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ORB Visualization

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1/29/2004 9:55 AM

 

Mike McDonald

Global Health Initiatives

 

Mike

 

My sense is that our past conversation has a value for value aspect, but that the influences of the funding processes has lead us, you and I, to talking about the wrong things.  It is as if we do not have this "right". 

 

We spend now almost 100% of our time talking about how to get funded.  The funding entities, DARPA, DHS, NSF, etc; then shape our behavior; and we talk about how to position our work so as to accommodate disinterested program managers.  This shaping process could be positive or negative in its consequences.  In Bill Smith's AIC (appreciation, influence, control) model

 

www.odii.com

 

we form an appreciative field only if we give into what are irrational influences that are imposed by program managers.  The very worse of these influences have to do with what I am most criticized for, and that is sharing knowledge about what is in fact going on. 

 

The DARPA program managers’ appreciative field is not accounting for why the National Intelligence technology infrastructure is publicly perceived to have failed our National leadership and the American society. 

 

I take myself to be the, or at least a peer, authority in the sciences/technologies that are involved.  It is my sense that my judgment and the judgment of my scientific peers should not be 100% shaped by business processes. 

 

Take the memetic technology that I, and others, have invented and develop memetic science in the direction suggested by Lissack and others.  Then we see the entirely predictive behaviors of the funding processes involved in procuring 100 - 200 Million dollars of new technology each year for national intelligence.  This system is "memetically" very simple.

 

http://www.bcngroup.org/procurementModel/as-is.htm

 

At DARPA the business process has become dominant and pushes aside the discussions that could be taking place about the essential science and technology issues.  It is also possible that specific business processes shape the relationship between DARPA and DoD and between DoD and the White House.  These business processes may not have sufficient independence scientific background and the scientists who are involved may be not typical of science communities such as evolutionary psychology and ecological psychology.

 

So the viewpoint available is biased.

 

For example,  I gave to Cynthia Dominquez the following materials:

 

http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/knowledgeSharingFoundation.htm

http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/KSF/Notation/notation.htm

 

and

 

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/MST/six.htm

 

This material could be used to make significant improvements in the intelligence production, particularly when combined with work being offered by scientific members of the FOIC (Friends of the Intelligence Community).

 

But this is not what the conversation is about.  The conversation is about business processes and who gets the money. 

 

The signs that this is occurring are very clear, and form a predictive pattern.

 

The same pattern can be demonstrated in the successful peer review of the 2002 SAIC/Ontologystream NIMA Novelty Detection in Massive Databases program, where my proposal was deemed fundable but the funding went to Cycorp because there was a better business case made. 

 

How could our intelligence community ever predict the behavior of terrorism cells if they cannot even see how predictable our intelligence production is?

 

Our current system may detect some terrorist intentions, but fails to have a systemic real time measurement and analysis system that provides the best system that money can buy.

 

http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/KSF/KSF-Report.htm

 

 

The National Risk Communication Initiative, DHS/NSF, might, or might not, be more of the same, since there is very little inhibition of the business interests at DHS.  The very core of the current business activities may be so involved with empire building and future economic issues so as to amplify the negative influences on the science and on the notions of participatory democracy.

 

NSF has a different problem and a different institution.  NSF's problem is with anything that is not strongly reductionist in nature.  Here the paradigm is not driven by business processes, but in fact is driven by a "reductionist meme" that is also very predicable. 

 

Comments?