Elegant Innovations is concerned with the enhancement of the quality of human life. This is a manifold issue which will require parallel avenues of exploration and development with an emphasis on communication. Elegant Innovations's intention is to facilitate cross-communication and a sharing of resources and ideas by offering website hosting, as well as chat and news forums to individuals and organizations. The intent to create a gateway or portal to service the community concerned with these vital issues.

Since it is quite possible that an innovative -(- methodology -)-(- approach to problem space formulation, resolution, and/or analysis -)- may be useful in fields of study other than the one in which it originated. One of the functions of Elegant Innovations will be to report and propagate this news throughout the community.

One of the basic tenets of Elegant Innovations is that the state of the art in various highly specialized fields has advanced to the point where they would greatly benefit from cross-pollinization from other areas. The purpose of the resultant would be application in the real world. A balanced, humanistic distillation of the state-of-the-art in many fields. Additionally this distillation would facilitate the discernment of commonalities between disparate fields of study. It is hoped that these new found commonalities will inspire a surge in new discoveries.

A vital function of Elegant Innovations is the propagation of this new synthesis through the public at large. With an emphasis of focus on "early adaptors", amateur scientists, and others with a raised conscience or concern in these areas. It is also seen as an important resource for the education of political leaders around the globe.

A fundamental principle of this educational role will be that the material be based on solid science subject to peer-review. That it be presented without bias or agenda.

Elegant Innovations will offer technical assistance where needed to provide transparency of medium to its clients. It will seek funding from sponsors and clients with financial resources to subsidize services rendered.

The hype is that the 'net will be all pervasive, it will be everywhere and will will be in constant touch with our gadgets. Every database, info-source, entertainment, etc. Yet all of this is just as fragmented at present day resources just faster. Human endeavor has grown so vast that we lack the concepts and language to abstract constructs that can encompass it and still retain any meaning. We need to develop a nomenclature for describing higher classes of conceptualization, modeling patterns, and similarity of symbol architecture. Ways to translate information from one field of study to another. Knowledge architecture or transformation?

Scientific advance is more drive by technological developments then anything else. New tools open up realms of inquiry which then inspire theoretical explaination. Which in turn inspires new tools.

There is no Grand Unified Theory. This makes direct translations of data from one field to another difficult.

Quality of information. How to determine the quality of a piece of information. Or rather how to separate the information from the noise? Build a sexy site and the "wing nuts" will come out of the woodwork. Science is not a democratic endeavor though it should benefit the body politic. This is the make or break point. If unable to enhance quality then the only thing this enterprise could possible succeed in doing is bringing out every theory and concept no matter how unrealistic. Thinking about that last sentence that would be desirable to a certain degree (this bringing out of every angle the human mind can conceive). The more unrealistic the better in the beginning as it would be easier to develop methods of filtering this noise out than the more subtle kind.

There are search engines for scouring the 'net that come back with incredible results. Google is the best one that I currently know of. I can usually find what I am looking for within the first few links. Except when I am looking for really specialized information. Then I may spend hours without finding what I need. Often I will find information such as a review of a product but I question the reviewer's methods and conclusions. How to build into a searchbot a noise filter?

Pure science is like pure water. It does do anything on its own and it tasteless. Yet it has powerful potential and can be used for good or ill.

Content supply i.e. news releases, reference material, search engine (Google rocks)

integrate supplier resources - shopping - i.e. vendor link list for products that clients need in their operations. A "bottomdollar.com" kind of resource as well as a feedback on vendor quality/service.

Slashdot has a powerful input of ideas but it has only short-term memory. Or rather there is no attempt to harness the collective IQ available to reach a consensus that can then be fed into the community for another interation. Or used to propagate these newly created ideasets into the community at large.

The intent of this work is the creation of an open structure enterpise model. To create a co-operative community in which participants are fungible. Where newcomers can stand on the shoulers of those that came before them, reach an evolving consensus that enables the community as a whole to see a little further down the road of time.

symantic forest or whatever it is call that the NSA is up to.

some sort of weighting method that automates the process of deriving consensus from a conversation thread at the end of a thread life-cycle the resultant consensus it then used to begin a new thread. This would include a classification and grouping of concepts to eliminate dulicate

I have heard it explained that the reason Google works as well as it does is because of some sort of ranking method.

There are a couple of new products out where every word in a webpage becomes a hyperlink.

There is the search assistant Watson. Tim was suggesting that I use Word for an unrelated purpose. Perhaps it is time I loaded it for both usages?

Slashdot is an excellent example of the dicussion format I would like to garner. The karma and such needs to be automated.

Due to the scope of human indeavour it is impairative that automation methodologies be developed to assist in the correlation and distillation of knowledge. It is my thesis that the results from such a process will expotentional increase the advancement of human knowledge and more importantly facilitate a sane, informed, decision making process for the continuation of human self-actualization.

Here is an example of the type on synthesis I hope to engender. (Note: I also saved this page in "My Documents/Daily Science")

The analysis, by researchers at the U-M Department of Anthropology, is the first to examine the full spectrum of paleontological, archeological, and genetic evidence available, each reflecting a different part of the puzzle of human origins.

While this is a limited example in regards to the distance between these fields of study it still shows the strength of the basis concept. Science has become so specialized that even workers in seemly related fields are unaware of recent innovations and discoveries outside of their purview.

fringe vs. peer review
Innovation occurs at the finge. It starts with one.
Quality is a function of testing.

Not only would an intelligent information management reduce duplication it will greatly enhance original writing. No longer will it be necessary for an author to provide background. The length of papers will likely become quite short. A brief intoduction which would essentially be a product of what was written for the agent to come up with the relevant information. Then the original thought being added and possible what the implications of that thought might be i.e. the conclusion. It would be a simple thing for the computer to attach the author's identity to the what was written. In this way it will be like the OSS movement from the viewpoint of ESR's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Homesteading the Noosphere".

I am reading in the History of the Printed Book an excellent example of developments in different areas that come together in the 15th century to form something entirely new, the printing press.

Explore the emergence of the concept of "self"
Show how language was a necessary precussor(reqiured element before derivative)
Language existing for thousands of years before "self" what other ideation was needed for this emergence?

What are the possible repercussions of a transparent network on individualism?

As the university system emerged the demand for books outstripped the supply. Scribes copied the manuscripts that existed. With the introduction of errors. As copies of copies were made the degradation grew.

Written language morms kaind of a dividing line between animals that make smart sounds and something entirely new. Writing abstract symbols for the sounds. Then putting them together to form words is a major innovations.

Accellerating at ever increasing speed we have making more and more innovations that will slam us into a wall of explosive creativity in the next thirty to forty years.

I am not concerned with the distiction between "a written" language i.e. one of symbols that represent phonic sounds and earlier pictographs. There my be a distinction in abstraction to be made but it is moot point for my purposes here. Pictographs were developed in a cultural setting and it was that setting that provided some of the meaning not explicit in the written form of the language itself.

I saw a comment about the measure of ignorance being the difference between the knowledge of a culture and what is known by the individual. The point being made where I found it was that ignorance is growing in today's society rather than shrinking.

I think thee is a dumbing down of content through the greater use of icons. Or rather it is a failure of language and an indicaiton of the above mentioned ignorance that a new lexicon is not propagating quickly enough to represent these new ideas to a wider spectrum of individuals. Just as the Third World is a source of trouble in the form of continuing population growth rates and the many other attendent problems. This ignorance gap resulting from the explosion of technical and scientific knowledge is one that must be address. Those that have fallen behind are turning to other reality constructs i.e. religion, new age mysticism, and pop culture. These alternative constructs do not offer the conceptual footing necessary to understand issues at the forefront of human scientific development.

The rise of the university system in Italy; scribes copy manuscripts with resulting degradation; printing press provides a standardization of individual titles; propagaton of texts and greatly reduced cost.
At this point the community of thinkers have a growing library of common texts that they can use as reference for dialog. The actual content and scientific accuracy of those texts is immaterial. The dialog can work as a process for the editing and improvement of quality of said content.

The rise of modern science can be characterized by the community of "naturalist" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were mostly aware of each other and each other's work. The would send letters and other communications within the community and thereby made critique of various ideas. This is the process we still have today in the form of peer review.

A new item the other day was that the WWW now has passed one billion documents that can be accessed by unique URL. Yet there is so much mis-information on the 'net. This is due to the difficulty of comparing documents. It is simular to the difficulties faced by scholars in comparing manuscripts. The means to verify quality is not readily available.

Google is the first search engine I have used that brings back significant results while filter out enough of the incidental documents that I can usually find what I am looking for the first search or two. That is when what I am looking for is something very specific. I have spent some twenty plus hours the last couple of days looking for reference material for a more generalized construct. (While I have learned a great deal the results are still inconclusive.)

Internet forums have the potential for very powerful influence in our society. I came across an article where an individual was critiquing a fallacy being espoused in some forums he was aware of. It had to do with vegans making claims that the development of agriculture extended the human lifespan. He had scientific data based on the study of paleopathology. These data indicate that late mesolithic humans actually lived longer than early neolithic humans. This data is available on the 'net. Yet due to lack of available tools to easily locate it this point was belatedly brought to the debate. It is the story of the kingdom lost for want of a nail.

I don't remember the exact wording but I believe it is some along these lines:

for want of a nail, the shoe was lost
for want of a shoe, the horse was lost
for want of a horse, the messenger was lost
for want of a messenger, the news was lost
for want of news, the King made an error in judgement and the kingdom was lost

I did some research into the origins of written language. In this pursuit I came across the Indus Valley and its history. The were originally some serious misconceptions about that history propagated by the archeologists that made the first digs. They developed the theory of Aryan invasion into the region. These authors were taken as autorities and their opinions were printed in textbooks. This created a mass that had minor influence on the course of twentieth century events. A new revised history in light of discoveries that started throwing doubt on the original theory is only now coming into its own. The early discoveries of this latter type were made before the most tragic results of the misinformed opinion.

Knowledge is not a possession that can be owned and kept to oneself. To attempt to do so is a disservice to the rest of humanity. The results of that misinformation is the hands of the withholder.

I am lifting the following unordered list from a business model I found on the net:

This requires a model that . . .

• is sufficiently detailed to allow a functional specification for the technical development
• is flexible and modular enough to take into account a range of different trading situations
• identifies the key relationships in the trading environment
• is sufficiently focused to allow development with the resources available
• does not preclude other business models
• does not preclude any technical solutions

Elements that should be included in this model:

• Focus statement, or equivalent
• Naming standards, for entities, relationships and attributes, etc.
• Definition of what details are contained in the textual information i.e. glossary
• Identification of diagraming conventions used to create a particular model
• Applicable laws, policies, standards, guidelines identified

Other considerations to the development of this business model:

• Things that shouldn't be in the model (typically outside focus)
• Things that are missing from the model
• Things that should be there but are not laid out correctly

Considerations for review of this model.

• Consider the intended business use of this enterprise model to determine the impact of problems found by the review.
• Consider the degree of completeness and "polish" of the model that it is adequate for its intended purpose. (For example, models for scoping a development effort do not need to be as complete, or error-free, as those that will be used to create data bases. Models created for eventual data base implementation need to be fairly detailed, and free of implications that might lead to incorrect data structures, redundantly stored data, or unnecessary data collection and storage.)

Social Scence Information Gateway: Collaboration

Internet Scout Project SOSIG has been working closely with staff from the Internet Scout Project, located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and funded by the National Science Foundation. The two projects have much in common, being selective, quality-controlled gateways to Internet resources, with librarians and subject experts working to find, describe and catalogue Internet resources. A mutual mirroring service has been set up so that users from North America can access a mirror of SOSIG, based on the Scout server, and European users can access a mirror of Scout from the SOSIG server. This will have a major impact on accessibility for end users, on saving international bandwidth and, in the UK, on saving charges for using the transatlantic pipe. We would welcome contact from institutions in other countries (Australia/Asia/Europe) that are interested in setting up SOSIG mirrors.

Internet Scout Project sounds similar to what I want to luanch but the all the links are dead.

Last updated on January 18, 2000

Sell data. (Score:2, Interesting) by ddt (ddt_nospamplease@transmeta.com) on Tuesday January 18, @07:20AM MST (#58) (User Info)

One cool way to do this is to sell your data. You're often writing a new tool because you want to work with data more easily. Well, because you're the author, odds are good you know how to use your software better than the average bloke, so you might be able to turn a dime working on the data your software is designed to handle.

For instance:

1. If it's a game, sell the artwork, levels, and sound files. These are called "mission packs" in the game industry.

2. If you're writing a GUI like GNOME or KDE, then sell the artwork for "themes".

3. If you're writing a music composition proggy, then sell music. Um, nevermind. Better keep your day job on this one.

Guess it goes w/o saying, but some data is easier to sell than others. :)

Anyway, if working on the data is too much of a load, or you don't want to work at that, then try to partner with someone who is good at it. In exchange for splitting the profits, he gets a piece of software that is custom-designed for and around his artwork/etc, and you get gorgeous data to help demo the killer function of your proggy, and you both get a little scratch, hopefully.

I like the above idea. The trouble I would run into in relations to the consensus distiller is rights. The idea is to increase contrib's as much as possible. How to allocate out the dispersion of funds? This is a problem I wrestled with when I was trying to work out a bonus system for my frame company. I never did come up with anything (due to dis-incentive on my part no doubt).

$$$ with several devlopers (Score:2, Insightful) by Sasq on Tuesday January 18, @09:07AM MST (#74) (User Info) http://www.obsession.se/zero/

The biggest problem is how to get money when working on a true opensource-project (multiple developers through CVS). What I thought was this:

1. Make the base work (first version). You have to do this anyway if you want people to join.
2. The license is GPL but can be released as closed-source for $$$ (like Quake). This requires all other developers to release there changes under the same "dual licence". Why would they? Because all money generated by the project will be split; 50% for you and 50% to share between all other developers. I actually think this would be pretty fair - if you get money early you will loose a bit but the more others do, the more favourable it will be. And if you start the next cool thing and retire, you will really hit it off :) 3. The license can be a bit more restrictive; ie the product can not be used commercially without a fee being paid per user/installation etc which would generate more money. Not GPL anymore though - but you still get (almost) all the benefits of opensource.

I think this might work...