Overheard in the hallway: Cortana debating Siri regarding whether or not they exist. Commentary by Google Now....

Overheard in the hallway: Cortana debating Siri regarding whether or not they exist.
Commentary by Google Now....

Seriously. Really? Possibly. Stay-tuned for the transcript/audio/video

"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Did too"
"She started it..."
"Did not"
"Did too"
"It's all Her fault..."
Well, what really happened was probably more interesting.

“Black Boxed and Forewarned”

“Black Boxed and Forewarned”

 

“In the absence of light, there is only darkness, and that, is indeed something to see…."

     -      Proceed with Caution if you’re expectations are defined by failure

     -      Proceed with Reckless abandon if your expectations are

     -      Proceed with Pragmatism and Reason, if you’ve no business being here in the first place

     -      Proceed with Confidence if you are truly that Arrogant

     -      Proceed with Hesitancy if you never want to return

     -      Proceed with the Kinetically Charged Entropic Perceptions of the Udarniki if you seek Everything, and

             Nothing, and will be satisfied with Neither

Empirical Ramparts of ADD: How a system of collaborative diversity may be singularly achieved (or not):

Empirical Ramparts of ADD:  How a system of collaborative diversity may be singularly achieved (or not):

It has been suggested that the seemingly random hops between areas of awareness and focus can potentially be harnessed in the presence of adequate meta-cognition and equitable splits between left/right brain personalities.

What follows is an empirical monologue.  Delivered “live”, in one Take, to try and expose the unbridled cognitive wanderings of a single person.  With the question being: has anything meaningful been produced, and could more or less, better or worse have been constructed by a group of more than one?

 

Institutional Knowledge Stagnation: Andragogy vs Pedagogy and the Requirement for Innovative Catalysts within Various Educational Constructs Pertaining to Large Corporations

Considerations and Methodology for Designing a Virtual World Solution for a Large Corporation

Brian Bauer

Étape Partners, USA
8-29-2009

Abstract

 

Our Case Study centers on a publically traded Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company based in the United States.  With over 100,000 employees spread across many countries, physical separation of the workforce is an everyday reality.  In our Case, it was not the goal to attempt to unite the entire company; rather, it was our goal to provide a means to overcome the obstacles that present themselves when physically disparate coworkers must perform seamlessly to complete a business process.

In the following Case Study we determined that although users were open minded to trying Virtual Worlds and other types of Immersive technologies, the solutions delivered needed to provide task oriented functionality that was directly in line with everyday business process.  Using this basic requirement, we developed a Virtual Corporate Environment Business Tool (VCEBT^©) box.

The VCEBT^© philosophy is grounded on the principal that business process is accomplished by following a set of business methods each performed using a set of business tools.  While it may sound like a rigid and inflexible way to describe a knowledge-worker environment, we find that the process-method-tools definition applies to most environments quite well.  Our goal is to introduce new tools that increase the effectiveness of this process in terms of its ability to meet clearly defined business objectives.

The VCEBT^© framework does not attempt to change people or the work that they do.  VCEBT^©’s do augment the business tool box, providing highly efficient tools designed to solve real world challenges that can restrict a business’s ability to maximize business performance.

 

Open Plan Desperation: Entrusting the next Generation of Innovation to Ping Pong and Bean Bag Chairs….Again?

Open Plan Desperation: Entrusting the next Generation of Innovation to Ping Pong and Bean Bag Chairs….Again?


So I've been recently disturbed, again, by the seeming resurgence in Open Plan office design, and the belief that primary colors, asymmetrical symmetries, Star Wars models, Ping Pong, and free range animals in the work place will somehow bring about the genesis of the "next big thing". However, this time, Mia Disturbia Seguito comes from the lurking fogginess of implausibility that even the most-post-modern, cognitively vacuous ( is that the same as “open plan minded”?) Rancheros of free-range “thinkers” seem to sense (spooky right?).  The Lofty echelons of the adolescent Arroganti are bereft with confident bewilderment, observable by the less enlightened, but not so much by the euphoric kiddies on the Meta Cognitive Short Bus to Destination Open PlanLand( man that is awkward grammalogy from me even).  But still, to call into question the radicalism that spawned a 99% failure rate 10 years ago, flies in the face of repetitive innovation, but there are those who sense that the inspirations of a prior generation, that spawned a near perfect failure record, may not be quite exactly the right catalyst, again, but famous architects must remain famous despite convictions that may be somewhat clouded, possibly even lacking in the same sort of certainty that sent start-ups clambering to the nearest "Land of Misfit Furnishings" during the dot-com Uber "something" over a decade ago. Even worse, as some of you may recall, "legacy" companies, fearing that they would not be able to compete for Generation “I” talent, started feverishly converting perfectly good workspaces into nurseries and romper-rooms. It was as if it became instantly "obvious", that creativity could not happen in the absence of a Ping-Pong ball incessantly pinging and ponging through the airwaves. Suddenly, unless you were sitting on a yoga ball or in a bean bag chair, it was clear to everyone that nothing Innovative was going to happen any time soon.

The good news however is that in these shagged-out spheres( no, some were square I suppose, but many would also argue, or at least *should* argue, that "square" is a state of mind, which is certainly not all bad, especially if you are tasked with creating square things), is that it was well recognized, thanks to some basic principles behind the development theory of "fail fast", that many of the idea hatched in these synthetic incubators would indeed fail, in fact, most would fail. But the believers in the gods of foosball as a medium to a higher plane of innovationism, still clung to the belief that unless you stood on your head, finger-painting ideas in a sand-box, the 1 in 1,000,000 idea that just might work, gasp...., might never actually be thought of in the first place.

Is it not possible that the difference between the “Innovationist Haves” and “Innovationots” could be rather easily sussed out by putting each of appointed “Innovationists” in a simple, white room, bland in character, lacking in sensory chaos( maybe a prison cell?), like an immersive blank canvas.  Wouldn’t we find out straight away who is inherently capable of filling the canvas with something truly impressionable?  Well, it seemed to work very well for the Impressionists.  It’s not like they started painting their masterpieces on top of brutally chaotic canvases already stuffed with “stuff”( yes I do know it was common to re-use canvases and planks, but that was based on economy, not Ensperation Desperation Disorder( EDD…errr…) .  In fact, their brilliance materialized, gasp( again), on a blank canvas, and I don’t believe for an instant that the Sistine Chapel’s reliefs were inspired via divine bean bag, nor were they painted to a sound track of fooses, pongs, and mock conversations in Vulcan( or whatever).  But I have seen this dilemma put to the test empirically, because I once had the opportunity to conduct a little experiment on a dozen or so PhD’s, and the results were not surprising…..using a double-blind model( in which I had both my eyes closed….actually I was cringing, but whatever…), I found that some people, regardless of the environment, simply cannot conceive of innovation( but you can in fact lead them to believe that they have…but more on that later).

Nostradamus, Da Vinci, Einstein, a few guys also pretty good at thinking of new "stuff", also had elaborate requirements for their surroundings in order to generate even the slightest inkling of thought beyond the primordial "I'm Hungry". In fact, I believe it was Nostradamus (he may have been a quack, but he had no lack of creativity), who had the grandiose requirement of a single lit candle in his chamber, and this was the source of some pretty innovative thinking, and I doubt very much that even if you illuminated his chamber by stuffing it full of lava lamps, you would find revealed much more than a desk, chair, wardrobe, possibly a bench. So how was this possible? Such simplicity defies all modern logic that affirms that without sensory chaos, nothing new can be conceived!

Part II:  Failure is always an option, and quite often the best one at that.

(To be continued….)

Fracturing of the Antartic Ice Shelf in Late Southern Summer Yields Geologically Stable, Movable Airfield

Fracturing of the Antarctic Ice Shelf in Late Southern Summer Yields Geologically Stable, Movable Airfield

1. Late Summer's warm temperatures expose a large fracture line along the Antarctic ice-shelf.  These fractures have been monitored and measured for years.  Data and imagery is commonly available

2. An "island" sized section of ice shelf shows early signs of potentially breaking free from mainland shelf

3. Multi-year warming has created less turbulence and thus smoother surfaces along coastal ice-shelf

4. The 777 makes a direct course for subject ice-shelf

If a Theory Falls in the Private Domain,and The Public is Not There to Read it.....

This is my blog so I will rant if I want to, even though I am ranting about my own mistake....

So I was reading today about the hottest new theory about the plane disappearance. It seems to be that some aviation "enthusiast" posted to his blog a theory that a second plane was involved. By flying very close to the missing plane, they appeared as one normal radar blip. I had an email exchange with a few people on 3/13 about this concept, and went into quite a bit of detail. What I did NOT do unfortunately is update my own blog with this concept (if I hadn't been rebuilding a car engine for 30 hours straight, I almost certainly would have updated this posting.....but sometimes rebuilding engines is a higher priority than getting your original thoughts into the public domain in a timely manner). This aviation enthusiast posted his description of the same scenario to his blog on 3/17. Let this be a lesson to all you kids at home: timestamp + public domain = credible citation of originality....

PS:  I did attempt to post my theory in response to a LinkedIn article, but the as I recall, the website froze and my comment was not saved to the website.  This likely happened because 5,000 people were adding their fascinating thoughts like, “OMG, I didn’t know that 777 was an area code for the location of missing airplanes”.  So I got close to getting the theory posted on the 13^th, but I was not playing with horseshoes or hand grenades (at least as far as you know…and that’s all I’m saying about the possibility that I can in fact multi-task)

Unmolested by USO’s, Solar Magnetic Bounce Accelerates Aircraft towards Orbital Velocity

Unmolested by USO’s, Solar Magnetic Bounce Accelerates Aircraft towards Orbital Velocity

The Dragon Triangle, a well-known location of a deep sea USO base, could easily be the source of 3 things: 1) a communications/radar vortex 2) An extreme density of thermal venting 3) a highly localized EMP Plane flies into Dragon Triangle entering the boundaries of the communication/radar vortex, causing it to "disappear" from radar and become unable to communicate. USO's augment the naturally occurring thermal venting which in return produces an extreme volume of low density gaseous bubbles that proceed to the surface.

Time Lapse Chronography : The Continuing Saga Of “Does Man Make Time, or Time Make Man”

Time Lapse Chronography : The Continuing Saga Of “Does Man Make Time, or Time Make Man”

So back to the subject concerning the origins of “time”:  I recently came across the hypothesis that the origins of time depend on how you define time, and the author of this hypothesis offers up two definitions for us to choose from, and here is my response to the author:

The hypothesis I am responding to:

“That depends on your definition of "time", for it could mean either the "units of time" (seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.) or the perpetuation of change in the physical universe as a result of the decay of matter into energy. The first is obviously a human construct, while the latter can only be perceived by beings capable of perception.”

Common Domestication of the Entropic Vacuum: (The Flash-Non-Fiction article)

So I just read-up on what "Flash Fiction" is. Because I am trying to follow the Flash rules, I won't elaborate on my thoughts. But my take-away was: use very few words, and lots of white space. The theory being that the reader will fill in all that white space themselves given the periodic, and sparsely available Flash words. Kind of like "choose your own ending", but Flash-Fiction is more like do the work of the writer for them.

Cognitive Obesity: A Prescription for Healthy Thought-loss

That's pretty much it for now....but it's a darn good Title.  Made you look....

Well, not really...this posting is going to be about "taking that infernal Thinking Box and relegating it to the deepest place I can find without leaving my chair". 

Literary Stick Figures –The Remedialization of Modern Linguistic Prose

Literary Stick Figures –The Remedialization of Modern Linguistic Prose

If a picture “is worth 1000 words”, are “1000 words worth a picture” ?

 

Show a man a stick figure, constructed of 5 lines and a circle. It’s a pretty simple concept, right? Well of course it is, because who hasn’t seen a stick figure?  And therefore I’ll bet that we only need an amuse- bouche, not even an Hors d'oeuvre of words to describe the stick figure. Let’s try an imaginary empirical use case involving test subject “Bob”.  We clarify that our test subject knows very little about anything, and sees the world only through his own eye.  So here goes:

Comments U.R.B.A.D.

Comments U.R.B.A.D.

I think that I may have discovered that my comments feature may not be working. Unless of course ever since the all-power and mighty G bought Blogger they have introduced an Commentary Anti-Narcissism Trammel( C.A.N.T.), or possibly a User Response Banality and Denial (U.R.B.A.D.) protocol, since in their opinion, leaving comments for yourself must be Evil, and since the "greatest super-power on earth and beyond"( in their collective opinion) made their first Commandment of Internetity:"Don't be Evil", the second most important action was of course to ensure that their will was exacted: Judge, Jury, Technology

From the Archives 2009: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea? And as such, a mechanism to Annhiliate the results of Twittering was needed, and Fast. Here was my thought at the time...

Unexpected Applications of Physics in a Social Media world where Viral “stuff” is believed to overcome the laws of nature….

From the Archives 2009: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea?  And as such, a mechanism to Annihilate the results of Twittering was needed, and Fast.  Here was my thought at the time...NOTE – I never had time to finish this though piece, it is a interesting view on the subject, and I am well aware that it was never concluded or edited, so yes, it has as many holes as Swiss has cheese, so I welcome all contributions.

From the Archives: Remember when Twitter was still a Novel Idea?

Want and Desire: Misunderstood and Universally Accepted

Want and Desire: Misunderstood and Universally Accepted

I recently came across a debate regarding “want and desire”.  This is the sort of semantically accepted explanation for motivations and their subsequent actions that troubles me a bit.  Want and Desire are Results, are outputs from very basic psychological equations.  Wants and Desires are not in themselves foundational variables in these equations, and this concept is so often left unconsidered, that the resulting impact is the complete and utter lack of understanding in regards to human behavior.   

"Mean Aversion": Avoidance of all that has become "the new normal"

[ Sorry, it's a bad joke if you happen to be a Finacial Engineer familiar with Mean Reversion]

The infectious ubiquity of that, which already exists, contains enough viral inversion to comprehensively vaccinate the "Mean" contributor such that the remission of symptomatic innovations is inoculated so thoroughly that the sick get healthier and "healthier" becomes so synthetically conceptualized that it is forcefully emancipated from the essence of original thought catalysts.

You say WHAT? But I actually said it first.

The Time Before Time:

The Time Before Time:

"If man made time, would that not suggest that before the age of man, there was no linear sequence of events that could be expressed in some other way than: **all happening at once? **

Thinking about Thinking: How many humans does it take to create a Thought Event?

To begin: Something I have written about in other forums…The Cogito.

Part I

Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am.   Am what?  What has this “thinker” become?  And is Thinking an atomic level Essence indivisible from “I am”.  Applied to humans, the implication is certainly that without Thinking, you are Not.  But again, Not What? Human?

Practical Applications of Pure Unreasoning

Hyper Relaxivity Disorder:  The Paradox of Multi-Thrashing Uselessness

A Fictional Case Study of Peterson: A Potential Observation of Quantum Idiocy

Peterson was on all accounts no different than anyone else he socialized with or worked with professionally. His Midnight blue suit was fitted just where it should be, his tie knotted to a geometric perfection, his Allen Edmonds cap-toes, seem to defy scuffs like teflons protects dons. 

The Business of Portals : Oh this used to be so topical, but is no less important now

Improving outcomes of virtual reality based protocol execution through a reduction of cognitive disintermediation caused by non-instinctive haptic input devices and cognitively inconsistent modal model interruptions

 

 A human brain assigned the task of completing a protocol is in State when it is processing through the modes that comprise the model.  The more that cognitive resources are in alignment with processing the modes, and the fewer State interruptions encountered by the brain, the greater the likelihood of positive outcomes in model completion.

            When models are developed for the completion of tasks using computer systems, the model is necessarily interspersed with tasks only indirectly relevant to the model that yields task completion.  However, the author of the model describing the task, will assume that the user is able to consciously insert the non-model related technology tasks as needed.  In fact, the fluid ability to follow a Modal Model protocol, while in addition processing the necessary(but indirect) insertion of technology tasks requires a great deal of cognitive resource, whether conscious or unconscious to the person performing the task.  As may be expected, the relative cognitive premium required to complete the model using technology, is a function of the performers proficiency with the tool, the intuitiveness of the tool, and the overall cognitive resources of the performer.

            In our application of virtual reality technology as a medium for education, communication, and task completion, we are motivated to render contexts for model execution that minimize the cognitive premium required to perform tasks that are not described in the model necessary for task completion.  In our study we look to articulate the impact on model outcomes when cognitive resources are preserved for model mode consideration.

            We will present a virtual reality environment that has been optimized for modal model completion and minimization of the cognitive premium required to interface with the technology.  Using virtual manifestations of the user(as a whole, or in part), minimization of proprioception, and replacement of inefficient haptic input devices, users of our environments will improve model outcomes through preservation and refocusing of cognitive resources.  We will deploy these methodologies into the contexts of education, business, and gerontechnology.

Cognitive and Computer science based learning theory applied to business, education and health

Improving outcomes of virtual reality based protocol execution through a reduction of cognitive disintermediation caused by non-instinctive haptic input devices and cognitively inconsistent modal model interruptions

 

 A human brain assigned the task of completing a protocol is in State when it is processing through the modes that comprise the model.  The more that cognitive resources are in alignment with processing the modes, and the fewer State interruptions encountered by the brain, the greater the likelihood of positive outcomes in model completion.

            When models are developed for the completion of tasks using computer systems, the model is necessarily interspersed with tasks only indirectly relevant to the model that yields task completion.  However, the author of the model describing the task, will assume that the user is able to consciously insert the non-model related technology tasks as needed.  In fact, the fluid ability to follow a Modal Model protocol, while in addition processing the necessary(but indirect) insertion of technology tasks requires a great deal of cognitive resource, whether conscious or unconscious to the person performing the task.  As may be expected, the relative cognitive premium required to complete the model using technology, is a function of the performers proficiency with the tool, the intuitiveness of the tool, and the overall cognitive resources of the performer.

            In our application of virtual reality technology as a medium for education, communication, and task completion, we are motivated to render contexts for model execution that minimize the cognitive premium required to perform tasks that are not described in the model necessary for task completion.  In our study we look to articulate the impact on model outcomes when cognitive resources are preserved for model mode consideration.

            We will present a virtual reality environment that has been optimized for modal model completion and minimization of the cognitive premium required to interface with the technology.  Using virtual manifestations of the user(as a whole, or in part), minimization of proprioception, and replacement of inefficient haptic input devices, users of our environments will improve model outcomes through preservation and refocusing of cognitive resources.  We will deploy these methodologies into the contexts of education, business, and gerontechnology.

The Post Beyond Reasonable Doubt, and Highly Dubious

Ok, so this is my blog, and I don't know how to create categories, so the absurd, get tossed into the blog-o-matic linearalization of my thoughts. Most are significant (likely), some are Absurd ( surely), and others retain a buoyancy akin to a flotsam and jetsam, but rarely travel in such tidy "Jeflotsam pairs. Like peeing in a pod ( sorry, it's a funny joke in Japan).

The point being that mixed in with the good, is something else entirely, and as someone(s) often said: "and now for something completely different"

Now I know I am not the first person to say this, but possibly I am the first person to say it today, and because it happens to be somewhere between the beginning and end of night for at least some of us, I feels this pressing sense of urgency to get these things said before either someone else says them, or I run out of time in which to say them, and with this winter chill, the pace at which I urgently put words to paper, or plastic to plastic, or skin to plastic, may be somewhat slower than it might be in a more or less favorable climate, but I can be certain of just one thing, and that one thing would be the conviction I feel to convert this expanse of white paper into an expanse of black and white paper.  And, should I be so fortunate as to be at least mildly coherent, it stands to reason, that at least someone, myself included, may in fact take the time to not only put these thoughts to paper, but to remove them as well.   Now that was a well-deserved little pause.  I don’t expect that anyone else took as much from that tiny round bit of guilty pleasure as I in fact did, but as someone may well have once refrained from (and wisely so I suppose), if a period divides a sequence of otherwise contiguous ramblings, and yet no one is there to read it, did the periodical pause exist, or was it stripped clean of it only true reason for being?  And to a lesser extent, the same could be said, of commas, I suppose. Unlike tower spires, or little piles of rocks, including those that may float, and of course those as well that don’t float, what could we say that would, in no uncertain terms, or even in certain terms, take up such a ubiquitous presence within the sightlines of our daily doings, and still, after testaments reaching to well about the almost inconceivable measure of a million comma march, could things, while possible having been slowed, now, as it were the second coming, coming, interject with such diminutive, yet iron clad insistence that a pause, is not a stop, while in fact a stop, especially is rather short, could assume the entirety of punctuational fluidity. Glory seeking, narcissistic, greedy fucking period, comma-wanna-be Period( and that was an intentionally denied, perfectly good opportunity to implant that ubiquitous, yet devious, cognitive-disintermediative, tiny round speck of nuisance, BUT, it was not to be, and thus :Denied ![ note the superiority of the exclamation points bar, standing square upon the undeserving, bottom-feeding, vermin of punctuation THE PERIOD])

It's about time: An Excerpt from an article I recently authored

"Beyond the 4th Dimension of Reason: Resetting the Dimensional Clock to Time Zero"

.....but time, seems to have the rather inconvenient characteristic of not wanting to stop, so for all of you so seriously litmusing and testing societal blocks to find out what time it is, best not to pause or lest you be left behind as time so indignantly waits for no "man".
Which leads me to believe that if you truly want to understand time, your efforts may be most productively applied to subjects for whom time does wait. And we can pretend that these anti-pendulous scoffers of sensorial narrative units don't exist, but now who’s being naive?
So let’s all close our eyes and each draw up a mental list of those things of which we know, that are neither concerned with time, nor impacted by it. And no, I am not accepting answers which include concepts like "Timeless Beauty", which is probably the most poorly named manifestation of universal progression....Absurdity!, Even the concept's name is derived from that construct from which it is claimed to be infinitely extracted from. "Timelessness" is a word.
And I really ought to simply leave it at that because any qualifier associated with it, even the seemingly nonsensical (e.g. Timeless Treasure perhaps? is just so plainly a reference to a far from chronologically ambivalent substance held in high regard by a temporary collective that clearly has the poor-boys half of the equation smudged out on the back of his coal shovel, while it apparently requires a large stone structure with windows, a quorum of some order often identified by the “timelessness” of their gray beards, to shuffle and mumble and hrrrfmmph around the room, *periodically" casting metered gazes at the black hole( helpfully drawn on cardboard with a sharpie and hung from the chalkboard), which is never there to explain itself when this quorum meets( because it wasn't timeless, or just wasn't on time?). But as they say, Absence makes the clock tick faster, at least in a black hole, where if you really think about it, it's far too dark to see clocks from within black holes, so who are we to say whether the sum of all time is singularly condensed down to an atomic unit, not really much larger in size or weight than the inherent value of a Bit coin on Chinese New Year. (So does that make Mr. Bit Coin stoic, or ignorant?) but more importantly, just the 30 seconds spent on a nonsensical vision of a personified Mr. Bit Coin is enough to 1) re-enforce the fact that we covet our 30 second fantastical escapades with C Bitty 2) run rough shod in our size 13EEE Geesus Ignorante moon boots over the tops of the truly time deifying list of entities existing within our realm.

If man made time, would that not suggest that before the age of man, there was no linear sequences of events that could be expressed in some other way than: all happening at once? is time a measure of history? a purely relativistic measure of some sequence of events happening not all at the same time? And if this is the case that before man came along and began "timing" everything, there was no essence( there's that word again) of time? we as humans have devised all manners of mechanics to monitor time, but is time not an inherent quality of all life? If something has a beginning and an end, does that require that the middle section is filled with time? this i think is not a question of whether a being needs to be able to contemplate time, it is a question of relativity, only, e.g.: what exactly is a "dog year" and who decided it was seven years of human time? do dogs know this? do they work faster to accomplish more given that their relative lifespans are somewhat shorter than their human companions? did early humans with life expectancies of only about 30 years, live their lives as fast as they could, knowing that they only had about 30 years to live? do fruit flies know that they have 1 day to live? If man made time, then how do other beings instinctively know when it is "time" to migrate, or create offspring, or challenge the leader of their group for supremacy? How much better would man be at keeping "time" if all mechanical instruments of time were stripped away? Surely some would be better than others. Primitives don't generally wear watches, but time is a very meaningful concept to them: when will the ice melt? When will wild game arrive, when will the 18 hours of sunlight in the far North begin and end? Do these events not occur according to a routine schedule? Time has existed long before man. But the mistake that is so often made by man is that they confuse meta-cognition with invention. Time knew man, long before man used mechanicals to count the ticks of life

Three Lefts don’t make a Right, but they do make a Square, and may even be potentially responsible for the genesis of Digitized Circles

Three Lefts don’t make a Right, but they do make a Square, and may even be potentially responsible for the genesis of Digitized Circles

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about little squares.  Little squares are easily constructed using very simple mathematics. If we agree( at least in the alien world of computer innards), that little squares, built by 0 and 1 constructors, are capable of manipulating sensory perception to such an extent that most people don't ever consider basic concepts like "curved is a sequence of straights".  "Arcs" are manifests of carefully arranged straight lines, with enough straight lines, we can create such a density of "straights", that Sensorially, we perceive what appear to be images that look nothing like squares or straight lines.

From the Archives: Written in September, 2009 - Online Consultations are an essential form of patient care

Online Consultations are an essential form of patient care   Doctors Provide the Service §  31 % of physicians reported using online communication with their patients in 2007, 25% in 2006, 24% in 2005, 19% in 2003 [1]   Payers Recognize the Service §  The top 5 health insurance companies ( United Health Group, WellPoint, Aetna, Humana, Cigna) cover online consultations [2] §  More than 100 commercial payers around the nation reimburse one or more telemedicine procedures  [3] §   The top 5 health insurance companies reimburse doctors for online consultations [4] Patients Like the Service §  76% prefer online consultations to interact with their doctors [5] §  62% of patients said the ability to talk to a physician electronically would affect their choice of doctors [6] §  57% of those with commercial insurance said they would use online consultations [7] §  75 % would like to be able to e-mail their doctors for consultations [8] §  1 in 2 consumers surveyed said they’d be likely to seek healthcare through online consultations [9] §  Patients ranked the virtual mode of online consultations as valuable as face-to-face consultations [10] §  35% of Medicaid respondents indicated they would likely use online consultations [11] §  37% of adult internet users are willing to pay to communicate online with their physicians, corresponding to $4 billion in 2002 [12]   Drivers to improve current state Online Consultation Technology -          50% of text based consultations yield an in-office visit o    Serialized, time-lapse communication impedes the Doctors ability to create a “differential moment” -          Doctors are motivated to maximize Online Consultations, thus freeing precious in-office visits for their most serious, and highest paying patients. They demand the most comprehensive form of Online Consultation available -          Much of the online communication with patients today is unreimbursable(email) because the structured communication necessary to meet Payer requirements is not conducive to effective patient care o    Doctors communicate without reimbursement because §  They care §  Customer Service/Competitive Advantage §  They want to keep their waiting room unclogged(but at the expense of not getting paid)   Why VR Improves Online Consultations -          Voice communication coupled with unlimited access to Charts & History, create a comprehensive, yet extremely efficient context for diagnosis o    Virtual Online Consultations can be as simple as quick Q/A, or as involved as complete EMR review with physiology simulations o    VR efficiently creates a real-time, multi-sensory, intuitive context for diagnosis o    If we agree that the best way to diagnose a patient is to consult with them in the office §  And if we can further agree that in-office visits could be improved for enabling diagnosis ·         Can we then say that an environment that simulates a doctor’s office, but vastly improves on shortcoming of the doctor’s office, would provide an environment capable of producing better diagnosis and treatment recommendations? o    Simulation(75% as good as in-office) + 50% VR Improvement(by doing things not possible in the doctor office) = %125 as good as in office §  Excluding diagnosis that require specialized equipment or visual exam -          Doctors who communicate online with patients in most cases are not reimbursed for the consultation o    Doctors are using available forms of communication, but are not getting paid for the service o    VR creates a structured environment in which a payable transaction occurs, and effective diagnosis and treatment can be administered -          Current State Online Consultations are rigid, and require the patient to do some self-diagnosis in order to begin the process: Fatigue, Sore throat, etc. o    In many cases, patients are not able to accurately self-diagnose, but are aware of a problem o    While statistically in may be true that many diagnosis can be classified into a few categories(Cold, Flu, etc.), this is the result of diagnosis, and not where the process begins.  A vast variety of symptoms may present, but after consultation can be slotted into a few categories -          Online Questionnaires are confusing to the patient o    Autonomous Virtual Nurse greets the patient, and solicits patient information using a combination of keypad entry and voice recognition §  A friendly voice, a clinical atmosphere, a person of authority/assistance o    This can be the reception when you arrive for a scheduled visit o    This can also be the new questionnaire Size of the Market §  70% of all doctor visits are for information only or for matters that can be handled over the phone [13] §  79% said that they would not like to use their mobile phones as an alternative method to contact their doctor [14] §  57% said that they would be likely to use an online forum or chat room monitored by their doctor technology for consultations[15] §  50% said they would be likely to access their healthcare via Internet or other computer technology [16] §  35% said they found getting through to someone via online methods the most Frustrating about e-Health Care Experiences [17] §  50% said they would be unlikely to access their healthcare via telephone consultations [18] §  25% said it takes more than 30 days to get an appointment with their doctors & 10% said they’ve had to wait 3 months or longer [19] §  90% of the visits patients made needed to be made in person. The remaining 10 percent fell into a category where the doctor’s diagnosis relied largely on a patient’s description of the ailment. (list included conditions such as headaches, certain urinary tract infections, dermatitis, and back pain)     Accessibility §  81% of household within the US have some sort of PC in their home, 92% of which have internet [20] §  90% of US physicians have high speed internet  [21] [1]  Manhattan Research Survey, 2007 ; EmaxHealth, 2006, TransformerMED [2]  PWC, 2009, etc. [3]  HealthCare Industry, 2008 [4]  Dallas News,2008 [5]  PWC, 2009 [6]  AM NEWs, 2007 [7]  PWC, 2009 [8]  Health Tracking, 2005; RelayHealth 2007; Business Tech, 2009; PWC, 2009; KP, 2009 [9]  PWC, 2009; 2006 Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal survey [10]  Boston Globe, June 09; HealthCare Blog, April 2009 [11] PWC, 2009 [12]  Science Direct Text [13] PRLog, 2007 [14] PWC, 2009 [15]  PWC, 2009 [16] PWC, 2009 [17] TransformerMED [18] PWC, 2009 [19] PWC, 2009 [20]  PWC, 2009 [21] EmaxHealth, 2006