
* Occupancy September 2011

BACKGROUND

Fifteen firms/teams submitted qualifications in response to the RFQ. Of these, three have been selected to be interviewed: Mahlum Architects, Mithun, and Snyder, Hartung, Kane Strauss Architects.

DESIGN RELATED ISSUES
The evaluation team short listed the consultants based upon:

* Successful experience with higher education facilities.
* Experience in design and renovation of existing buildings.
* Proven ability to work within project budgets and schedules and for public institutions.
* Staffing plan and LEED certification experience.

ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION - Savery Hall Renovation
December 4, 2006
PROJECT SUMMARY: Savery Hall Renovation
PROJECT NUMBER: 200911
PROJECT MANAGER: Brian Berard
ARCHITECT: SRG Partnership
ACTION REQUIRED: Design Development Final

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Constructed in 1917 and 1920 in the Collegiate Gothic style, Savery Hall is one of four buildings on the Seattle campus’ liberal arts quadrangle. At 102,105 GSF building is a major instructional building with 25% of its area dedicated to general purpose classrooms and a 200-seat auditorium. The Departments of Economics, Philosophy, and Sociology occupy the building. Savery also houses the Center of Social Science Computation & Research, a computer center supporting all of the social sciences. Usage is anticipated to remain the same.

Over the years a range of isolated remodels and other improvements have been made; however, a major renovation has never occurred. The purpose of this project is to completely restore and preserve the core facility while making current fire and life safety provisions, seismic upgrades, accessibility accommodations, and other improvements to enhance instruction.

The GCCM procurement method is planned. Condon Hall will serve as the surge space.

Design funding has been appropriated by the State Legislature. Construction funding needs to be allocated by the state in early 2007.

* Project Budget: $61,510,000
* Estimated MACC: $30,000,000
* Estimated Construction Start: Fall 2007
* Estimated Project Occupancy: Fall 2009

DESIGN RELATED CONSIDERATIONS:

* Finalized Design Development package includes re-design of interior spaces from the SD approval that contain reductions in the gross SF necessary to meet the budget.
* Redesign floor plate and interior spaces.
* Reduced and eliminated mezzanine floor space. Re-used existing fourth floor attic for occupied space.
* Reduced ADA Access to two locations.
* Exterior proportions of lowered modified entry locations on Spokane Lane (SW) and Chelan Lane (W).
* Continued development of the natural ventilation and mix mode ventilation systems.
* Developed open common areas for teaching assistance office and meeting areas. Eliminated closed TA offices.
* Relocated mechanical chiller systems to a roof well area from prior SD exterior at grade location for sound and visual considerations.

PREVIOUS ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION ACTION: Design Development – in progress review

The Good Friday Quake in Alaska, a personal reflection

The 1964 Good Friday Quake in Alaska, a personal reflection
By Dee Lane, March 2007

At 5:35 on a Friday night in Anchorage we had a stupendous earthquake at 9.2 on the Richter scale - it was adjusted later to that number because they didn't realize the spikes crossed. It was Good Friday.

Outside in front of the house through the large picture window we watched our parked '57 Buick, in gear with the brake on, with each wave of the quake the car would come up on the front yard incline and nearly touch the house as it rolled back and forth. Buicks were very heavy so I had some idea of how intense the quake was - and amazing. In the backyard the trees rolled to the ground back and forth like a wave, like the ground was made of water. The snow was bright white, and then the ground appeared black as it rolled so it was quite a show.

My kids were watching an episode of "Mighty Mouse" when the TV went off and they said, "who turned off the TV?" but they quickly realized we were going to have some fun with an earthquake. And they stood up to watch it, and watched in the back yard too --you could barely stand up. The primary earthquake lasted five minutes or so, and the only damage in our house was of a 1950 Motorola clock (a wedding present, one of a matching pair) and black malachite totemic statue fell and dented a stereo. Our house in Mountain View was stable, on the gravel of an ancient river bed.

Our neighbor Guntrin the baby sitter was at our house at the time of the quake and she kept ruining the earthquake for us, she would cry, “Oh God I'll be good, please God, I'll be good”. And her two little kids were with her and she was scaring the bejesus out of them. She had endured bombing in Germany but we wondered what she did that was so bad to ask God for mercy like that.

Our friends Joe (my boss) and Veneta Arns and their four kids showed up to make sure we were ok. They had driven in from south Anchorage.

For the newborn baby next door, Rachel the youngest of the Jensen children, the Jensens were getting snow out of the yard to make water for the baby, it as easier to melt next to our fireplace. And I left Veneta in charge and she took care of all the 7 kids from the combined families, and as it turned out others too. Joe and I reported to work at the Alaska State Highway Department. And, we got our matching orders but I don't remember much that happened, it was just not enough.

So more and more people starting coming to my house - I just done my shopping and stocked up on food and supplies as if I expected it. I had at least two or more cords of wood for our bright orange 1960’s style hooded fireplace one of only two working fireplaces on our street. So we did not turn away anyone who wanted refuge, a warm house, clean water, and light, as I also had stocked emergency supplies such as hurricane lamps and kerosene. It became apparent quickly that I was needed to help with the rescue effort and founded what became known as “Damage Control”.

So because I could not watch the kids and the house was filling with people I decided to send my three children Outside to live with my sister Marilyn, and her second husband, her two children and my father in Malibu, California.

Eventually there were approximately 150 people coming and going from my small 3 bedroom house with one bathroom.

There were lots of buildings that were flattened from the shaking. New construction met the same fate. After the kids left I wrote an announcement for the radio requesting all architects, engineers, land appraisers, surveyors, typists with manual typewriters, to come and meet at Z J Loussac library at 10 am the following morning, a Monday I think. Fortunately the Loussac librarian heard the announcement over the radio and she was prepared to greet us so in this way we didn't break in to the library as I had planned.

Lots of people came. We set up many teams of two people each with maps, we divided the city to try and figure out if there were people trapped and ascertain the damage and document it. The other purpose of the group was to prepare people for a possible tidal wave, a Tsunami as we called it. We went down to the water's edge and told people not to go to the beach it was dangerous and they were very likely to get wet [funny] - inundated by the Tsunami but no Tsunami ever showed up. I volunteered my car because I wasn't worried about the gas shortage, everyone else seemed to worry about that, but I didn't - I had a full tank. So the teams also used my car to get around and warn people.

I broke into the Department of Natural Resources and took maps that we needed to identify block by block the places that were damaged. And I set up a system of percentages of damages which ranged from 100% which was a flattened useless building to minimal damage like 20%. My ex-husband, Roland Lane, a noted architect, was once of the few that did not come to the meeting. Later I found him sleeping in his apartment on 4th and L street which was very close to the fault line but he said “this building is never going to fall down, so go way and let me sleep”. Pretty funny. He was right it never did, and neither did his "Cliff house" which was a few blocks away, on a cliff, overlooking the fault line.


We chose the innocuous name Damage Control to deflect any criticism from people who may have lost friends or relatives in the earthquake in those buildings, we rendered what aide we could and documented all the known damage, building by building, block by block, and where that wasn’t possible, we estimated in general at the town level such as Seward, which burned and lost the large oil and gas storage tanks. The regular officials entrusted with the authority to act were slow to respond.

We sent a team of people out to check up on an emergency official who did not report to work after several days, they found him with his entire family sitting wrapped in blankets shivering in the cold claiming the world had come to an end. They were fed and comforted.

But eventually we moved to the Civil Defense building where we set up a map of south-central Alaska on the wall with a piece of clear acetate over it. And as the runners bringing reports from distant regions poured in I took notes of the reported damage, fires, Tsunami damage, loss of life, boats destroyed or missing and the state of passibility of the roads and landing fields.

Because communications were down people were using short wave radios, and signaling from the end of their drivable range to the next truck on the edge of it's drivable range, to bring in this news. In the midst of this clever form of tracking, with the situation news being hand delivered scrawled on little bits of paper or from memory a man entered the room, and pitched an offer, he had a truck full of gas, a cat (caterpillar) and front end moose gooser (plow), and he was offering to rent them each for $50 an hour. At this interruption, almost without stopping four of the men present picked the man up and thru him bodily out the door and down the stairs out of the building and returned to what we were working on.

Quickly I realized that just capturing this news was not enough we needed to document it in such a way as we could send our representative to the US government in Washington DC and request emergency funds.

When I completed compiling the damage report I had a man whose house had collapsed and he was the last one to leave Anchorage on the scheduled plane -- I got them to delay the flight to Washington DC. He flew to Washington met with President Johnson to request emergency funds. He returned with a promise of funding. He was the speaker of the house of the Alaska Legislature. I worked at the State while the kids stayed in Malibu.

The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) Director took all my notes and presented them as if he had compiled them which was a bunch of bullpucky and I got to resenting him for doing that. I don't remember his name. I am sure he got some recognition and promotion from my work. Senator Yule Kilcher was at the State he was (sentance trailed off)

The reason I didn't say anything I just decided to do it - silently as benefit to everyone - and not a personal benefit. I stayed awake the first few weeks in 72 hour sections, and slept like 3-4 hours. I went too far, overextended myself and my health was never the same again after that summer.

A week later we had another really bad earthquake almost as bad as the previous week. I was out at Elemendorf in the vault which was downstairs and it scared me because I didn't know we could have another really bad quake that close together. I was looking for photographs to send with Governor Egan to the President. We found tons of photos, a bunch of Seward, the train all scattered around twisted sections of the traintrack - they were relatively new. They included photos before and after the earthquake - they were terrible photos because they showed such detailed damage.

We did not include any of dead people.

Anyway it was scary. So Governor Egan took the photos I found with him to show President Johnson the amazing extent of the damages due to the Good Friday Quake, the fires, tsunami, and after quakes.

Alaska was a new State at that time.

In this way Alaska was able to get emergency funding really fast, and at that time our infrastructure always barely stringing along but it was able to get patched back together. More money came as we showed need; we were pretty desperate, and when the oil was discovered later in the 1960’s it was widely seen as a god send that we had that help from the US federal government so quickly, and before a new source of revenue for the state and local peoples opened up.

dictated by
Darlene L. Lane
Alaskan Pioneer
Urban, Regional, Land and Energy Planner
(design highways and villages, worked on Alaska Land Claims Settlement, D-2 Lands)
Anchorage, Alaska
March 2007

Note:
1959 Alaska Statehood, President Eisenhower signs statehood bill on January 3.
1964 Good Friday earthquake.
1967 Fairbanks flood.
1968 Oil pumped from a well at Prudhoe Bay on North Slope. Governor Hickel establishes Alaska Lands Claims Task Force that recommends a 40 million acre land settlement for Alaska Natives.
1969 North Slope Oil lease sale brings $900 million. First live satellite telecast in Alaska.
1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act signed into law.
1973 Congress passes the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act; salmon fisheries limited entry program becomes law.
1975 Alaska Legislature appropriates funds to initiate purchase and installation of 100 satellite earth stations for establishment of statewide satellite communications network.



http://www.funsocialstudies.learninghaven.com/edu/good-friday.html

On certain
Christian holidays like Good Friday you are not supposed to eat meat.Ash Wednesday's you see an array of people are walking around with the symbolic ash on their forehead.

The Perfumed Bed

every night one of my married male friends visits and sleeps on my living room sofa.

sure they are travelers for one reason or another but what gets me is that when I was rich before the dotcom crash I bought a special sofa just for the purpose of visitors being able to sleep on it. The camel colored metro FlexSteel was on sale for $700 and with the matching chair for total around $1000 -- I had a nice set up.

trouble was only once or twice did anyone actually sleep on the sofa. Visitors preferred my second bedroom with a huge queen bed or the floor mattress. I miss having the extra room and queen, I sleep on a twin bed these days. That sofa was not only smooth it was 6 ft long - that's why it isn't here, we could not get it into this tiny flat without taking a window out.

but now that I have a special sofa, a short, discarded, $50 cat piss enhanced sofa, it's everyone's notion of the W Hotel. "It's so comfortable, thanks!" said one recent visitor. "At least you have this comfortable sofa for me to sleep on," said another friend. There's no problem with the Proverbs here --
"Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your intimate friend;
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon." well sort of...

I believe that because it arrived "pre-damaged" it is popular, and suits predisposed standards for ratty, lumpy, flop house sleeping on the road. It's old, with a Western American Indian design over the entire thing, something I would not buy unless out of sheer need - and who can question that lovely wafting perfume d'felino which appears at odd intervals and will not be silenced.

the other sofa was a designer special - good looks, great support but too precious, this one has a charm befitting its use - really no harm can come to it because it is already a reject = perfect!

now for some trailer park furniture with dog chewed corners and thin, coffee stained, worn through country western fabrics, I'll have visitors night and day!!!

World Systems of Data: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

As humans continually process behind the filters of the mind, in a time delayed way this becomes our mind map. Through extrapolation we will always have a data or information excess - just as we carve away at our brain pathways and build ourselves as children. (West, in the Mind's Eye)

We expect to do this with data -- it is inevitable that we will always tend to produce more data than we can handle unless there are some mighty leaps in technology and they will be overwhelmed again as soon as deployed -- like Washington State's Highway 90 was.

"It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds"
- Death Cab for Cutie

If not immediate in the moment, the mindstream is like a continuous movie of processed interpreted experience. For a sense of this applied over time take for example "Cutters" the person who is the subject of their own continuously filmed movie does not have time to watch the entire thing replayed.

L. Flordi mentions that the data collection from the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN will produce 10 petabytes annually. Google's whole storage system is 5 petabytes.

This author is saying that automated agents will shape thinking about being what existence is, ontology that is, because they will help try to produce a frictionless infosphere arising from the cause of intological friction - in this case meaning the flow of information, where when why how what and why not and what not etc.

I think a lot about this sort of thing. How restrictions can backfire and create new republics of alternative thinking, little subworlds, with all their own laws and rules. Then these worlds pick up the cool factor like Jim Morrison and they take over the paradigm which is exactly what Morrison did with his songs and poetry.

As far as our inability to keep abreast of our information processing and management needs, not even wants, remember Blake advised, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." We may only learn to collect what we need when we have overextended our storage and retrieval capacity so that it becomes a burden.

The first level of human computer interaction is likely to be close to our person -- the near digitalmindskin will rule the level of datamonitoring almost as fluidly as the function of bare perception. In fact it may appear as a scene. (Digital Mind Scene)

In the catagory of it was not just a force of pretechnological cultures... It should be widely accepted that for some of us the world has never ceased to be a teleological system. See living system ESP research at the University of Cambridge: www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/delanoy/node5.html

References:
In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity by Thomas G. West (Author)

Flordi, L., "A look into the future impact of Information and Comunication technlogies (ICT) on our lives", The Information Society. 2007, 23.1, 59-64.

Art:
Philip Sugden
15. The Enigmatic Universe at Sakya Monastery #4
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/psugden/19.html

Linda Lane
Palace of the Water Garden
http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--11666468/SP--A/IGID--11666468/Palace_of_the_Water_Garden_Fountain.htm?sOrig=CRT&sOrigId=10579&ui=1BDC9757629045A2845CE3476DC0E765

Afterwards:
Sand 2007-05-11 10:01:52
You seem to be aware that one of the prime functions of the nervous system is to act as a filter to discard input not co-relatable with pre-organized data. The brain, after all, deals with inputs already filtered through the other sense organs which have been conditioned by experience to automatically discard irrelevant data. Discarded data, insofar as I understand it, is perceived as noise and has no perceptual capability to contribute to or modify existing cognitive collections.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LL 2007-05-12 08:45:07
Digital Mind Scene is a way to express the appearance and feelings someone who is plugged into information at greater depth will feel. There are probably better ways to express it.

Nobody thought feedback from a guitar amp was music until Jimi did it with artistic grace and style. And it is music. In just the same way discarded or unintelligable data can be concieved to be a magical creative source.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sand 2007-05-12 09:36:31
All sorts of innovative sounds become integrated into music at various times. Amongst others the 1812 Overture used actual cannon firing and John Cage became famous by presenting silence as a musical experience. A motionless artist sat in front of a piano to create this effect. I have not yet heard if different musicians might have sat differently before their instruments to "play" this piece nor whether has been adapted to unconventional instruments.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LL 2007-05-13 06:23:25
Sand, rest assured that I am playing John Cage's piece right now.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sand 2007-05-13 08:40:59
And I am listening with great appreciation since your innovation requires no instrument and has attained the status of conceptual art.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LL 2007-05-13 21:06:54
J Sand - what a fabulous response. I can hear the applause now.

Poverty = lack of access to information - Charles in Space Blog

Q. Can spaceflight be justified with the extent of world poverty?
Mike, Ireland

A. I am not certain if it can be justified to your satisfaction. Nor am I certain that it needs to justified any more than hundreds of other human activities and industries that take up much more space and human resources than space, from higher education to rail transport, need to be justified. These days the concept of poverty includes the lack of access to information resources that are frequently space based. We should not try to eliminate poverty by eliminating those things that people strive for.
Charles Simonyi, blogging from outer space
http://blog.charlesinspace.com/category/ask-charles/?&paged=2

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/09/russia.space.ap/index.html

See my earlier post at:
http://wonderlane.blogspot.com/2007/03/charles-in-space.html

A List of People You Should Know or Know About

Because they have personality - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clapaucius/List_of_people_widely_considered_to_be_eccentric

"He shines eccentric, like a comet's blaze."
- Savage

"A psychology textbook entitled General Psychology by Weeks and James attempts to define eccentricity. These guys did a pretty good job. Essentially, they said that eccentrics may "act" like crazy people, but the difference is that people with mental disorders "suffer" from them, while eccentrics know they are different and are pleased with that fact. Eccentric people's thought processes are not usually illogical but are simply unusual and/or abnormal, and strangely enough, when tested, eccentric people have a lower incidence of mental disorders than the general population. This insinuates that the eccentrics' unusual behavior and failure to comply with society standards may even be beneficial to mental health. David Weeks came up with this list of fifteen characteristics of eccentrics. The first five are present in almost all eccentrics, while below that they are less able to be generalized to the eccentric population. Having ten or more of these characteristics may signify eccentricity.

* Nonconforming
* Creative
* Strongly curious
* Idealistic
* Happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one)
* Aware from early childhood of being different from others
* Intelligent
* Opinionated and outspoken
* Noncompetitive
* Unusual eating or living habits
* Not interested in the opinions or company of others
* Mischievous sense of humor
* Single
* Eldest or only child
* Bad speller

(Weeks & James, 1995)"

Wow I am in the company of greatness...and I match all 15 of the characteristics.

found http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=eccentric

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Approach with Confidence - You Have Arrived.

As you know we have raised 2.34 million dollars for the Space Travel Portal to cover everything about Space Travel. As Japanese School Girls are early adopters I would like to begin with their personas, and work back to American and European upper middle class and middle class travelers with a minimum of $500 American to invest in growth paths guaranteed for the principle. To begin with we are focusing on memberships of those with credit cards.

Our investors goal is to actuate Space Travel and some exploration in the next twenty to thirty years. We believe that the first pioneers in space are going to reap economic success in the mid-near term to far term future, especially strong will be market spin offs for those groundlings that are excited by the adventure but for many reasons will only be able to dream of space travel and related adventures.We would like to meet with you at your earliest conveyance (ha ha) to determine the best courses of actionable items to meet our aggressive goals for related information services regarding everything to do with Space Travel.

We are interested in cross and upselling ventures to begin sales in the next three months. We will require a beta b2b Intranet site completed in that time frame. We are operating system and application agnostic.

Our office located in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle is at your disposal:
8414 Greenwood Ave N, Seattle, Washington, USA, Earth, Sol

Our site is:
http://www.greenwoodspacetravelsupply.com/

Our Motto:
Experienced Space Travelers agree that a lack of preparation is a prescription for mishaps.

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Ms.Gravity Greenspace

Photos: Ajpscs, Dance in Tokyo, Manganite,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajpscs/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lost-moments/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manganite/

On Being An Experienced Manager

Experience -
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
- Mark Twain

Assigning Duties for Reasons of Security -
"No, you are not Mr. Purple, somebody from another job's Mr. Purple. You're Mr. Pink."
Instincts -
"You don't need proof when you have instinct."
- Joe Cabot, the experienced Mob Boss from the film Reservoir Dogs

Information Architecture Community Site - Nextd.org

While querying on my hero C. West Churchman's book "The Systems Approach" (planner and philosopher; investigated accounting, research and development management, city planning, education, mental health, space exploration, education, and peace and conflict studies. Died March 21, 2004 ) I located this site - http://www.nextd.org/index.html.

The Nextd.org, which started out with Dr Jeff Conklin, Dr Min Basadur and GK VanPatter discussing if the "wicked problem" senario described by Horst Rittel & Melvin Webber in 1973 was meaningful.

Thinking in terms of wicked problems is one of my friends and iSchool cohorts favorite way to frame a problem, so it's an article I have to read even if GK VanPatter has the nerve to have his photo for the site shot with his sunglasses on. (Oh dude we will _so_ recognize you from that picture!) VanPatten has supporters in the League of Human Design - http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002423.html

The next (ha ha) article is "Nussbaum’s “Are Designers the Enemy of Design?” beginning with an author with the title 'Sir' - I can hardly wait to check it out, right after the required reading for Information Management - no dame so-n-so here, Sir Linda Lane. What fun! Maybe this group is like Next Door...

My plan is to scan in the 1968 book jacket of 'The Systems Approach' for all you reader junkies who have not had the visual pleasure of seeing the hip original (because I was not able to locate it in an image search.)