Language versus Thought in 2007

If the semantic structure of a language influences the thoughts and ideas of its users and vice versa, then how and to what degree? Over a decade ago John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson looked at such questions in a work entitled “Rethinking Linguistic Relativity” which examined much earlier works by linguists attempting to explain how thought and language interact. In 2007 and beyond, such research is and will be fundamental to our understanding of things like online Web 2.0 collaborations, artificial intelligence, semantic web applications, internationalization tasks, and just about any other activity that primarily involves communication between people using language. Similarly, some have suggested (e.g. in books like “Thinking in Java” and the like) that ideas and/or thought in software engineering are governed to some degree by the structure and/or semantics of programming languages themselves and that they are not to be compared simply in terms of efficiency or other such criteria.

True 3D Video Holographic Display

Simple display technologies like that used in the Fantazein Clock and other such novelties, suggest a potential approach for creating genuine three dimensional video. This potential involves the use of the persistence-of-vision effect combined with fiber optics light emitters. These light emitters would be configured in arrays and attached to a central spinning hub. Hundreds of these arrays would be attached to the same hub with each being slightly shorter in length with respect to the central hub than the one adjacent to it in a clockwise or counter clockwise direction. These various lengths would represent 3d layers. More to follow....

Open search indices, Google's Achilles heal?

Open public indices for search , if expanded, could be the start of open-source-like alternatives to Google's global search dominance. With the success of collaborative open web 2.0 phenomena like Wikipedia, can much of the internet content itself be catalogued by public minded groups and individuals so that search might again be an area for innovation and experimentation? Many groups have discussed this topic but attempts at something real have been few and far between.
Could mammoth indexing tasks like the continual web crawling conducted by Google's bots, be accomplished in a distributed manner like peer-to-peer networks or systems that employ approaches like that used by BitTorrent?

Semantics

ProgenitorCE tool has helped me find relationships among concepts in software engineering such as those related to algorithms and many areas in biology. Specifically, insect behaviors and potential heuristics for optimization category problems.
The study of ant colony behavior has been studied for years in connection with such problems as path optimization but many other similar connections between entomology and computer science exist.

Recognizing Differences

Many years ago I worked as a lab technician. I learned to use a microscope to perform manual blood cell and other analyses. One thing I discovered quickly was that in order to see depth when viewing a specimen, I had to oscillate the distance of the microscope lens to the specimen. By essentially moving towards and then away from the specimen, I could sense the three dimensional character of the object.

This can be used as a metaphor in describing how we "see" in general and how we perceive or recognize (cognize?) form and definition. Concepts, ideas, or concrete things.

It is in the movement itself, back and forth, from one perspective to another, that we generate "perceptions".
Dude...

Cognitive Boxes

How does the structuring and categorization of knowledge promote and/or hinder innovation and creativity?

How does the structure of educational systems help and/or hurt new developments across multidisciplinary solution spaces?

What are the most effective processes that we can apply to allow us to expand upon our understanding of nature and society across many specialized fileds of study?

To better understand and/or solve complex problems that may not fit within the purview of any one discipline or field of study we must look across disciplinary boundaries from both inside and outside the perspectives created by our own structuring of information.

Imagine applying systems theory and systems engineering principles to centers of knowledge.

Imagine using computers to unleash us from own cognitive boxes.

Distributed or Networked Computing

Recent article in MIT Technology Review discusses use of donated compute time from thousands of individuals to help in cancer research. Project at University of Washington follows lead of SETI project in trying to harness the power of idle processors.

Does Telecommuting Hinder Creativity?

Does telecommuting hinder creativity among groups?
This is a question that must be answered as industries allow more and more work to be moved from central offices to the home based agreements or other individualized off-site arrangements. Creativity sparked from face to face interaction among small teams is the hallmark of many types of knowledge industry activities. From journalism to design to software engineering to advertising, many categories of work that require continuous streams of new ideas and innovative approaches often do better when small groups interact in such a way as to aggregate and then distill multiple perspectives. Is this done more effectively in person? My opinion: probably.

Uber Search

Without more intelligent high performance search algorithms and systems that use them, ambiguity in results will continue to increase. The internet has become so large in terms of numbers of web sites and web pages that its shear size coupled with its disorganization have devalued it as a resource. Finding ways to harvest value from this ocean of data is the challenge for industry and academia.
We don't even know what we know or rather we have access to so much that we cannot access. We can know so much that we know nothing.

Transitions from deterministic to probabilistic to chaos

Some are exploring how real world systems such as different kinds of networks, go from states of structure and predictability to states of randomness and chaos. What would the implications be and what would be possible if we could know when, why, where, how a system or systems moves from deterministic to probabilistic to chaotic?

Small Worlds by Duncan Watts

Mapping Ideas To Images

Information such as news can be made much more meaningful when it is overlaid onto images such as geographic maps that convey something about the data such as where it has or is occurring. One example, BuzzTracker , lets you explore news through such a map interface.

Forecasting Conditions

How many times have we heard,

Conditions are just right for bla bla bla to happen next.

Finding relationships between some set of indicators and some type of event is a billion dollar industry. Predicting the future has always been worth much, with or without computer models and simulations.

If the type of event you are predicting involves much human behavior or systems whose primary actors are people, then do your methods of prediction and forecasting become invalid when to many individuals comprehend and act on it.
Like if we all knew the future or too many of us did, then that future would not happen?

Meeting Grand Challenges with Cadre of Geniuses

At MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), the department in charge of Traffic Flow Management Systems Engineering and Evolution represents a pool of some of the brightest minds in Systems and Software Engineering, not just in terms of the US but I believe globally. This department is developing software based on some of the most complex and intriguing multidisciplinary concepts. The Grand Challenge they face daily is to develop decision support and analysis tools that allow users to make better choices with regard to the use of our National Airspace System in an equitable manner within tight time constraints. The solutions that these individuals have created and are still producing could be applied to a much broader range of complex problems.

This team is comprised of many dedicated highly intelligent open minded professionals that continually embrace new ideas and approaches. They exemplify successful collaborative teamwork in research and development.

Seeing the forest all at once, knowledge discovery and data mining

A demand exists for developing methods to learn from vast data sets like those related to climate studies, macroeconomics analysis, etc. We might be able to discover knowledge by looking at these massive databases as single entities with features that can be compared from one instance of a set to another.

Multi-state transistors beyond binary

What could be done with a transistor capable of n-states?

With the advent of molecular switches and nanotech as well as optical and/or quantum based computing we may soon be presented with the opportunity to think about algorithms and software engineering in completely different ways. With limited fuzzy logic implemented in hardware like analog, we may be able to take wholly new approaches to many of the most complex problems.

PUBLIC SEARCH CACHE INDEX: Searching the web without search engine sites

If web sites or rather their addresses were organized in some meaningful ways that had to do with verified content and/or purpose, then we would not need search engine sites.

Easily accessible public domain registeries of urls mapped to content categories with listings verified by some independent bodies, not DMOZ, would go a long way in making the vast internet searchable by means other than search engine sites. Make the internet searchable to personal search bots, intelligent agents, or web services accessed and launched by individual users from their own machines or hosted machines.

What I am suggesting is something like a PUBLIC SEARCH CACHE INDEX like the Google indices but owned by not-for-profit PUBLIC entities. Do it people!