Web X.0

Recent articles like the one in MIT Tech Review, The Internet Is Broken,
make claims that the internet is in such dire need of repair that we need a whole new design.
Others seem worried to death that the internet is being subdivided so a few companies can profit from the "pipes" they provide. If I were any of the companies that do provide the infrastructure for the internet, I would not let my contribution be made into a commodity but I would also not want to tread into antitrust territory by also providing the many other parts of the internet that make it what it is.
If any one company tries to vertically dominate the internet in terms of infrastructure, content, software, etc. they will eventually be taught a lesson in antitrust law and will get the MS-like backlash from all of those who hate to be dominated or bullied.

Analyzing Assumptions

Success in innovation is determined by what we decide not to assume and our ability to temporarily assume. Deciding to momentarily not believe what we know or assume to be true and temporarily believing something is true that we are unsure of or have no proof of as yet. Extending beyond dictionary word meanings into connotations.
Stretching theory and conjecture to applications totally unrelated on the surface.
Divergent boundaries toward convergent new ideas.
New dimensions to old problems and new problems with traditionally accepted principles.
Not just thinking outside of the box but redefining the box as another shape altogether and then stepping outside of and through that new region to discover new purposes and novel design.

Web 3.0

From the future:
Premier transmission services through telcos and cable providers.
Old fashion ISP connections for Joe Shmo controlled by mega site content dealers.
Free underground overlapping WiFi and satellite connections across the globe, unregulated and impossible to control for all those who don't like to have their information access sensored and don't like big brother or big business.

Materials That Repair Themselves

Intelligent materials that repair themselves? Nissan has just come out with an automobile paint for its new X-Trail SUV that can heal itself of minor scratches. Imagine many other applications of this idea of "self-repair" to a multitude of other materials, situations, systems.

• clothing
• metals
• home siding
• flooring
• glass, esp. windshields

Or extend the idea a little like the military is doing with future battlefield uniforms, to "repair" the thing contained by the materials. Future military uniforms may "respond" to rips and punctures by administering first aid compounds to help wounds clot or inject antidotes in case of chemical or biological attacks. And what about metal fatigue in aircraft bodies.

Nano Wars

Imagine an arms race in nanotechnology. If and when nations begin to develop offensive nanotech devices and/or compounds, where will it end? My nanomachines against your nanomachines. Maybe it is a crazy thought but I think it is not that far fetched. Maybe we will just develop the technology then realize we can't use it safely without endangering our own troops. Maybe it will be to expensive. Maybe it will just be impossible because of the physics involved. Maybe.....

Techno Posse

Imagine micro robots the size of ants. Now imagine that these robots can perform repeated simple DNA match test between a sample they carry and samples that they collect from their environment. Imagine that these Micro Laboratory Robots (MLR) can be manufactured cheaply.

Build a swarm of MLRs numbering in the tens of thousands and give them the ability to communicate with one another and a central "colony" host. Let them internally manufacture a compound from some readily available material in most environments and infuse it with nanotech driven signal devices. Let them "mark" the paths they travel with aforementioned compound and let the MLRs be able to detect the compound left by other MLRs.

Release the MLR swarm into a city where the perpetrator of some infamous crime is thought to be located and give them a DNA sample from said perpetrator. You get the idea.

Ideal Perspectives

What if we all viewed one another the way a parent, a mom or dad, views their children?
For example:
What if we all wanted only what is best for one another?
What if we simply just wanted to see each other succeed?
What if we just wanted to see each other happy and fulfilled?
What if we would go hungry rather than see another go hungry?
What if we would rather be homeless rather than see another without shelter?
What if we would rather be cold than see another shivering without a coat?
What if we would rather give our life to save another's life if it came to it?

Words Ranked by number of Synonyms

Using a simplified version of Google's page ranking logic, equating a synonym as a link between words, I conjectured that the more synonyms a word has, the more important or fundemental that word is in a language. See list at link.

On popflux

If we spent more time thinking about all of the unsolved problems or open questions left to be answered or yet to be asked, then who would be the audience for the steady stream of media that tells us what we are all thinking about or what our opinions are or should be?
Blogging, books, category, Computers and Internet, Entertainment, Family, Food and Drink, Friends, Game, Health and wellness, hobbies, Journal, Musica, Media, Misc, Movies, Moblog, Musique, News and politics, Organizations, Philosophy, Ramblings, random, Travel, Votes, Work

Whatever........>>>>?????

Conjecture on number of synonyms, meaning, and complexity

Conjecture:
The more synonyms and antonyms associated with a word , the more significant the concept represented by that word or else the more complex and many faceted.

Living Consciously

List of rules for living. Choosing to think, even when thinking is difficult, versus remaining in ignorance.....

Multidimensional Data Analysis

Methods for analyzing multidimensional data are still lacking. Multivariate data sets are all around us but methods that maintain the integrity of the data are still primitive. Systems or objects that are described with multiple interdependent variables are difficult to analyze without the reduction of dimensions but to reduce dimensions can lead to a reduction in accuracy.

The Movie in Your Head: SCIAM Mind Magazine

This is a great article on theories about how the mind processes sensory input, especially visual input. Various experiments are discussed. Experiments mentioned focus on noninvasive methods of measuring brain activity. Very insightful.

Google Earth

So far Google's expansion into many areas from email to advertising to library services etc. has gone on without causing to much of an uproar in the highly sarcastic world of software developers and sundry IT fields but everyone is watching. Hopefully Google will maintain the foresight it has shown so far without giving in to negative forces.

Feeds Feed Ideas

With the rise of RSS and Atom feeds continuing at light speed, soon if not already, researchers in fields like computer science, information science, natural language studies, and others, will apply artificial intelligence and language processing algorithms to feed aggregators to perform such tasks as extrapolation and/or heuristic associative extension logic.

A Server in Every Home

What would be the impact on the web if everyone online had their own http server? If everyone owned their own server possibly, probably, through a web hosting service like 1and1 or one of the many other services available for small fees, then a myriad of opportunities for entertainment, software development, and many other products and services, would be realistically possible. Everything needed for such a change to occur is already available except maybe training and/or documentation type resources, but that could be remedied fairly quickly.
What do you think?

Watching New Ideas Grow

I cannot watch every piece of information, every day, on every subject I am interested in, but a new site called TransTheoretical.com will be watching some of the areas I want to know about. So far they have listed the following as areas they will be exploring:

1. Database of theories
2. Quantum cryptography
3. Optical computing
4. Meta-heuristics
5. Grid computing
6. Probabilistic resource allocation
7. Multidimensional data analysis
8. Multidimensional data visualization
9. Noninvasive neural-computer interfaces
10. Human cognition
11. Intersections of linguistics and artificial intelligence
12. Intelligent agent emergent behaviors
13. Nanotechnology and self-replication
14. Swarm intelligence and logic

I will be watching...

Knowledge Intersections

Most of human knowledge is categorized in terms of objects of study or focus. What if human knowledge was divided according to actions or activities held in common among some group of such? In other words, what if knowledge was organized in terms of verbs instead of nouns? Just a thought.

Clear Thinking and Breathing

"Want Clear Thinking? Relax" October 2005; by Charmaine Liebertz; 2 page(s) is a good short article on effective relaxation techniques that can be used on the job. I found one idea listed in connection with breathing control very useful. You basically imagine a small flaming candle in front of you a foot or so from your face. You then imagine breathing in such a way as to not blow out the candle.

The politics of Decision Support Systems

The problem with developing really advanced Decision Support Systems is that one must not go so far as to replace the Decision Maker or else the system is no longer a support system but moves into the realm of artificial intelligence system or expert system. This can be a problem since the Decision Maker is usually also the customer and does not want to be replaced by software.

Swarm Intelligence or Net Centric Warfare in Military Strategy - Old Ideas

The original architect of some of the main non-technological concepts associated with swarm intelligence, net centric warfare, and asymmetrical warfare is none other than the ancient Chinese strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu. The strategies and tactics described by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War” are as applicable today as ever. Indeed, the tactics and strategies described by Sun Tzu remind one of the those used in modern history by many of the enemies that the United States has faced who appear smaller or weaker in size or strength, but achieve devastating results. Two examples of such enemies are the Viet Cong/ North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war and the Islamic terrorists of present day. Also, some of these ideas seem to sound like parts and pieces from the Asian martial arts, which may be where Sun Tzu got some of his ideas or vice versa. The main point of commonality amongst these principles is the concept of not presenting your enemy with a large solid target or fooling him into thinking part of your forces are more substantial than they really are. The idea is to keep your enemy guessing so that he must spread his forces thinly or concentrate them incorrectly. Furthermore, there is an associated concept of developing the strategic ability to rapidly focus massive force upon a single objective from previously dispersed positions or else attack multiple points simultaneously from within enemy positions after first infiltrating fluidly in a dispersed amorphous fashion. What is new now is the scale with which we can execute the aforementioned strategies and tactics due to our communications and information technology. See "Foundations of Swarm Intelligence: From Principles to Practice" by Mark Fleischer.

Logical Cognition Part 2

The interpretation of sensory input and the images they create is accomplished in individuals by many mechanisms. Contrast and comparison or difference and similarity are the underpinnings of most all human understanding and interpretive mechanisms. This is partly due to the way humans see and otherwise sense the world around them. Individuals see forms and color in terms of the quantity and angle of light reflected from objects. Human beings sense shadow and reflection or light and dark., hot and cold, rough and smooth, loudness and silence, odorlessness and pungency.
Therefore, individuals modify and extend the physiological mechanisms used to sense the external world, for use in the realm of thoughts, ideas, and mental images. However, the sources of illumination in the arena of thoughts are an individual’s past and present experiences, memories either perceived or imagined, and any attendant emotions and or desires, in that by comparison and contrast with these elements humans give form to new thoughts, including judgments about what is perceived through the senses.
Moreover, some of the sources of mental illumination or reflection that can lead to unhealthy thinking are:

1. Assumptions about causes.
2. Assumptions about effects or the future.
3. Miscategorizations.
4. Extreme:Guilt, Fear, Anger, Jealousy, Greed
5. Self-image/definition issues.

Logical Cognition Part 1

Beliefs and assumptions act as filters through which thoughts and sensations pass before individuals make decisions or conclusions. Most often these filters concern either ideas about an individual’s identity or the exterior world. The source of many of these cognitive gates can be traced to childhood or other life experiences. These thought sentries can have either positive or negative effects.
Furthermore, many individuals operate on the basis of self-defined images that are associated with the “self” or the world. These images are continually referenced and compared to thoughts or sensory input. When conflicts arise between these “images” and definitions and other thoughts or input, then problems often arise. Much of mental illness and disorder is caused by the discontinuity of conceived reality versus perceived reality.
Conversely, an individual’s degree of mental health is tied to an ability to adapt conceptions about self and the external, to sensory perceptions. And, although there is nothing unhealthy about envisioning things differently than they are or appear to be, the capability of differentiating vision from concrete reality or empirically suggested frames of reference delineates dreams from delusion.
(more to follow)

Conscious Mission Part 3

In contrast, control of the direction of self events does not insure certain results because of the lack of control of external events. Indeed, understanding that many externalities are by nature outside the control of an individual may be said to be a primary belief itself in the establishment of personal mental health. Furthermore, with some exceptions, certain beliefs may generally contribute to a healthier self. Moreover, all sorts of institutions have understood that to direct people's beliefs is to direct their whole persons. Additionally, appeal to the most basic human desires that spawn and support beliefs, has been used as a successful tactic to affect control over individuals. Thus, individuals may use some of the same methods that others have used from outside the person, to execute control over themselves. Also, individuals may look to the means the body uses physiologically to affect the self. Nevertheless, choosing a direction for the self or determining a personal mission can be a difficult process to begin, but may reveal much about a person's beliefs and assumptions. Currently, many organizations have found that a statement of mission or goals and purposes of existing, are essential to the initiation of changes in group behavior. Equally though, the application of a mission to the present can be daunting. The multiplicity of elements acting on an individual at any given time, demand that choices and eventually priorities be made and set. Choice implies control and therefore a source of control. Individuals can chose to be active in the choices that determine personal happiness and mental health or may wish to remain unconscious of the internal dynamics that shape who they are and how they feel.

Conscious Mission Part 2

However, because of the quantity and speed of the interactions in an individual's self, and the fact that many interactions can occur randomly and or outside awareness, singular self events cannot realistically be continually affected by a person's conscious faculties. On the other hand, general patterns of events can be directed consciously. The most effective means for an individual to achieve some measure of control of the general patterns of internal self events is twofold. First, an individual must believe that conscious control of self is possible. Secondly, an individual must alter beliefs and direct personal exposure to outside stimuli which themselves contribute to the production of other self events so that such elements produce elements that agree with a chosen direction.
(More to follow tomorrow)

Conscious Mission Part 1

Conscious Mission Part 1

With competing “self” events or elements such as beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and ideas, individuals are forced to set priorities either consciously or unconsciously. A consciously directed set of priorities is a mission. Indeed, the degree to which an individual is presently aware of the elements that are acting on the “self” will determine an individual’s ability to make changes to the “self”. Although ignorance may be bliss, knowledge of “self” is health and ultimately, sustained happiness.
(More to follow tomorrow)

The Most Simple Creatures Can Be The Most Complex

Social insect behavior such as is found in ant colonies serves as a powerful model to generate advanced algorithms in solutions to highly complex optimization problems. Some types or areas where this has been attempted with success include applications involving:

• Sequential ordering problem
• Parallel implementations
• Quadratic assignment problem
• Vehicle routing problem
• Symmetric and asymmetric traveling salesman problem
• Scheduling problems
• Graph coloring problem
• Partitioning problems
• Telecommunications nets

Some of these solutions involve:

• emergent behaviors
• automata
• collaborative elements

Universal Translator Automated

The search is on by several groups in gov and academia to develop automated equipment that will perform on the fly two-way (bidirectional) language translations using speech recognition, speech synthesis, and other software (insert miracle here) . We may be a long way from something like "Star Trek" but at least for limited language families, we may soon be able to understand each other a little better.

INTROSPECTION - Descarte Say What

Sentience or the knowledge of self is the primary prerequisite for intelligent life. The knowledge that one’s mind or person is composed of several parts that perform many kinds of operations on various types of materials is essential for intelligent life to have and maintain mental health. Intelligent people will not achieve their maximum potential or experience the fullness of human existence, unless they are conscious of the multifaceted nature of their persons.

Intelligent people can expand their sentience and become more comfortable with who they are, by understanding certain principles, having the right attitudes, and using several techniques. Once people learn to identify and observe the interactions that are continually occurring within their person, they will begin to understand and appreciate who they are more fully, and consequently, achieve greater mental health.

“I think, therefore I am”

The capacity to observe and question ones self determines the degree of mental health one achieves and maintains and is essential for personal growth.

New Level of the Web

New article in Discover magazine:
Emerging Technology
Web 2.0 Arrives
Software upgrades promise to turn the Internet into a lush rain forest of information teeming with new life
By Steven Johnson
DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10 October 2005
is very thought provoking and applicable to anyone trying to start a web based enterprise today.
Must read.

Power Web Searches

Using intelligent agents or web crawlers is not new, but with recent increases in bandwidth and computing power for most people it is more feasible than ever for individuals to use their own agents to conduct web mining and data gathering.

Time Capsule - 2105

How would our economy, our jobs, our society and culture, our daily lives, be altered if in the future all of the material needs of all mankind could cheaply and easily be met by developments in such technologies as nano-engineering and nuclear fusion? What if nobody had a corner on any form of knowledge or information? What would then be the motivation for careers? for our lives?

Developments in Cryptography and Invulnerable Security

"Quantum Bit Commitment Protocol" (QBC) has been proven formally to be invulnerable to all attacks consistent with the laws of quantum mechanics."
What a statement.
Any organization involved in the application of quantum cryptography is on the cutting edge of communications security.
Companies that find innovative, efficient, and adaptable ways to implement and/or apply the principles of quantum cryptography to communications security should turn tremendous profits.
Moreover, non-security related applications of quantum technologies are sure to drive much future research and invention.

On the Creative Use of Analogy

Using analogies is a great way to discover new ideas. If you can take some topic and reframe it in terms of an analogy, sometimes this can lead you to views of that topic which you would never have had otherwise.

New Orleans - To Rebuild or Not

Should New Orleans be rebuilt exactly as it was?
Forgive me if this seems insensitive. I do not wish to minimize any loss of life, I think all human life is precious and deserving of respect and love, but for the future, Should New Orleans be rebuilt? Why not let part of the New Orleans resemble Venice?
Bolster the foundations in the lowest parts of the city and somehow let water, minus sewage, trash, and anything else negative, flow in the streets of those parts of the city. Give a little to mother nature and the Mississippi and let them have little pieces of the city such as described. Let the city become semi-porous to the waters that constantly push at its borders. Just a concept for exploration.

Patent Reform

With all of the problems associated with the US patent process today comes the recurring debate over the purpose of patents.
One line of thought is that patents exist to protect the rights of inventors with, I guess, the main right being the ability to prevent anyone else from making a profit from an idea without the inventor's permission.
However, my question is, wouldn't people still invent even if they could not profit from their ideas?
Also, with the pretense that "necessity is the mother of invention" and the premise that "problems" normally equate to "necessities", what happens, in terms of inventing solutions to problems, when all of the best solutions have no potential for profit?

China Rising

We should all start learning chinese. China's economic progress will fuel the world economy for the next two decades. With a population of almost 1.3 billion, it is in the interest of most businesses to make sure that they have a strategy that incorporates China.

On seeing and wisdom

Why is wisdom associated with the owl?
Maybe because they are supposed to have large eyes and somehow wisdom is connected to sight. So if you can see more you have more wisdom. Indeed the early roots of the English word wisdom are related to watching and our current definition does have the connotation of seeing with the "mind's eye".
Wisdom and knowledge are connected to seeing past or beyond what is superficially apparent, seeing the real beneath or behind the visible or pulling out the abstract.

Researching Strategies

One of the best strategist in history, be it military, business, or otherwise, was the ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu ca. 400 - 200 BC. "The Art Of War", written by this general more than 2000 years ago, seems as relevant today as ever. His ideas on being adaptive and "formless" are informative because as he notes, if your competition does not know where to defend or plan to defend against you, then he will have to distribute his resources thinly. You then can concentrate your resources against a single point, focusing action toward a single objective and succeed with a much higher probability.

The physics of human "wants"

Some thoughts about the physics of desire or wanting.
Human desire denotes craving and points to a preference for a certain future event to occur or not occur. Also, human desire is a function of the arbitrary values individual's hold for objects. A person senses an object whether abstract or concrete, and places a value on either the use or possession of that object. The contrast between an individual's perception of the value of an object, with their perception of the likelihood of obtaining that value influences the degree of desire for that object.
Furthermore, most all desires have a motive of obtaining pleasure, avoiding pain, or insuring and or increasing the chance of survival of the individual or some other abstraction. Moreover, in some individuals, desires having to do with offspring or group survival issues, are tied to personal survival. Thus in many individuals the survival of offspring and or socio/cultural groups for which the individual feels connected, seems to supersede their personal survival instinct.
Equally significant, desire is related in some ways to individuals attempting to extend themselves or exercise control over something outside themselves. The human drive to control may be related to human being's structural makeup as well, in that the human body operates as a single organism by the nervous system exercising control over the body. Hence desire can be seen as an extension of an individual's internal control mechanisms.
Therefore, at a primitive level, the human consciousness makes no distinction between the internal self and the external world. The human "self" is predisposed to internalize and or personalize sensory input and continually reinterpret itself within the context of its perceived reality. The continual process of determining personal definition is related to a human being's sensory instincts that must constantly maintain a bearing as to its spatial orientation.
Additionally, curiosity is a manifestation of the control characteristics of human consciousness. The urge to know or understand the new or the unfamiliar is an example of the human consciousness attempting to find order and thereby exert control.
Lastly, hunger is an inborn human desire which may also feed all of the other types of desires as an emotional template or blueprint. Hunger is normally the first information that individuals try to communicate in the form of crying.
All in All, desire is the emotion produced along side of or as a result of an individual's natural attempts to exert control over everything from internal thoughts and physical processes to a myriad of externalities, both concrete and abstract. Pleasure, pain avoidance, and survival issues play roles in the mechanics of desire. The desire to define "self" and curiosity are examples of the human consciousness trying to determine its orientation.

Too Intelligent Marketing Concepts

As advertisers and marketers try to get our attention through the roar of ads, movies, magazines, books, and commercials we are bombarded with continually, they increasingly try to "target" consumers by using knowledge about the consumers preferences, tastes, previous choices, etc. However, if and when this approach works, then our previous choices and/or preferences become self-reinforcing because we are shown more and more of what we "like" to see, we get trained or we train ourselves, depending on how you want to look at it.
This runs contrary to what we should do if we want to "explore" new ideas and concepts, if we want to create new ideas and concepts, because one of the main ingredients of exploration, by definition, is discovery, and discovery implies that something unknown to us becomes known.

Discover the unknown, solve the unsolved, define the undefined!
Concept Explore

Very useful site, EJournals

Ejournals has many links to legit online scholarly journals, a wealth of info for free.

On Opportunities At Boundaries and Intersections

The compartmentalization and specialization that defines academia is both its strength and weakness. However, weakness can be turned to opportunity if one recognizes such weakness as an opening or as a need begging to be filled. If an academic specialty, department, field of study, or discipline were to "miss" something in the area of knowledge that defines its focus, then a good candidate location to look for such a "miss" would probably be in those area that have overlap with other specialties or at boundaries not clearly defined between multiple fields of study. These are the kinds of subjects we are interested in at Concept Explore.

On Reading Your Mind

It may not be long before sensors linked to computers will be able to read our thoughts. This is usually refered to as a neuro-interface.
One question I would like to investigate, related to research on neuro-interfaces and translating brain wave measurements into meaningful data for use in command and control systems is:
What is the difference between the brain waves created when we think about say something like "a new HDTV" and the brain waves produced when we simply speak the words "a new HDTV" silently to ourselves in our mind?

Urban-Suburban, Cram Together or Spread Out

Written after reading article on sprawl and mixed use development in Washington Post today.

What is the opposite of suburban sprawl?
What is this conceptual uptopia that the opponents of suburban development have in mind as an alternative?
They say that they want denser development where people can live, dine, shop, and work all in the same location within walking distance or within the reach of mass transit. It seems that their assumption is that cars and the suburban land use made possible by cars are the roots of all evil, that environment is damaged by suburban development patterns, and that highly planned compact urban development is less harmful.
That said, the "new urbanists" and "smart growth" advocates ignore some simple human traits and practical concerns.

1. People don't always prefer and can't always afford to live where they work and/or perform all of the other activities of life.
2. People don't always prefer to live right on top of thousands of other people.
3. People love the freedom that their cars afford them.
4. Mass transit sucks in most areas of the US and usually can't always get you to your destination in a reasonable amount of time to within a reasonable distance.
5. People do other things on the way to and from work such as shop for groceries, take classes, etc. I can't see myself lugging 10-15 bags of groceries for my family while boarding buses and trains.

Beyond all that, just based on the population and land area of the US, if we were to all spread out evenly to the maximum extent possible, we would each occupy roughly 8 acres. On the other hand, if we all packed together at the density found in Manhattan, NY, we would collectively only occupy a patch of earth with an area of about 100 miles by 100 miles. So we have plenty of room in the US to spread out all that we want.

My take, my bottom line conclusion is that those who don't want "sprawl", don't want it because they are not in charge of it and/or no one is in charge of it, it is not "planned" enough for them, it is not always neat and optimized, it charges forth in error sometimes, it responds to market forces not academic studies, it is unbridled.

I say if you want to spread out then spread out. I say that dense urban development probably does just as much damage to the environment as suburban development, maybe more. I say that in some ways I like the sprawl, the boom town feel, the brand new everything, new malls, new homes, new roads, new schools, new parks, etc. etc.

On Perpetuating Problems and Hyping the Insignificant

Government agencies and non-profit organizations established to fix some problem or shed light on some issue of "concern", no matter how worthy, all soon begin to exhibit self-survival behaviors just like every other living organism. It does not benefit them to solve the problem they were tasked to solve or fix because then they would no longer have a reason to exist.
News media tasked with providing a continual stream of information about something to us all, when short on "significant" information must make the insignificant seem significant, i.e. hype the trival or otherwise focus on some statistcally meaningless event or just get us all worried about something that might intrude in our lives with less probability than being hit by lightning. Usually, we are already aware of the things we should be worried about. Further, the most complex problems will never be solved by agencies because by definition agencies act for us and most important complex problems require our direct participation. We invent agencies to solve problems when we don't care about whether or when those problems are ever solved or not.

On More Research

If we all spent as much time doing serious research, scientific or otherwise, as we spend researching the best HDTV, car, computer, etc. to buy, just imagine what we could accomplish.

Ideas and Profit

Companies need two brains that talk to each other every once in a while. One brain should be the dreamer, NOT so worried about the deliverable, the practical, or the profitable. The other brain should be the doer, ALL about the execution, the implementation, and the cost-profit calcs. Most of us should not be given over to either brain exclusively or else we risk becoming stale. Further still, fresh profitable ideas come from brains that are not always concentrated on the profitable and those ideas do not become or remain fantasy so long as sharpened, worked and hammered into reality in the form of profitable solutions.

On Space-Time and the Universe

If all of the electromagnetic radiation we can sense from space using various types of receivers, including the visible spectrum, actually represents views into the universe at different times based on the distance of an object to earth and the speed of light, then all that we know about huge parts of the universe is based on data that is thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years old. If we could see the universe instantaneously or at times near what we are accustomed to with close objects, what would we see? How different would our understanding of the universe be? Considering the magnitude of the distances between celestial bodies like galaxies, what is time when measured using human standards like days and years? For all we know, large portions of the universe will have been destroyed and reborn several times by the time we see the light from such areas. For that mater, if the universe began to end in some distant part relative to us, how long would it be before we were even aware of such?

Conceive Significant Actionable Concepts

Millions of people have new ideas about important subjects all of the time but either do not act on them for a myriad of reasons or a vital connection is never made between the new idea or partial idea and other new or existing ideas. However, with a toolkit consisting of the internet, present information technology, and software, we should be able to make many more of the types of connections between partial or whole ideas necessary to conceive of complete significant actionable concepts. I say "should" because the only thing missing for all of this to come to fruition is for individuals and groups to invent or learn to use and implement processes that continually explore the assumptions, boundaries, and intersections of current knowledge sets from different perspectives under various contexts. I started Concept Explore to help people do just that.