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.”