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November 10, 2006

On the entrenchment of the current problem

There is a paradox. The more one is able to see natural complexity, as it actually exists in natural reality; to see its structure, the more one is able to be a magical being through the realization of simplicity.

Ken,

As this is likely to be read by Congressional staffers, I will reference your three-page pdf file written as proposed testimony, and which I submitted to In-Q-Tel Director in 2004.

http://www.bcngroup.org/investment/testimony.pdf

your points are well echoed by many other individuals perplexing experience in dealing with the government IT procurement system since the War started.

Additional materials from 2004 are at:

http://www.bcngroup.org/investment/home.htm

It has been over a year since I dropped discussions with you and a number of primarily information/knowledge scientists. I have been working on a set of integrative concepts:

I have done as well as I can in introducing these concepts at:

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/safeNet/28.htm

and in a number of papers indexed at:

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/index.htm

The first of these papers is on “Digital Media Opportunity” and is less than two pages and is perhaps simple and yet to the critical point regarding very large capitalization of the new knowledge science. I have been calling the knowledge sciences the “Second School”.

I am considering re-establishing communications with around 100 individuals, mostly PhDs, whose work has, as yours has and mine has suffered from the regime of what seems proper to call "shallow information science". I have perhaps created more problems by associating “shallow information science” with a commercialism of human communication shaped by advertising and this paradigm that constantly increasing consumption is the “way to Heaven”.

It is difficult to describe in a brief way.

Yesterday I did make contact with someone who triggered in me my outrage regarding "making it simple stupid".... I condensed the reaction into something clear:

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/safeNet/32.htm

This communication was correct in the methodology he suggested:

"I would submit that your next personal task would be to develop a list of words you intend on using in the proposal (thus extending your personal lexicon into a group glossary), then to define them (i.e., what is your stipulated definition, what are the corresponding authoritative definitions). Then present these to the group for a short round of discussion, ending with a set of consensus group definitions for the glossary terms). Next, work with the group to identify from that glossary, the consensus hierarchical taxonomy of categorized broader and narrower terms? >From there the group can identify preferred, alternate, abbreviation, acronym, and spelling-variant/error terms. From this point, we have a fairly rich controlled vocabulary from which to operate as a cohesive team."

It is interesting that I am proposing the development of a community wiki for a new "intentional communities" e-forum

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/safeNet/31.htm

and so his thinking and my thinking are along similar lines.

The problem is that neither you nor I nor anyone else whose corporate backing is not mired in the status quo has been allowed to participate. Small and reasonable first steps are made into 100M-dollar projects for each of the government agencies, and then these contracts are executed without any insight as to why that was a reasonable first step.

My work with the FCC was but one example:

http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/one.htm

http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/two.htm

http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/three.htm

and then

http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/FCCcomplaint.htm

(Reading this material will take a little time, but the reason why Congressional Investigations over all IT contracts and the process being mediated by the US Federal CIO Council is necessary cannot be made clearer than in this one “history”.)

Nathan may have time to help on this. What I propose is that the suggestion about producing a wiki that indexes the around 1500 beads, in the BCNGroup digital Glass Bead Games be quickly done.

This steps to do this are:

You help Nathan harvest all of the beads on the several web sites.

Some process of placing the content into simple htm formats is needed so that all of the Microsoft tagging is removed and all beads are simple .txt files. This will take several days and is doable.

We then have a “text corpus” that we wish to expose to a topic index using Readware, your software.

The topic index using the underlying “Adi” ontology:

http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/generativeMethodology/AdiStructuredOntology-PartI.htm

is then to be stood up as a simple broad term narrow term taxonomy that can be examined and used to access beads, now all in the simplest standard format.

Many of the beads are expressing a story about the struggle I had and you have had, and others had had in getting the IT procurement system to focus off war profiteering. This content can be exposed using a separated taxonomy. The technical and theoretical discussions can also have a separated taxonomy.

The body of work is then something that politicians can talk about and so can the common people.

I would like to point out to you that the Topic Map standard has effectively gone the way of the electric car, so I am not proposing that we can put an actual Topic Map as the interface to Readware generated taxonomical index to the BCNGroup digital Glass Bead Games. However, the purpose of this proposed collaboration between yourself, Nathan and I is to stand up evidence and context for the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The FCC Waste Fraud and Abuse complaint was followed by the detailed request for inquiry I made as I was resigning my position at US Custom’s , and could frame the basis for an investigation of all contracts awarded to the large contractors; IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, BAH, Price Waterhouse, etc.

This investigation could then lead to the re-programming of all federal funding of computer science and Information Technology based on the flawed assertions that the Second School has been positioned to expose. The positive consequence would be federal funding of new infrastructure for the Internet, based on the SafeNet concepts and on something like the Knowledge Sharing Foundation.

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