Making invisible patterns , visible

I have long believed in equality and fairness - so any policies that  hint of discrimination and protection of privilege raises my hackles. What muddies the waters for me -in discussions about the subject - is that I often hear arguments spouting the benefits of capitalism - "survival of the fittest , handouts promote laziness " blah blah - from the mouths of people born into privileged classes and inherited wealth. The messengers  are polluting the message for me.  On the other hand -as an engineer - facts do matter to me. The  collapse of the wellbeing of peoples under "socialism" in various countries like Cuba, Venezuela , the old Soviet Union is undeniable. This has got me  re-examining the underlying assumptions and drivers of economic well being. It has raised the following questions in my mind: Does "equality of opportunity" really drive economic growth and prosperity? If not - then are the policies proposed by the Democrats and egalit...

I was reading a book called 'Thinking - the latest research findings on how we really think, learn and make decisions'. The latest research provides interesting clues to why diagramming and idea / concept mapping helps you think better. Why it is better at helping you clarify your thoughts and grasping issues and concepts more quickly. Here are some important research nuggets I found in the book that are relevant to diagrams for thinking: 1. The brain likes to 'Chunk' things. It needs to break things up and group them in digestible pieces. That is why our eyes glaze over when presented with long blocks of text in a paragraph or lists that are longer than 5 -7 items long. Tree or concept-map layouts help you do that. Tree nodes provide 'grouping' hooks. So does highlighting and annotation. It is also the reason newspaper use columns. 2. The brain likes to connect and chain the 'chunks'. The brain seems to be very good at recognizing and remembe...

Just finished reading the Shiva Trilogy by Manish - a publishing sensation in India over the last 3 years. Another highly recommended read. Perhaps a tad difficult for people who are not familiar with hindu names - to follow the different characters. What I found fascinating about the book  was how the author interweaves  philosophical discussions that are at the heart of hindu mythology and religion into the narrative. In particular the discussions about the nature of good and evil. Can all evil be banished ? And does  'good' itself generate 'evil' as a by-product? We now know that  everything considered "progress"  has "side-effects" - antibiotics , nuclear-energy, industrialization, dams , automation , fertilizers - you name it . (And to think this was in the Vedas - a few thousand years BC!) Continuing in the same vein(ie  there is never a "pure good" without "evil" by-products) -  one has to wonder if the following t...

Recently finished a fascinating book on the murder of our 20th President - James Garfield and how it was not the assassins bullet that actually killed him - but the mistakes (preventable) in his medical treatment by the "reputed" doctors at the time. It is a fascinating tale and I would highly recommend the book: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. A tale of madness, medicine and the murder of the president. There are a number of patterns in this tale : Vanity of key decision makers, Insanity and Delusions of the assassin ( A depressingly  recurring pattern in US history of the killing or attempted killing of presidents) , fear and distrust of new technology and methods - when faced with a crisis. The last pattern is the one I am interested in - as it is a common one occurring in management and decision making. The question is : How best to avoid the types of mistakes that the doctors made- that  turned out to be ultimately fatal to the president. I essence t...

Just came back from a trip to India. Visited Jaipur and Agra. Saw the Taj Mahal for the first time- and it is a gorgeous piece of work. Should be on everyone's bucket list. An example of beautiful things men are capable of creating - and that too on a grand scale. When you visit the Qutb Minar - you also see excellence and superb attention to detail in construction. And yet - these places are surrounded by squalor. It is as if  the people (and municipalities) are blind to the beauty amidst them. In Jaipur - the pink city - with its superb examples of architectural beauty .. one would think the local developers (and populace) would be inspired and would start a design renaissance .but no!  A plethora of  truly ugly buildings abound. More ugly buildings being built all the time. And these are people with money - who could afford better looking designs. You see structures with totally non functional, unfinished beams  jutting out like broken bones disfiguring a body....

Which is more useful- Being a specialist or a generalist? Which is more satisfying personally ? This question came up when a friend was pondering on what to focus on next in terms of career choices.  This issue often comes up for middle managers(generally highly paid) - who are suddenly faced with an interruption in assignments. Self doubt creeps in when they realize that they do not seem to have a personal area of expertise. That all they seem to do is prepare and review office documents - and spend time in meetings and conference calls.  They know that being a 'techie' does not pay , and yet meetings and documents do not seem to be particularly valuable contributions to the betterment of mankind. Better paid cog in the machine!  So in deciding what to do next - ie specialize or remain a generalist- and to derive more satisfaction from your work- you need to visualize your purpose and role in the network - to better understand your contributions.  First a...

The other day - I was nursing some inflamed tendons in my left knee. The result of a 1000 mile drive from Boca Raton to Alexandria VA - and an immobile left foot for hours! As I was waiting for the doctor, I was studying the colorful diagrams of muscles and tendons and bones and their connections. Of course the nerves that actuate the systems are not shown in the charts. As the doctor started his diagnostic process and pressed down on the knee and pain shot through it - it got me thinking and marveling about the nerve sensors and 'inbuilt' feedback infrastructure that nature builds into animal bodies - to protect it from damage. I could not help myself contrasting it with our code writing as we build systems. We don't always put 'diagnostic' sensors everywhere as we go along(laziness?). But nature does not forget to do that. It unfailingly builds feedback sensors into all the muscles. I wonder why. Does it have an evolutionary benefit? Would it not be benefic...

Just a thought on Jobs and the 'nature' vs 'nurture' debate on what actually influences a person. Steve Jobs - the quintessential American Icon in the mold of Edison and Henry Ford was half - arab!! (genetically) This might come as quite a shock to all arab phobic folks - who in the post 9/11 era - have taken to viewing arabs has 'inherently' incapable beings. I am sure - he himself was shocked to find that out - and am sure that in some degree - contributed to him not wanting to do anything with the man who had 'abandoned' him and his biological mother . His foster parents , who adopted him - and 'nurtured' him, although humble, did a truly amazing job in making him feel that he was loved and 'specially chosen' - that contributed greatly to his self-esteem! So go figure! What's your take on 'nature' vs 'nurture'?

The other day I got to wondering - If we are evolved from apes , who essentially hang from trees- are we really built for running and jogging? (The thought was triggered in part because of a lower back pinched nerve - that I thought would be relieved by hanging to stretch the spine.) I got my answer on a NOVA show about our true ancestor - Homo Erectus and Turkana Boy that I happened to be watching last night. The Surprising answer is : Yes we are - built for running! In fact , this is what helped us survive! Here we were - as a species - not very fast (compared to antelopes and deer we wanted to hunt) - not possessing powerful claws or slashing teeth. And the stone axe -in reality just a handheld stone (iPhones of the era) wasn't really a good enough tool to throw and kill. So how were we successful at hunting? We had one advantage - the loss of body hair (hairless apes) and sweating , kept us cool at midday, when the rest of animal kingdom had to lie down and pant - to ke...

I have been trying to understand the reasons why people abandoned other social networks like MySpace and Orkut(which was very popular in India and Brazil) in favor of Facebook .. when facebook burst on the scene. And if Facebook would fall prey to the same causal factors - and lose to Google+. My feeling is- probably not. Here are my reasons why: (Your comments welcome); a) On Social Sites - people go where their friends are b) High school and college students - are the heavy users of social sites c) People do not want YET another site to visit to stay in touch with friends ..it complicates their lives So then - why were Orkut and MySpace and Friendster ditched by the users? They had the initial advantage. My top 3 causes: 1) Obtrusive Ads - intruded upon the social interaction 2) Facebook using its university roots and pedigree -- was very appealing to the heavy users (High School- College students). Invitation only cachet made it desirable to join!. Initially- unless you...

One way of taming information overload is data visualization. Here is a video from TED that illustrates this beautifully. It does make you "see" relationships that you did not before if you just read the news. Illustrates the concept of making the invisible visible beautifully. If you have trouble viewing the video, please click here. David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

I have a hypothesis. All progress depends on making the the invisible visible. As humans it appears that we have to be able to "see" to be able to do something about it; So many people would easily support enivronmental conservation efforts if it was easy to "see" how dirty the air is in some places or "see" how forests are disappearing - with animated before and "now" views. People would not have to "imagine" so much. They would be able to "see" it. The same would be true of many "theories" that affect our lives or our future. Does cutting taxes spur growth ? This would not(should not) be a matter of ideology - but of science if there was a way it could be "shown" whether one was true or not. Communication would be so much more effective -- if we could "see" what the other person "sees". X-Rays and Catscans improved diagnosis and treatment. They made the "invisible" visible. ...

The other day I was revisiting some of the brainstorming exercises that were recommended for coming up with new products. Some recommended Idea joggers were: - What if we made it bigger? Smaller? Combined it with X, Made component X with material Y instead and so on. And then - I was struck how close this is to biological innovation (evolution). Where genes are mutated. The brainstorming was to mutate the core "genes" of the product. The "genes" being of course the key attributes about the product or service. e.g size, color,price etc. Now genetic programming has been around for a while with algorithms to mimic evolution and mutate genes and then evaluate them with fitness functions ie discard bad variations because they do not meet the 'fitness' or survivability test. So do you think that genetic programming ought to be in the management tool bag for innovation, along with the traditional "brainstorming". Actually- identifying the core "gene...

Large Searchable Datasets about the world are being stored online- and the data flow is increasing to a flood. This includes web content (crawled , indexed, ranked by Google). Public records( by many organizations including LexisNexis). In addition people are dumping personal content - into the Cloud via emails and postings on Facebook , Twitter and other Social Sites and Forums. As new sensors and cameras are developed - even more data will be captured and stored. Now raw data by itself is sometimes hard to interpret and therefore it's usefulness is diminished -- But when it is tagged and annotated - it's like the raw stuff has been nicely packaged. The tagging makes it useful - because now it is searchable and linkable to the appropriate context. This is what Augmented Reality solutions are about. You point your iPhone camera at a scene and the GPS gives you the location, the accelerometer /compass gives you which way you are looking. Based on this -- information about the lo...

I have been busy studying the new frameworks like Django (Python) and Ruby on Rails to explore if I should switch to the new bandwagon and see if they will really give me productivity benefits. Some background before I present my problem issue or what I am missing. I have developed some production sites using Zope and Tomcat/JSP/Struts . I am a fan of Zope. As a self taught web developer, here are some things I love about Zope. (I do have a programming background from ages ago!) IMHO the simple , powerful, ready- made management interface provided by ZMI with Zope's inbuilt security admin is really unparalleled in its ease-of-use for first time users. It also sets up easily without much fuss and runs well out of the box! No big configuration hassles! (Zope 3 seems to have succumbed to the complex installation syndrome). Zope is also pretty graceful in the way it handles errors. One struggle much less with constant syntax errors typical in Java and other development languages . ...

Wiki's have a very simple and powerful model for content management that seems to follow Tim Berner Lee's orginial concept for the world wide web where all content is linked via a url. Wiki's allow you to create new pages by inserting a link into an existing page. A "navigator" then uses a search or a url to pick a"landing-point" in this content space and explores the links from there. Wiki's also use the pattern of "view-edit-save" thru the browser - so there is no separate step for transferring information from a "composer" program to the web server. As most web sites are a collection of web pages anyway ,why are not all web sites done this way? Some common reasons with my thoughts on resolving them. A) Preventing Grafiti Solution: A "Lock" on pages - to ensure only authorized people can edit it B) A "nice" aesthetic look to the pages Solution: A Use-Template type command line at the top of the page C) Image...

For team collaboration - there is always a lot of information floating around. Messages, Documents, Alerts, Events , Info about events, Presentations . You get the idea. Generally everything can be stored as a linear list - ordered by creation date or some other scheme. But this does not provide any "chunking" info that is helpful to grouping and classifying information so it is easily understood. Different users may have different ways of grouping the information. But this can lead to anarchy if the information repository is a common repository. What are good "models" to organize the info? a) Use time honored library classification schemes (hierarchical decimal dewey system)? (1-d) b) Index Terms with Concept Maps ? (you are here!) Concept maps can be spacial.. humans easily grasp 2-d views c) Allow people to customize their own grouping or frame slots. I am curious to know if there are any good models to follow here.

I have a hypothesis. All progress depends on making the the invisible visible. As humans it appears that we have to be able to "see" to be able to do something about it; So many people would easily support enivronmental conservation efforts if it was easy to "see" how dirty the air is in some places or how forests are disappearing. People would not have to "imagine" so much. They would be able to "see" it. The same would be true of many "theories" that affect our lives or our future. Is socialism better or capitalism ? This would not be a matter of ideology - but of science if there was a way it could be "shown" that one was better than the other. X-Rays and Catscans improved diagnosis and treatment. They made the "invisible" visible. So an x-ray for the environment , interpersonal relationships, strategies and so on would be nice. You "see" my point?