1. Homework and work tasks assigned
2. “Extra” stuff – reading, chess/golf, advanced topics, sports and entertainment
3. Basic needs – health, personal needs, living need, shopping, financial, chores, etc.
4. Relationships – family and friends
There are just so many stuff that needs attention.
Social networks – Facebook, twitter, chinaren, sina, sohu, douban, myspace
Communication tools – Google phone, Black Berry, Iphone, Ipad, Skype, Google Talk, regular phones.
Different Email accounts – Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, outlook, Lotus Notes
Specialized calendar tools – CRM, Golf, Doctors, school calendar, girl scout, special accounts, etc.
There are at least 10 places that address, email, phone numbers, and calendar information need to synced. Maybe a personal MDM is the answer.
The key problem is the improved producivity in India and China. Under the current foreign exchange framework (which is global in scope) and the monetary and fiscal regime (that are local in each bloc), there inevitably will be an imbalance when productivity level are getting closer. Basically, the majority of the U.S. and EU labor force will be “priced” out by Indian, Brazillian and Chinese counterparts. The solution is not fiscal stimulus but looser immigration control, which allows the inflow of higher caliber population to move into the U.S. in order to sustain the productivity advantage and at the same time, smaller government and less fiscal intervention. Elimination of minimum wage and union monopoly on wage would also help.
The question and answer are both about framework and methodology. The question is about what framework to explain the reality and the answer is about what methodology to understand the framework. That seems to create this never-ending loop here.
When we are designing systems, there are always the balance between complexity (functionality) and simplicity (integration and management). A good software application (such as google map, amazon.com, linkedin.com, adobe pdf reader, Microsoft Excel, etc.) always appears to be simple in interface (human to machine or machine to machine, or even human to human) but rich in functionality/content under the hood.
We can almost extend this paradigm to people and organizations. The great minds, (such as Einstein, Mendleyev, Newton, Darwin, etc.) and the great organizations, (such as the old U.S. government, GE, Mackinsey, Disney, old HP, etc.) have very simple principles (their interfaces to the world) even though they have very deep and complex knowledge, experience, organization and processes to support such “simple” and “elegant” images.
Take a look at ehow.com for the paid content model.
Also, the copyright model in the new knowledge economy is being challenged from both the efficiency front and the competition for attention (viewer/reader’s time) front. There is a good lecture on ITunesU on that topic by Samuel Bowles regarding the behavioral experiments from five continents.
Are they the 3 pillars of the personal motivation? Are they overriding each other? The 3 books “Assault on Reason” by Al Gore, “Consulting Mastery” by Keith Merron, and “The Master and His Missionary” by Iain McGilchrist all touched on these 3 concepts. In reason, Science, Philosophy and Logic are the dominant forces. In Passion, love, fear, happiness and natural instincts lead our daily life. In faith, principle, religion, and spirit control our destiny. Gore opined that fear masked by the pretense of faith has been used by politicians to attack reason in the public sphere. McGilchrist resorts to hemispherical physiology and Nietzsche’s metaphor to lament the diminishing role played by passion and faith in the face of scientific and technological advances in the Western Civilization. Interestingly enough, Keith Merron in his guidance to leadership and business consulting, enlists principle (faith) much more than knowledge (reason) and drive (passion) as the foundation for mastery.
Personally, I believe in the supremacy of reason over emotion, but I am hesitant on claiming that faith can be expressed in rational terms. Faith and principle to me can always overcome the void unoccupied by knowledge and guide our march towards immortality.
I enjoy this book not because it reaffirms my personal methodology, but because it exposes a lot of the “secret” of the management consulting trade from an insider’s perspective. While not totally discounting the framework and knowledge possessed by the common expert consultants, Keith does point out the true value of the consulting lies in the personal principle and strength of the individuals involved in the process and the learning and responsibility taking by the client organization. It is like the student and teacher relationship where the true value achieved by the teacher lies in the fit between the student and the teacher. A master consultant brings the best out of the client just as a good teacher brings the best out of the student.
I need to learn also not to teach knowledge but to facilitate the self-learning of my client (my kids, my organization and my audiences).
After reading the article (http://www.douban.com/group/topic/9450394/) from Mr. Zhou Guoping, a contemporary philosopher, on why China lacks spiritual development, here is my two cents.
Good article. However, instead of complaining about it, can we find out what’s the reason for such phenomenon? What’s in China’s history and culture or maybe even genetic coding that has prevented the development of metaphysics or pursuit of spiritual transcendence? I would attribute part of that to the oriental language which is less structured than Latin or other alphabetical languages. Also, I would hypothesize that great philosophy comes from highly competitive and almost tragically unstable environment where survival of individual as well as organization are threatened on a daily basis. Only in those environment can the great mind be both challenged constantly and be provided with the experiment or life experience for creating the thought. For example, almost all of the great Chinese philosophers came from the Chunqiu and Zhanguo (Spring Autumn and Warring Nations). All the Greek thoughts came from the period of warring city states. German philosophers came from the pre-Prussia-domination period. Even the like of Thomas Hobbes of Britain and Descartes of France were produced when Cromwell disrupted the social order between Charles I and Charles II/James II. In Chinese there is a saying, hero emerges from chaotic world (“Luan Shi Chu Ying Xiong”). This is also true for Philosophers, with the only exception of Immanuel Kant, who had a rather calm life but whom I consider more as a summarizer than an innovator.
So, the cure for Mr. Zhou’s complaint is to make the world another tragically chaotic place and he will get his wish. That’s a dilemma most of us won’t attempt and also the emergence of artificially-enhanced intelligent beings (I would call man-computer hybrid) within the next 50 years would make his concerns a moot point.
Cometh, the age of spiritual machines. What’s thy thought?
Patterns emerge from natural chaos. When we look at how systems evolve, there is an inevitability of such emergence. When I am designing the enterprise architecture for my company, the value statements (such as Agile, SLA, SOA or any new buzzword in the architecture value system) are all secondary to the ultimate goal – business survival. The value statements, in some case, the vision statement you find in every architecture document, simply become justification, or for a better word, the instruments for advancing the organization survival goal. When the vendors come in with multi-million dollar project proposals, all the evaluation around such value system is just a game of negotiation and internal political process. The rituals and the artifacts of this game are no more significant than any other more obvious instruments such as haggling the price or looking around for capable software engineers who can deliver. The advances in cloud computing and service outsourcing will definitely change the “values” and future vision statement dramatically. To me, such emergence of new paradigm is inevitable in the dynamic technological field.
My daughter wants to become a supreme court justice and we design her career path as this:
1) she needs to learn Latin, history, literature, piano, math, golf, drama, cheerleading and chess
2) go to a Ivy league school for undergraduate (hopefully Princeton),
3) go to Harvard/Yale/Stanford Law to get a JD on constitutional law,
4) clerk for one of the current justice for 2-5 years,
5) work as a DA / federal judge for about 10-15 years, and
6) if lucky, become a justice between 45-55 years old.
Now, the first step is to learn Latin…
Here is a web site with online Latin Videos
http://www.eryavideo.com/videoinfo.asp?id=1066
A very high percentage of the studies in social science fields and their models are based on data sets from surveys, census, or even economic statistics though dubious data gathering practices as those mentioned in Mujun’s article. This is partially attributed to the complex, subjective, and non-quantitative nature of these social concepts in the first place. Unlike the speed of an object or the weight of a cubic meter of water at the temperature of 23 degree Celsius at air pressure of 760mmPh (14.696 PSI), the social or economic data we encounter can not be easily defined in simple reductive terms. For example, how happy is happy, or how democratic is democratic, how poor is considered as poor, or even how dense an urban area is considered as crowded are not only subjective but also hard to measure or compare between samples. First, the causal relationship is so much entangled. Second, the concepts are too compounded and complex to be meaningful.
I remember when I was a graduate assistant working SAS and SPSS 18 years ago, one of my project was to run multivariate regression on a Chinese census data set to prove my boss’s hypothesis of CCP membership would lead to higher income after excluding education, age, gender, regional, and other social economical factors. My question at that time was – huh, was not CCP supposed to recruit or admit the more elite member from the general population in the first place? Secondly, what if we run the same exercise on Republican or Democratic Party members. Last and not the least, I can prove my hypothesis no matter what the data shows. If the data told me that CCP membership contributes to higher weight in nominal income over time, I could have proved that the social economic system favors the political elite more and more; on the other hand, if the number did not show significant contribution change, I could have theorized that the party membership has degraded over the years, blah, blah. In such economic or social study, it is always “head I win and tail you lose” situation. Well in all fairness it could be that gray income has been hidden from the income statistics or that the causal relationship has been reversed in the first place. Other than getting funding from NSF or political think tanks who needs some bullet points for their agenda, such study really has not much value, and definitely is not scientific.
To me, the only meaningful social and economic measures at per capita level are life expectancy and birth rate. The former identifies survival, the fundamental human need, and the latter identifies the success rate of propagation, the ultimate driver behind the need for social status, money, power, politics, culture and love. If a government or society can sustain progress along those 2 deliverables, that’s much better than delivering on the scale of democracy (distribution of power?) or human right. BTW, what good is human right if the average Joe can not protect himself from war or disease or high medical bill or work stress? What good is democracy if the average person doesn’t have the wherewithal to sustain their DNA into the next generation? That’s natural selection at its worst. A populist leader or organization that cannot aggregate and sustain the public goods for the group survival has no space in the history no matter how righteous or how good-intentioned they are. I don’t mind ceding some of my power and right to those capable institutions either through explicit social contract such as the Constitution or through their manufacturing of public consent such as producing propaganda of social studies to discredit their opponents and to prove their own legitimacy. I guess that’s the societal game to play.
1. CAS: Society, social organization, laws, ethics, etc. are all either economic foundation or superstructure (at least that what I have learned, unlearned and relearned again.) Therefore, they are all CAS (complex adaptive systems) fighting for their own survival. A democratic government just has to cling to its power and legitimacy the same way as a monarch or autocrat does. It is a stochastic process (history, transformation and evolution) in a game setting and whichever survives and all its beneficiaries would obtain the advantage of “might is right” status. In such sense, economic systems are not superior to the other social CAS because it is just one of them and is composed of the other CASes even though it could be considered as a leading indicator because it is much closer to the basic human need of survival and propagation. No CAS is going to dissolve or become extinct without putting up a fight. No mercy or fairness either here.
2. Commoditization: Everything that has some utility (in broad sense) has the potential to become goods in the market. Corruption, power politics, social status, college entrance exam scores and even an opinion expressed in this blog could be commoditized as long as there is demand for that. Again, this is a game of economic agents (another name for the CAS) and we cannot and should not single out some of that as purer than the other goods traded.
A cultural icon like MJ or Tiger Woods or Barack Obama is basically a brand name. Such brand name is produced by both his/her own merit but also the PR and marketing campaign behind that icon. If we look at the brand name valuations in the world, China is still probably far behind right now. It may change when the Chinese consumer/firms obtain higher and higher economic power. Also, English as a language is also a major obstacle for Chinese to overcome, because English is the de facto international language for knowledge, communication and thinking, especially amongst elite members of the global society.
When I was young, I was puzzled by the material vs. mind dichotomy. If everything is material, then isn’t mind also material as well? Now, we know better and better about the human as a complex adaptive system, just like pretty much any “thing” in the universe. Then isn’t mind just like the signals in my computer’s ICs? Thought is pretty much just a process in which electrons are moving in neural networks, resulting in memory, which are changes and temporal patterns in synapse, myelin and other chemicals. Even though it is about a billion times more complicated, in essence, human mind (thought and memory) are still comparable or I would say, conceptually equivalent to those signals and patterns passing through simpler systems such as computer, mice, virus (both biological and man-made), and even in earth (as a complex system), in a nation, a company, a cup of water, so on and so forth.
What makes thought a little different to me is that, even in its reduced forms, its own pattern actually mimics, or reflects, or represents the other patterns in the universe. We call such reflection or representation between 2 patterns a “concept”, which is the basic building block of thought and the foundation of human (or computer) language. That’s why in Chomsky’s linguistic study, he found out that certain human language elements are innate to all human being, also known as his universal grammar. If we consider the utility or essence of language, it is nothing but representative facility in human nervous system that is composed of patterns of synapses. Given the commonality among human DNA, which establishes the initial set-up script of human life (or installation software for a system), such universal grammar in language seems pretty inevitable. It would be absurd that 2 systems with 99.9% equivalent Operating Systems to not share some common basic representation facility of patterns essential to the survival of any of these evolved systems.
What also makes thought (some people call it mind, or consciousness) a little unique is that it can not only represent temporal existence, such as anything in the universe, but also timeless existence, such as natural laws. For example, the concept of 1+1=2, or e=mc2 does not seem to change overtime. Such existence being reflected in mind or derivative of mental activities does give mind a shade of mystery or divinity, even though such amazement itself can be reduced to one of the many evolved human feelings that help the human specie to survive and propagate as a temporal existence (“being” might be a better word for that.).
Now if anyone asks me about the meaning of life or consciousness, I would say “Problem solved”. However, the more difficult problem for us though, is “How do we live a little bit longer, a little happier, give out a little more love, or may we dare to say, continue forever in that path?”
As in any language (the building block of concept), there must be a root word. In the case of building the philosophy, there must be a basic root object where everything else must be built upon. In my hierarchy (see the hierarchy article), that root class is “existence”, this concept cannot be further reduced but can be explained. Existence can only be explained in terms of existence. My definition:
Existence impacts other existences. Now the hard part, what does impact means? Impact means an existence causes another existence’s attributes to become different. Again, we now need definition for become, cause, and attribute. In this sense, cause becomes another root concept and attribute as well.
People are dating because they need to find suitable life (or at least for sometimes) partners. In building a dating profile, you want to use information to enable their reach. We can establish linkage to 43things (interest), Douban (book/movie/TV), Travel, Game, blah, blah so that the members can search, link and share. We should bring SinaShow etc. also to the picture. (not facebook and linkedin though). They may import/export stuff from these interest profile so that they can still keep their privacy. So the 3 key themes:
1. Who you are (profile engine -> 43things -> interest sites)
2. What can you do (virtual meeting place)
3. How can you get people to know you (advertise)
The traditional material/mind duality is not a good representation of the universe. I think is should be tree object model like this:
0. Existence
1. Timeful and Timeless
1. Timeful
2. Material and Snapshot Representation of Existence (Mind)
1. Timeless = Laws of interactions among any forms of existences (such as natual laws, structure of forms, etc.
The common future forecast or prediction focuses more on geopolitical than on societal, on living standard/condition than on living paradigm, on snapshot than on progression/change, on commonality than on essential difference, etc. We should predict future on more SET factors basing in a stochastic complex genetic/game theory setting through simulation (representation) such as cybernation.
If I were a serious match.com or jiayuan member, I would like to utilize all the social resources to find the match. Language barrier, self promotion barrier, privacy concern all become important. Furthermore, if my profile can merge the books I read, the movie/music I like, the places I have been or want to go and online video of my interest, will that improve the chance of getting attention?
Whether though the 6 degree of social net, the
Amway type of relationship marketing or the Google/facebook type of utility for attention(ad) exchange, the key for service/branding success is to consolidate 3 main factors of information product – the right amount of time (customer attention and attraction), right amount of money (fee and service and offline resource) and the right amount of “prior” knowledge (how to, social norm, trust, etc.) to enable the new generation of dating service.
When I read the great books, such as Jean Christopher by Romain Rolland, or Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, I realize that it is almost impossible to bridge the details that are needed in analyzing the life/thought of individual and the abstraction sought by theorizing and scientific research. When I was doing the statistical analysis of economic/social data, it was just not possible to capture and model the intricate human/psychological decision making process mathematically. That deficiency really exposes the mordern economist and social scentists who relies so much on the questionaires, census, GDP and interest rate data. However, the often necessary depiction and bisecting done by Freud, Habermas and Steven Pinkers alike also lack the classification, abstraction and logical inference to go beyond simple explanation to conclusive prediction or even basis for confident action. In this sense, the two men I admire, Noam Chomsky and Ray Kurzweil are at least interdisplinary enough to bridge some of the gap in their own thinking, (from linguist to politician and activist in fomer and from inventor to futuristic philopher in latter.)
My plan is to follow the footstep of practical problem solving (bottom up approach) by creating “product” and “experiment” to validate the complex pattern hypothesis of social evolution.
http://www.onlinedatinglaw.com/
The legal matters
http://www.worlddatingpartners.com/
The online affiliate portal for dating sites
http://www.abledating.net/
The dating software provider which enables Youtube, V-chat, etc.
From Chinese to Hispanic to Jews, it seems that every little niche market would have it own angle to target dating.
For example, a dragsonsurf copycat:
http://www.chineselovelinks.com/Registration.cfm
Another example, a Hispanic site started by Wharton MBAs:
The San Francisco-based QuieroLatino is targeting Hispanics, both bilingual and English-only speakers, between the ages of 21 to 45. For a free membership users can create a profile and check out other users’ profiles. However, in order to meet another user, members will have to sign up for a monthly subscription fee of $24.95.
There are a handful of online dating Web sites targeting Hispanics, including Latinopeoplemeet.com and Migente.com, which is also a social networking site. QuieroLatino stands out, says Mr. Oxman because it’s an online web site for Hispanics wanting to meet other eligible Hispanics.
“We want to do for Latinos what J-Date has done for Jewish online dating,” he said.
Synctoy 2.1
Google sync
ActiveSync
Facebook
Linkedin
Google Calendar
Now, how do we organize?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml
When reading these online sites, one of the main issues I am facing is that they are organized more from the producer’s perspective but not from the perspective of users (teacher, student or parents). It would be much more effective if they organized in such a way that a user would come in and be able to have a wizard-like user interface to start from. Once they master the organization of the resources, they would be able to use those in a better way. Such a site should not be on any one of the particular content site but should be on a user-oriented portal with AI based wizard interface.
By Darvin’s theory, the evolution is driven by random mutation filtered by natural selection. It is still strange that a butterfly can evolve into a coloring scheme that gives it an adaptive trait such as the color of its wing to mimic the surrounding. Given the number of Amino Acid combination that is possible, how could such mutation be possible?! Is there any conciousness in this evolution process? How is such conciousness stored in the Gene?
I am trying to find out “what is the trigger for people to change from one task to the next.” Some people can really follow the plan, but it is very hard for me to naturally follow the plan. Good habits help but I am more an interest type of person. Really need to improve on this. For example, need to call or write to my friend!
The U.S. healthcare system is totally distorted by profit taking and lack of collective economy of scale. A lot of the analysis was done by a great MGI (Mckinsey Global Institute) study. U.S. as a large geographically dispersed country than EU or Japan may explain why smaller clinics can sustain here. (Hospital is too far away and inconvenient for primary care visits.)
The Obama and Democratic plan is a baby step towards the socialist structure in the U.S. but it is so laden with special interest protection and is not going to take much bigger change to be efficient. However, efficiency in socialist structure is going to cause disincentive in capitalist creation/production. What is balance? Will America decline? I hope not.
1. Simple object oriented universe where an object is but an structure and life is just an object that can duplicate such structure
2. Economics is about the exchange of goods among people or other economic agents, but given the 3 type of human relationship – communal, dominant, and exchange, the rule of engagement will be different and resulting in different equalibrium and optimal strategies. The survival and utility seeking are not governed only by local optimum but by global or contrainted maximization efforts. Evolution created so many rules and topologies that make any macro-level direct formula absurd.
3. Human will be replaced by machine
There are so many “pseudo” sciences in economics (especially in macro economics) that are just absurd and have almost become part of the political tools for certain type of opinion holders. The true science should be based on Math and should be provable and verifiable.
Economics is the analysis of resource allocation among economics agents. The current structure is problematic because it did not start from the basic foundations as the other sciences. Physics starts with basic physical objects, which are mass/energy, time, distance, motion, etc. Chemistry starts from chemical objects, which is element, molecule, chemical compounds, etc. Biology has a foundation starting from cells, to tissue, to organ, to systems, to species, to ecosystems. Psychology has a foundation from neuron, neuron network, myelin, behavior, trait, etc. Such meaningful abstraction is critical in establishing the structure, theorem, taxonomy (The conceptual parts, i.e., how do we describe that science.) and the observing, modeling, experimenting, theorizing and verifying the concepts (The methodology part). Physics has the laws, chemistry has the periodic tables, biology has the evolution theory and genetic theory (DNA mechanism) all because the foundation of each of these sciences are based on consistent, verifiable and conceptually complete basic objects.
The economics/social science should also be based on such conceptually simple basic objects and they are: A) economic agents are merely organisms including individual human and human organizations that are connected through the forces of communal, authoritative, and exchange relationships. B) Resources are all the objects (both physical and mental) that affect the state and stochastic process of those economic agents. The effect of resource on economic agent is its utility. Such foundation will make economics more comparable to other sciences and thus give it more powerful tools and more meaningful methodologies in its study. For example, complex mathematics, game theory, probability analysis, chaos theories, topology, signal theory, operation research, organizational mathematics, and computer science theorem can all serve as meaningful aids to the study of economics if the foundation is solid. This process should be analogous to how calculus is helping physics, or how statistics and stochastic process is helping chemistry now.
In the course of becoming an alpha male, we are indulging in the process of failure and revealation. That’s why John (in Brave New World), or so many great thinkers such as Turing commit suicide to escape that vicious circle.
Social critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
What’s common among a computer program, an organization, a community, an ecosystem, the earth, Solar systems, a cell in the human body, and even an simple pattern of sea wave?
They all live, die, and try to propagate. And strangest of all, they all have consciousness even though a cell probably does not understand how human think and vice versa. Eventually, as an organism becomes complicated enough, it will understand the consciousness of itself, its peers and others. In the way, it may even find out the natural laws that are connecting some of the pieces of the big puzzle.
1. Myelin
2. Habit building
3. Analyze K’s behavoir
4. I suspect that he (I) is missing the skill chunk where he does not have the circuit for transitioning from one thread to another thus resulting in poor planning and lingering in one thing for too long.
From google to facebook to apple to amazon, the key barrier to entry is not the technology but the attention. MarketAmerica is good in that way and is promising in the long run. I am thinking of joining/taking advantage of opportunity where attention can meet information need:
1. Everyone needs information (He needs to get information with both money and attention (his own time)).
2. Everyone has only limited attention.
3. Everyone has limited money (production) to purchase information.
A google/media company like NYTimes or ehow.com are basically giving away information to get the attention (all advertising and branding campaign work that way.) However, nowadays, every new company is struggling to sustain people’s attention especially with limited marketing budget.
