Cindy and the Cheese Soufflé

 

Rummaging through some 'old papers' can be entertaining at time.   This is an extract from an August 2000 keynote presentation of mine at the HotConnects Conference at Stanford University.  I didn't publish it at the time, but it became a bit of a guidepost for the Intel Collaboratory that we commissioned soon after.   Most of the points covered have indeed been solved in the intervening 25 years, but it is surprising to me still how long that evolution required.  Herewith the paper:  

              

It sometimes takes a historical look when we seek to anticipate the future.  It is always fascinating as well to look at past visionaries, not least for the humorous miscues that they mistakenly foresaw, but more importantly for cues that they noted, but didn't yet know how to interpret.  For example, at the visionary 'look ahead fifty years' ACM '97 conference, "Beyond Computing" in San Jose (CA), there were several acute observations about the 'separateness' of the communications networks, both circuit-switched and broadcast, from the packet-switched computer data networks, and when they might merge, and indeed, whether it would matter or not.  But incredibly, there was almost no energy devoted to the Web, or to wireless, and no credence whatsoever to alternative computing architectures, such as the DSP structures that enable the panoply of Network appliances from Palm Pilots to ubiquitous cell phones.  All of these misses occurred a scant three years ago, by the leading pundits of the leading computer science society on the globe. What were they 'not thinking?'

 They certainly were 'not thinking' about everyday life at our home.  A common situation at our place is a daughter calling home during dinner preparation.   Our home, like most homes of our colleagues, is pretty technology-equipped.  We have seven computers, nine television sets or monitors, two scanners, four printers, six VCRs, three cell phones with their own numbers, and six telephone handsets in our home, four of which are 900MHz wireless sets.  In our library, we have a conferencing Sound Station, for effective conference calls, "just as at your office conference room."   We even have a video conferencing capability in our office, unconnected at the moment, but occasionally demonstrated.

Most evenings, we're in the kitchen, with 'surround' stereo softly playing, and the TV on, in the corner on moderate volume.    My wife cooks while I chatter about the day's activities.  The phone rings, and I answer it since she is busy whipping up the ingredients for a Cheese Soufllé.  This means picking up the handset, and either turning down the volume for the TV or the stereo (or both), or leaving the room so that I can hear my daughter Cindy on the other end.  Soon enough, she asks about Jenny, who deigns to answer because she is in the middle of a critical part of the soufflé preparation.   I finish the conversation, hang up, turn the stereo volume back up, and Jenny says, "Wha'd she say?"  To which I reply, "She says she's fine."   At this point, the soufflé preparation moves down the priority list.  Lots of energy and invective: "I want to know every word."   It is pointless to suggest that no mortal, certainly no father, could be expected to do such a Herculean task.   It requires only modest experimentation to discover that most wives and mothers share this perception about their spouse's inability to relate a simple conversation.

Recently, while completing construction of a new home, I suggested to my builder something more elegant to handle this issue.  One migh start with a simple switch that would allow switching the phone conversation into the stereo speakers, much like my new automobile does routinely.  Of course, you would want the caller identified before allowing the cut-over, and you might want to soften rather than abort the stereo signal, but these are small details.   When the telephone conversation ends, music resumes at the original volume.  The room should have conferencing capability so that  participation is both 'hands-free' and open to all present.  And there should be microphone pickup throughout the kitchen, so that Jenny can move about and talk, and be heard from anywhere she moves.  And we should be able to archive (e.g. save) the conversation.

To be sure, some kitchen nosies might need muting, such as water running at the sink, but echo-cancellation software and notch filters are becoming well-known and available technologies. Multiple other stationary or roaming folk should be as easily heard, with automatic selectivity and volume adjustment  for the person speaking.   Privacy is gained by simply lifting the handset.  Would Jenny be open to wearing a headset while cooking?  Would casual visitors sitting at the bar counter balk? 

I called five different vendors of video- and audio-conferencing equipment for advice on how to wire and equip my home for this Cheese Soufflé problem.  All referred me to the 'after-market' meaning that they don't sell to end-users, nor to businesses.  Instead they sell to distributors and custom installers, who tailor a solution for the hapless soul who is seeking answers in this realm (reminiscent of sagas on file about the early automotive enthusiasts, or fledgling EDP department managers and users).

I called my favorite 'after-market' installer, a premier Sound and Video custom design shop in Palo Alto (CA) which had done earlier work for us.   They have wired the homes of numerous CEOs and CTOs in Silicon Valley, names that we would all say, "yea, verily, they are important in our industry."  And their immediate response was "wow, we 've never had a request like that before.  But tell you what, our designers would love to tackle a problem like that one." 

I did the same in New Jersey (where the home is), and it took seven different companies coming out, each with referrals to their favorite 'smart consultant' before getting the guy from "New Yawk City" who had reputedly done the very best Commercial Conference Centers in Manhattan.  His quote, ignoring any wireless solution entirely, was $23,000 worth of wiring and simple switch controllers before we got to any of the eqipment needed to make it work (e.g. televisions, speakers, phones).  He had a smart quip, intended to dissuade me no doubt, that he only knew of two such homes in America, and that he himself was 'up on this' because he attends all the meaningful conferences.

One of the two homes, he averred, was Bill Gates' and the other was Craig Barrett, the president of Intel.  My retort was in like spirit, saying that if those two found themselves in my kitchen while Jenny was cooking, I'd like them at least to feel 'at home.'  He must have thought me insane.   He drove away, mumbling, without an order.  The insanity to me is that this cannot be done easily. It is technically pretty easy to do, but it is architecturally difficult because the various communication networks don't interact.  Since it is hard to do architecturally, it isn't done hardly at all, and thus it remains cost-prohibitive.

Ahh, but now, with the Web, everything can be digitized and packetized, so it should be doable.  Well, yes, and no.  Yes, technically.  No, architecturally, because everything is a conversion.  We have streaming video, we have VOIP, and we have QOS levels of service. But we don't have the paradigm of switching for the usage, and essentially, no one is designing for that model.   

The telephone companies, in their death-throes, are not chartered to provide multi-mediated home switching centers, nor do any of them believe in that.  Which is a shame, because they alone believe in two-way communications.   

The entertainment world (radio, television, movies, and music) is fixated on content, especially on its ownership, protection, and control.  The most paranoid of groups, they view users as potential thieves of their almighty content, so they religiously guard their creation, production, distribution model zealously, thwarting any illusion of an interactive, conversational, collaborative view of media for the world.

And the computing world, the newest and most innovative of the three, is primarily focused around a data-centric world-view, as PCs in the home stalled at 50% of homes vs. 97% for phones and 98% for TVs.  And we're seeing Palm Pilot usage surge, plus DSP-based cell phones.  Where might this lead?  Why cannot the technology that can pop multiple windows on your PC screen for your utility bills, phone bill, and bank account be used for more conversational roles?

In other words, a simple request: PROVDE NEW COMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITY FOR MY FAMILY's ISSUES.  More than one-third of Americans live in a state other than where they were born.   Estimates vary, but one estimate is that 80% of US households have at least one close relative living more than 300 miles away.  And when people get together, for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or just visits, little time is spent with extensive readings, database references, or PowerPoint slideshows.  Hugs, kisses, laughter, and clowning around dominate.  People are glad to see each other, and shouts of joy and screams of delight fill the air.  The background noise gets louder, and smiles broaden. Everyone is sad when the day must end.    Give us tools that can facilitate this feeling of togetherness when we're apart.

Notes:

1. I did not include in this HotConnects talk anything about a Video-enhanced Family Meeting, where multiple-site cameras and videographics might be invoked.  I just wanted a simple example for the audience.

2. After giving the talk, a colleague had me meet with John Sabol of Microsoft.  Sabol, a creative engineer for IBM for years, had become personal aide to Bill Gates, and among other things, was responsible for installing the 'smart home' for Gates' personal residence, cited by the NYC consultant.  Sotto voce, Sabol shared that "it doesn't work as well as you'd think.   It required lots of custom software drivers. and they continually need debugging."

I failed to mention to the NYC consultant or to Sabol that my wife had worked closely with Steve Jobs at Apple, that I was currently working for Intel's executive committee on collaboration projects, and that we both knew and worked with Gates on occasion as well.    The good news was that Intel did allow me and my team to create Project Miramar, and the Intel Collaboratory research program over the next few years.  And of course Steve Jobs created the marvelous iPhone a mere seven years later, while Eric Yuan pioneered Zoom a dozen years downstream.  So we are better off today. But my chief goal--to handle the Cheese Soufflé phone call interruption--remains.  Sigh.

California Crazy

 "My gawd, they look old," said my brother's widow, Diane.

I recognized few people; one espied me and delightedly greeted me--"Welcome, Jim," she wheezed."

"Jim?" I thought,  Am I that unrecognizable?

My wife Jenny declined to attend my 60th high school reunion in a town she'd never known.  Diane, though, was born and raised here, so she knew more of the folk in my class, three years ahead of her, than I ever had, since I only arrived in agricultural La Habra in my sophomore high school year.

The thirty alumni of the La Habra class of 1958 gathered for dinner Sept 28, 2018.  Why am I only reporting this now?   Because I just found the notes, as we prepare to move back to California from Oregon to be nearer to family in our dotage.

That night, canes were prominent, walkers evident, health issues topped the conversation.  But laughter abounded, hugs were ubiquitous, old animosities forgotten, and wonder of wonders--great ideas for today's students flowed freely.  The best IMHO was "never confuse Preparation H with toothpaste."

Americans are joiners, members of clubs and associaitons of every kind and description.  Some clubs thrive for years, while others arise and ebb over faddish goals.   Much of America's greatness and magnanimity derives from generosity and charity that flows from religious and secular groups, clubs, societies, organizations and associations in every corner of America.

Some clubs are constantly, inevitably, shrinking.  Think for example about the DeSoto owners club.  A high school class, once graduated, can never grow.  Our club members numbered 225 all told, with 198 'graduating on time.'   Nearly one third have died (7 years ago), not so bad if you think that all the rest of us are beating America's average lifespans for both men and women handily.

 You don't choose to join some clubs--if you graduated with a high school class, you are a member of that group whether or not you ever choose to attend any events.   It is possible to be a member of a group that never convenes, whose members may not realized that they share membership.  Ditto for companies.  Hewlett-Packard started in 1939--the date is irrevocable, so that company by definition is in a group whose origins will always predate World War II.  

For some reason, I got enthused later that night about this group in which I was eating dinner--I thought of them as Ornery Bastards--they've seen it all, they've lived it all, and they can scarcely believe the results of California's growth over eight decades of evolution, innovation, and social change.

I knew a fellow once who actually titled his small group of friends, Yrenro Dratsabs, pronounced Y-Reen-Ro Drat-Sabs, which is Ornery Bastards spelt backwards.   

Of the thirty attendees that night, 5 were born elsewhere than California.   I started musing about how many Californians today were actually born in California before WW II.  The group, however large it was at some point (say, 1940), is clearly been shrinking ever since.   

The next day, I did some noodling on the subject.  California population in 1940 was 6.9 million folk, up from 5.7 million in 1930.   Given the lure of Hollywood, plus migrations described in Grapes of Wrath, my conclusion is that only about 40% of the 6.9 million were actually born in California.  And of those, only a third were under 15 years old in 1940.  So the cohort we are trying to describe here starts with roughly 900,000 to one million folk who would have had a chance to be in our current group.

Using the demographic for our own high school graduating class, roughly 40% have moved away--a statistic seldom mentioned about Americans is that Westerners are much more mobile than Easterners or Midwestern folk.  28% of our class had passed away, but this is the 'last year' of that 15 year cohort, for which on average more than 65% have departed the world of the living.

Taking these two factors together, the 900,000 cohort has shrunk by this point to about 180,000 living native Californians born before World War II.  This computes to about 4 people in 1,000 in California who belong to this group which is now shrinking faster than at any earlier time.  I posed this once to an octogenarian in Woodlake, CA (a rural agricultural town of about 8,000 folk), Coach Frank Ainley   https://www.woodlakefoundation.org/hof-past-inductees/blog-post-title-one-6nx32-cljdn

Ainley, youngest of three boys, stayed in town after WW II service, ranching on his father's homestead.  An older brother went to Alaska and stayed; I never learned about the eldest son's pathway.  By Frank and I agreed, that we were in a small club, one getting smaller by the year.

Years as the Woodlake football coach didn't dim Ainley's love of the ranching world.   As patriarch, he still heads up one of Califronia's dwindling 'large' cattle ranche.   705 head in 2004, vs. 93% of CA's cattle ranches less than 100 head, accordin to one interview when Frank was 71 (born in 1933).    https://www.facebook.com/groups/605982946133424/posts/25035594522745593/

So, think about it--a tiny few of those in this club started with the flappers and the chnchilla coats and the speak-easies of the late 1920;s, to build the land "of fruits and nuts" and the high-tech leadership of aircraft and war tools in Southern California, long before California spawned the personal computer, WorldWideWeb, and iPhone from Silicon Valley, not to metntion an avant garde approach to societal issues of every stripe.  How to capture these changes and emotions?  An impossible task at one level, but one wonders if vignettes centered around specific ideas, individuals, careers, and towns could provide an anchor for each of us to appreciate more deeply the past eight decades of California in the American pantheon.

Jenny's cousin Joan Didion tried, god knows, to capture some of this.  Dare I try?

Such an effort would indeed be California Crazy.

Collected INNOVATION thoughts

 I've mentioned Aidan McCullen now in several past posts.   He runs an active blog service, devoted to innovation questions.

Here are some of the pithy comments he's featured in recent weeks

I particularly like this giraffe painting a picture of what he sees, vs. what we all see typically

Doesn't that about sum it up?

Another one from the animal world:  "If you want to know if the elephant has a stomach ache, don't ask the veterenarian, ask the cage cleaner."   Robert Sapolsky

One from an old friend of mine:  

"A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points" -- Alan Kay 

Another old friend:

"You must admit that not only you do 'not know' many things, 

but that you 'wrongly know' many things."  Gary Hamel

Some thoughts:

1. "Breakthroughs often come from people you weren't listening to.  People who aren't burdened by the assumptions of the field.   Pay attention to the person who notices the small, strange thing that people step over on the way to being 'busy'."  Srini Pagidyala

2. "We are trained to filter out the noise in the data to find the trends, but the noise, the anomaly, is where novelty lies."   Angus Fletcher, in Primal Intelligence

3. "Real, worthy, problems surface when one spends time doing discovery in the field--talking to users, observing behavior, listening for pain points."     Navin Kunde

4. "Innovation thrives not just on data, but on curiosity about what doesn't fit the usual pattern."  Martin S

5."If everone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking."  George Patton

****************   

Aidan has conducted many interviews of 'innovators' and published them in the public domain, which is great.  What might we learn from his own gleaned perspective?  Here's perhaps the greatest one, that totally fits my own experience at HP, Intel, and Cisco to name a few past leaders of high-tech sectors:

"IN SOME SECTORS OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY, BREAKTHROUGHS ARE NOT DESIRED by the players ruling them at the moment--for whatever reasons, mostly unrelated or even diametrically opposite to each given sector's priorities.  Therefore, such domains become deliberately isolated, beling artificially turned into stagnating silos, and eventually rot down to a complete oblivion, ussless and pitiful."

Now, there's an indictment!  Does that fit the Intel situation today, where the #1 semiconductor company in the world for more than four decades has fallen to #10 (charitably) in ten years?

How about Cisco, betting big on Computer Teleconferencing with both its proprietary Telepresence and acquisition of Webex, only to have the Webes CTO leave in frustration to set up Zoom?

I cannot even stomach describing how HP botched innovation from 1990 onward, betting on failed strategies (e.g. HP RISC on a 'new' OS and instruction set; ignoring 'personal tools' like the iPhone {having done brilliant hand-held calculators years before}; and completely fudging virtually all application software fields {databases ala Oracle, networking ala Cisco, business tools ala Salesforce, securty tools ala Crowdflare..., the list is practically endless}).

It also fits IBM not wanting RISC, which led Birnbaum to HP and the Valley to 'killing' IBM hardware just about completely.

Sigh

The First Global Innovation Show Interview

 I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Aidan McCullen had called, and wanted to do an interview about our Permission Denied book.   I had said "Yes" and then decided to re-read it.  Pleasantly surprised by what I'd written back before COVID Brain Fog and all that has transpired over the pasts 12 years or so, we went ahead.

Here, for your listening pleasure (???) is a copy of the first 90 minutes or so.   https://youtu.be/ROquLKw8Yxs?si=zjnzwBObKMULFxth

I know, I know, I should have cleaned off the table in the background

(And I shouldn't have aged to the extent that it shows--my gawd, time takes a toll).

Lots of chatty-cathy here, but hopefully (especially if we pull some snippets out later), there is some good material here for the history buffs.

Autumn and AstroVirtual and Comparative Pictures

 Sometimes newcomers to this Blog ask "What are the topics here?"   And, I stutter with the answer: "Well, it is a function of what InnovaScapes Institute works on, and that is pretty eclectic."   Not very satisfying for someone wondering if this might be worth their time.

So, what topics are 'mostly' here?   Well, InnovaScapes has pursued topics in a wide space, usually as a function of client interest or the founder's own interests.  As such, there is a history of covering "high-tech" stories and analyses, by which is usually meant "computer high-tech."  And medical topics often make the list.   Innovation, too, is a common theme.   Each of those have spawned their own blog:  For example, "high-tech" around computing is often the theme of the HP Phenomenon blog (https://hpphenom.blogspot.com/); Innovation is often discussed from an Intrapreneurial standpoint (https://intrapreneuringinnovation.blogspot.com/) and medical topics such as COVID analyses and COPD analyses are included in the Breathe COPD blog (https://breathecopd.blogspot.com/).  

A nascent blog exists for AstroVirtual (https://www.astrovirtual.com/astrovirtualblog) that discusses virtues and issues for multi-display environments, although this blog has much of the antecedent material for AstroVirtual and also much of the COVID work done at InnovaScapes.

Less frequent, but not unknown, are prejudices and persuasions of the founder and author, Chuck House.

And, just to be forewarned, House has written and pubished something like six books and a hundred articles about the computing world, but he has also written and published six horticultural books.  Without delving into "Why", we can just note that there are many entries about trees and autumn color, or interesting discoveries while traveling, or just factoids that have no other place to be recorded.   Luck of the draw, we call these.  Obviously, you, the dear reader, are not obliged or even expected to read such material, but I cannot resist the notion of scribbling some of this down for posterity.

Such is today's column.   AstroVirtual Inc. is dedicated to the notion that comparative pictures (graphs, photographs, charts, plots, etc) are powerful for quick conveyance of information.   We focus for example on Charts that show facts from BIG DATA.  The next image, for example, highlights the difficulty of understanding the impact of political decisions without recourse to data, but displays easily the impact of the Southern Republican governors in May and June 2020 to abandon lock-downs in early summer, and the result of the governor of South Dakota's asinine decision to allow (encourage actually) the Sturgis SD motorcycle rally at the height of the COVID pandemic in August 2020.  Bet you never saw these images on your public TV channel (doesn't matter if it is Fox News or MSNBC--none of the networks have anyone involved who understand this material).    The governor's action differentially infected more than half a million citizens, killed many thousands, while helping the bottom line of about fourteen bars and seven hotels in Sturgis.  Great tradeoff.  The dog killer--this was Kristi Noam--said none of this slander is true, that it was a hatchet job by left-wing activists.  Ah, so!  Damn that data.

In particular, the Sturgis event sent both South and North Dakota to the very top of the 'most infected' states in America, but more importantly, impacted adversely some 61% of America's counties and recorded the highest infection rates in fourteen states that had hitherto been relatively unscathed.

So, that is the value of comparative side-by-side images--as they taught us in the first science courses to hold the variables constant and then do time-lapse comparisons.   

I titled this "Autumn and AstroVirtual" though for a different reason.  I have been enchanted the past few weeks by the autumn hues on trees in our neighborhood.  I have always been enchanted by the Jack Frost coloration in New England autumns, but over a lifetime have found that many places have beautiful hues.

First, a clear picture of Comparative images for one local Oak Tree, just to show Spring Advance:

And then, just to celebrate our local flora, here are some recent images from McMinnville, Oregon.

The first one compares changing yellow tones of the same Green Ash a week apart:

The next one compares several Green Ash with the White Ash cultivar Autumn Purple

Pictures of some more Ash, just to make the point.   Unfortunately, Ash across America are in serious decline, due to the Emerald Ash Borer.   In two decades, nearly all Ash in America will likely be gone.   

Monocultures, e.g. the American Elm that once graced American towns, or the mighty Chestnut tree (under which the Village Smithy stood c.f. Longfellow), have been decimated.  Meanwhile, enjoy these Ash.

New England's stunning fall landscapes are noteworthy mostly for their handsome varieties of Maple, especially the orange-reds of Sugar Maple and the vermilion reds of Canadian Maple.  Ironically, Oregon (via the Hoyt Arboretum in Portland) has one of the most extensive Maple collections in the world.  Here's their description: "Maple trees thrive in the Pacific Northwest, and our collections reflect that vitality,  The Maple Collection blazes with the colors of over 90 species, subspecies, and cultivars in autumn. Both are accredited by the Plant Collections Network of the American Public Gardens Association, which recognizes the quality and breadth of the collections, the garden’s long-term commitment, a favorable local environment, and institutional expertise."

Translation--our small town has planted many varieties of maple, and their foliage is stunning.  I counted nine major varieties this week within two blocks of home (including the park shown).  The bare tree in the foreground on the right below is the Green Ash shown above in yellow garb.

These trees are all Autumn Blaze, a cross between the Canadian Red and the Silver Maple.

The town has planted these rapid-growing beauties along many major streets. The bright vermilion color deepens to a solid crimson over a two-week period.

By contrast, the true Canadian Red Maple has a smaller, trident-shaped leaf, which colors early, and variably, eventually becoming the same brilliant vermilion of the later Autumn Glory.

I don't want to turn this into a Maple Encyclopedia, but it is true that the big genus of Maples, with all the varietals, are among the most diverse leaf designs in nature.  So, just to give a bit of idea for that, the following several pictures illustrate indeed that a Picture is worth 1,000 words.

Clearly, not all Maples turn red in the fall.   Here, a panoply of Yellow, clockwise from upper left:

Silver Maple, Bigleaf Maple, Japanese Maple,  Norway Maple, Bigtooth Maple, another Norway

And there are many more Red or Red-orange varieties,  On the left is the majestic Sugar Maple, native to New England, while the others are all forms of the palmate Japanese Maple, which are typically 'five-fingered', hence shaped like a hand (or palm).

Japanese Maple come in two basic forms--the Palmate, shown above, and the Japonica, a much fuller leaf with (usually seven) minor lobes.   The Pacific Northwest shrub maple is a Japonica type

So there you have a brief run-through the autumn presentations of a few of the genus Acer (Maple)

Could words describe this panoply, or do the images help?   

The Global Innovation Show

 Aidan McCullen, based in Ireland, has a long-running show called "the Global Innovation Show"

Here's a quick synopsis:

About The Show

The Why or “The North Star” for this show is to share fresh information to empower new thinking.

We welcome guests to the show to share their wisdom and inform the community to lead more fulfilled lives.

About The Host

Aidan McCullen is a change consultant and works with organisations to improve how they collaborate and create the environment for change.

Aidan is the host and founder of the Global Innovation Show, which boasts Bill Gates as a listener and advocate and features on Irelands national broadcaster RTÉ and the only English-speaking show on Finland’s Business FM.

He developed and delivers a module on Emerging Technology Trends in Trinity College Business School, ranked as one of the top Business Schools in the world.

Aidan speaks and runs workshops globally on disruption and change for organisations such as Mastercard, Epic Games, Endemol Shine Group, Agilent Technologies, CBC Canada and Toyota and in industries from Pharma to Fintech.

Aidan is a board advisor and Non-Executive board member for National Broadband Ireland.

He reinvented himself after a 10-year career after rugby with over 100 caps for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish and is a full Ireland Rugby International.

He worked in digital transformation, innovation delivery and now culture and leadership. This journey has led him to believe that you cannot change business models until you first change mental models.

Aidan is the author of the book, “Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life” which features a Foreword by Visa founder and CEO Emeritus, Dee Hock.

********************       

Someone, I believe it was Dr. Martin Curley of Maynooth University in Leixlip, Ireland, gave a copy of Permission Denied to McCullen in spring 2024.   I had worked with Martin at Intel Corporation from 2000 to 2006, and again with his program at the annual United Nations Digital Medical workshops in 2023 and 2024 via our multi-display AstroVirtual capability.    Martin asked me to give a commencement talk for graduates at Maynooth in 2023, for which Martin distributed perhaps a hundred copies of the Permission Denied book.

Net net was that McCullen was intrigued, and asked for an interview for his program, way back in March 2024.   He said "lead time is way out" but proffered late in 2025.   Well, no further notice until a week ago, when he sent a note, "How about Friday November 7th?"   

"Sure," I said, noting that a lot of water has gone over the dam in the meantime, and a story about the Moon Monitor from 1969 or the Logic State Analyzer program from 1970-1982 is not exactly today's news.   So I compiled a few notes about things that have happened since, and sent them his way.

He replied promptly, saying he fully knew that, but there's lots of material in the book that he'd like to cover.   So, somewhat in self-defense, I re-read the book, which was published in 2013. And a strange thing happened--one that I've experienced before, but not quite so dramatically.

I read what I had written, with fresh eyes.  Meaning that I didn't recall writing this, so it was like reading new material.  Granted, while reading it, the visceral feelings came back, but it is an unusual experience to read your own work as if it was written by someone else sometime back.  And, I know this might sound egotistical, but I liked what I read.  In fact, I marveled to some degree at what I'd written, sort of in the mood of "Boy, I couldn't write that today so well."  

Maybe more importantly, I found myself testing the hypothesis set forth in the book about how to empower intrapreneurs, and even more, how to empower their managers to empower them, against the work we've been doing in our current start-up, AstroVirtual.   And WOW, I felt, this is pretty ON-TARGET, maybe I should be pushing this book and the thesis more.

I sent that to Aidan, and got this reply: 

Dear Chuck,

Your story is such an important one and it needs to be well preserved and I hope to play my part to do that.

The show is pre recorded so we can play it by ear. 

I’ll just follow your notes and do my research. 

I wrote this today inspired by your work https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aidanmccullen_do-you-have-a-homoiconic-organisation-where-activity-7390359837991186432-8ivf?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAIlywMBBNUoJ8eBx98xKuQJrV5qgKywM2Q&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

Kind regards,

Aidan

****************     

So who knows how this will turn out.  But I do look forward to it.

Chuck

Statistician's delight

I got a strong recommendation the other day for the work of David Spiegelhalter, a U.K. statistician that colleagues with AstroVirtual find incredible. 

*************** 

Chuck - recommended (by many people) book about Covid numbers

 

Covid By Numbers: Making Sense of the Pandemic with Data: Spiegelhalter, David, Masters, Anthony: 9780241547731: Amazon.com: Books

 

By the guy who wrote the now-classic ‘The Art of Statistics’

 

Brian Julius just endorsed him (Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter) on a podcast, as the best

 

Regards

 

Art

**********************  

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately(?), I was underwhelmed.   Here's my reply to Art:

Art, thank you for this recommendation.   I sent for both books.   The classic is indeed classic.  Highly recommended, very very well done.

Alas, I cannot report the same for the COVID book.  The book is pocket-sized, 4” x 7” instead of the 6” x 9” of the other one.   And, it is printed in very small type, like 7 point type maximum.   Physically unreadable, although under a magnifying lens (I have an 8x10” magnifier that can render it passably readable).   And when you read it, it is done in generalities and non-specific graphs and wording that would leave someone who knows the data saying “WHAT?”

I thought, maybe this was an el cheapo knockoff from China or something, but apparently this was the original printing.

The reviews are clear that this was a rush job, to try to capture something at the end of the first pandemic year, and that the authors (there are two) did not do a good job in several respects.   I concur.

All the same, it is the best I have seen to date on the topic, which gives me encouragement for my own draft.   Still a virgin territory in terms of meaningful data and analysis.   

Given their reputation, I think they stubbed their toe.  Too bad.

All the best

*****************

Book writing is not for the faint of heart.   Neither are statistics.   And readership, measured in sales terms are hardly sanguine, for nearly all topics, even popular ones like books for the lovelorn, or treatises about Narcissistic Rage, or the favorite breeds of dogs.

A deep discussion with a colleague today raised the question -- aren't blogs, podcasts, short essays, and video vignettes far better communication mechanisms in this age?

And the short answer is YES, and maybe even the longer answer.  But books do still have a place in my view.   They are more durable, more findable over time, and more complete.  Essays must be collected and collated to cover a broad topic.  Videos can be compelling for the first 30 seconds, and maybe pithy enough to merit a five minute 'watch'.  And podcasts, with a commanding compelling voice, can be very satisfying, if ephemeral.    Blogs, of which this is one, have some lasting value, but it is akin to another lost art, Journaling.   We've just crossed 400,000 posting views in mine, but the 'voice' is scattered over myriad topics with little cross-correlation or time-sequential development.

Lament, lament . . .  so what's your point, Charlie?

The point is that I have gotten considerable pushback over the idea of doing a COVID anthology, for a variety of reasons, and I have mostly persevered and have produced a trial volume at this point, for which I need to decide what to do with it.   And, the advice reminds me of similar discussions as the Hewlett-Packard book stimulated at this time in its evolution.

Let me review one observation that my co-author Ray Price had during that HP book preparation time.   We were challenged that we weren't covering one division's products very deeply, certainly to the desired depth that a colleague from that division desired, for which he said "you are claiming to be definitive and thorough, but . . . ."   

The book wound up 656 pages, a very big book by Stanford Press standards, so presumably many things could be covered in such a tome.   But HP in 2007, as we finished the draft, was a $125 Billion revenue per year company, with another $25 Billion in spnoffs, and well more than 100 separate operating divisions still running.  The company legacy was approaching seventy years.  So imagine trying to describe "in any depth whatsoever" how a newly hatched $50 million product line for one division experienced its five year initiation and sales development period.   Equal page-time would give one-third of one page to that story, right?

So authors have to find the essence of the key stories, and both generalize and condense them to make any coherent presentation.   We named some 442 HP employees along the way, vs. the high count of 46 in Mike Malone's contemporary HP book, so we tried!

The same with COVID.   Big topic, affecting virtually every country of the 200 in the world, with nearly a billion identified infected, with more than 7 million known dead (and doubtless twice that manner or more).   How can you cover that with adequate conviction that 'the right stories' have been distilled into the mix?   Ah, that is the author dilemma.  

And, crazy as it sounds, I suspect that I'll persevere.   Wish me luck.

 

Reflection on topics

 This InnovaScapes blog has been running for 13 years now, WHEW!

And what pearls of wisdom have appeared here?   Or, in other words, is it worth the time to read it?

The first couple years (2013-14) saw 100 posts, heavily driven by enthusiasms of the day as opposed to a thematic direction for InnovaScapes Institute itself.

2015 was only five posts, but they all considered the question of high-tech history, and they included notice of a new book at the time which described how to conduct 'amateur hour interviews' of friends and colleagues to try to capture more of the lore of this crazy discipline in which we are involved.  The book, written for and distributed to, the Trustees of the Computer History Museum, has been mildly successful, and in particular, was asked about just this past week--a decade after I penned it.

Scanning it, I realized that I have since conducted another 250 interviews or so, and learned a lot more about technique and values, and I almost withheld the book from the inquirer for that reason.  But, it does exist, and I had nothing else on hand for her questions.

Then a dearth.  Four years, and one post, which noted simply that it had been four years sans posts.

2020 fixed that, as I got caught up in the COVID pandemic--first, catching it, and then amassing a database and developing some graphical tools to understand it, and eventually posting fifty blogs in 2020 and 2021 about the findings.

A quick flurry in late 2022 outlined our decision to try to build a company, AstroVirtual Inc.  https://www.astrovirtual.com/  around the tools and methods that the COVID efforts had found valuable, and then we got busy enough that 2023 had NO posts.

But progress on that venue, and new assessments both last year, and half of this year, have generated  about 20 new posts, something like one per month for that period.  And finally, early 2025, we elected to start a new blog, available through our AstroVirtual website.  Again, not a heavy dose of material, but we have written a half-dozen posts for that site, mostly why we are doing it, and some "How" as well.

A recent entry, Envisioning data https://www.astrovirtual.com/astrovirtualblog/envisioningdata is indicative of some focused blogs that describe what we are trying to do, and why.

So, it is perhaps time to revisit the InnovaScapes Institute blog, and refocus it back on things that our Institute has been pursuing alongside and independent of AstroVirtual.  

First and foremost among those pursuits has been a long-standing effort to provide more in-depth interviewing of key individuals in the high-tech sector (mostly the computing and instrumentation sides, to be sure).  So we will be starting a series on PIPs--Previously Important People--and what they did and why, and how it all turned out.

Second, as a derivative of the COVID research, and efforts with AstroVirtual, we have been working on a potential contribution for the public health sector.   We have uncovered significant learning and even key mistakes made in the COVID pandemic processes and procedures across the globe, and we intend to try to give those findings a broad exposure, getting ready if you will for the next pandemic.

And third, we intend to periodically cover 'current enthusiams' and we'll do that in labeled posts also.

So--a new beginning for InnovaScapes Institute and its blog.   I invite you to join in and participate.

Joel Birnbaum case study

Have you ever had something like this happen?   

I was part of 'a front-page story' in the Denver Post some years ago for a situation with the Colorado Air Pollution Control Commission.   I brought some serious issues to the table around a violator and the state health standards, and a reporter put the contretemps into a front-page story.   But--I didn't recognize either the issue or the analysis as it was written.   He'd completely missed the point both with respect to the topic and the resolution.

Since then, I have repeatedly seen similar examples.  Truth, if there in fact is such a thing, is so often in the eye of the beholder, me included.   And errors of commission are often the lesser of evils--much more often they are errors of omission.

With that in mind, I went back to a pair of extensive Computer History Museum (CHM) interviews--the four hours of interviewing I did with Joel Birnbaum more than a decade ago.  Joel, with whom I had worked closely at HP for years, was uniquely qualified to talk about key contributions in computing history--he is the only person ever to lead the two largest computer research organizations in world history, IBM and HP.  Not surprisingly, he headed IBM Research when it was the largest computer company in the world by a factor of five.   Coming to HP when HP Computing was 14th in computing company size, and only four percent of IBM size, he led HP which eventually (after 27 years of trying) caught and passed IBM in total revenues in 2007.   Joel himself holds many accolades, including Fellow of ACM, IEEE, AAAS, NAE, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.   (see a bio, this one from Computing Research Association {CRA} https://archive.cra.org/Activities/grand.challenges/birnbaum.pdf ).

The significance of the interviews is illustrated by the fact that the CHM CEO and founder Len Shustek attended for the entire set, something he very seldom did.    And, as you doubtless would expect from me, this was not the traditional 'techie' interview by a proper historian, but rather my Socratic Interview, described herein earlier--focused more on WHO and WHY rather than WHAT and HOW.

What did Joel say, and what have we done with it?

He named 96 people who represented in his mind the most significant factors in his own career, many of them were people that both Len and I knew, some of them only Joel and I knew, and some of the early ones from IBM and elsewhere were names that we'd heard but neither of us knew the individuals.   https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746891/ is the first interview;   https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102780991/ is the second.

We filed the transcripts, and some years later, I built a Btrieve index to find and analyze the folk he named, compared to their coverage in several compendia, including ACM awards, ACM Fellows, HP and IBM Fellows, and CHM Fellows and CHM oral histories.  

Out of 96 individuals (the best folk known and cited by the leading research manager in compute history)

    13 hold ACM Awards (11 Turing Awards and 6 Eckert-Mauchly Awards, two held jointly, plus one Grace Murray Hopper award and one Distinguished Service award).   Another has an ACM-SIG award.

    Joel named 16 IBM Fellows, 2 HP Fellows, an Intel Fellow, and a Nobel Laureate with whom he worked closely.  Of these, CHM has just one oral interview and 5 IBM Fellows as CHM Fellows (Fran Allen, Gene Amdahl, John Backus, Don Chamberlin, John Cocke).

    CHM Fellows include seven others that Joel named (Eric Bloch and Fred Brooks (IBM); John Hennessy and Don Knuth (Stanford), Dave Patterson (Berkeley), Ken Olson (DEC), and Raj Reddy  (CMU).

    ACM includes those seven (except for Bloch), plus Allen, Brooks, Chamberlin, and Ted Codd and Jim Gray of database fame, plus Dominic Ferrari.

    Joel named IBM CEOs Cary, Gerstner, and Opal, plus HP CEOs Hewlett, Packard, Young, Plat, Fiorina, Apotheker, and Hurd, and Jobs at Apple, and DG's DeCastro, none of whom were researchers, and they are represented modestly in CHM, and hardly at all in ACM.

    Astonishingly, 56 of the 96 names are essentially 'invisible' to all of the major computing archives that I have searched, never mind that Joel describes most of them in glowing terms.  Even more interesting, some of those 56 names are seminal in their respective arenas (e.g. Lew Branscomb, Ralph Gomory, and Jeff Katzenbach at IBM; John Doyle, Paul Ely, Dick Hackborn, Bill Terry, and especially Barney Oliver at HP, and even Jack Welch at GE.

    My purpose here is not to finger ACM or CHM for lack of coverage, but rather to illuminate just how big this computing world has been, and continues to be.   As one historian put it, "most of the creators are still alive, and their stories, if captured, will be irretrievable if we don't do it.  BUT, there are only about 400 computer research historians in the world.  It's an intractable task," she added.   

    What if we could feed all of the transcripts for the nearly 10,000 high-tech interviews into one corpus, and do a gigantic Btrieve on them, and even better, put these wonderful new AI tools to work, so that some of these associations and connections could be exposed, much like a gigantic word tag directory (ala this simple one from the ACM Turing page)?

ACM Annual Awards Banquet

 

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has a long storied collection of award winners, for a wide variety of contributions within the computing world.  Lists abound, and fame accrues, especially for the Big Awards, but also for each of these prestigious categories.

If you've been privileged enough to attend one of their formal black-tie award dinners, you will have doubtless glanced at the Awards pamphlet carefully placed at every seat.  It lists all new winners, as well as the names of every previous awardee for each award given.

As each award is announced, a brief video vignette describes the winner and thc cited work on big screens located at each end of the stage.  The honoree is handed a Plaque, a certificate, usually a check (sometimes for substantial funds), and a handshake before the obligatory photo-op with the extant ACM leadership.

Subsequently, a two- or three-paragraph notation about the person, the work, and the award will be posted to the person's ACM webpage.  This is truly a career highpoint for many awardees!!!

The audience is appreciative, even enthusiastic for some winners.   Attendees, some four hundred strong, are composed of the honorees and their family and friends (usually including the honoree's major professor), plus a significant number of past winners and ACM officers and ACM emeriti.  As an ex-ACM President, I usually garner an invite, and it is an incredible pleasure for my wife Jenny and me each year, revisiting old friends and meeting new ones.

Not surprisingly, though, for events of this type, not everyone in attendance is enthralled.  Here's a tongue-in-cheek ribald post from the outspoken wife of an ACM stalwart:    

      "Excuse me," I hissed to my husband, an ACM Fellow whom I was expected to revere.  But I was irreverent.  I cannot change my stripes at 62, and so I continued.   "Hello, I believe these beans were brought from a local farm to this table."  My point was that "farm to table" does not necessarily mean directly from the farm to the table by skipping the kitchen.           My husband was not pleased.  "Eat.  Show some gratitude," he growled.   So I drove my fork into another raw green bean the length of my elbow and forklifted it onto my tongue, and turned politely to face the gentleman speaking at the podium.                                                                                                                                                                             Over the course of the last few decades, I've been invited, on and off, to the ACM awards.  I feel honored--seriously, I do--for having been invited to partake of the banter, the banquet, and the work of the brightest minds in computing.  I'm genuinely thankful because some of us ordinary mortals can get to celebrate the gifts of someone else who has earned some honors.  Still, I'm mildly peeved that no one has thought to institute some kind of an award for those who endure the eccentricities of those honored by the ACM.  Consider some of the struggles of spouses or partners who attend these: We must listen to our better halves talk shop for eons while remembering to look terribly excited by the latest buzzword.  We must strive to remember the names of people we met years ago, maybe once, in formal wear.  We must also grin and bare our teeth as our partners take photographs--and more photographs--and still more.

My own wife, a bona fide Berkeley computer science and computer education PhD herself, howled when she saw this post.   I'm not sure why I showed it to her; I certainly did not send it to ACM headquarters.

My concerns over the years about this banquet have taken a different tack.  I want to know more about the winners, plus previous winners.  And I'd like the information in context.   I can listen to the two-minute high-quality YouTube video about the current awardee, and I can expect to view it again later on the ACM website after the event.  I can peruse my iPhone during the ceremony to Google about the winner, to learn more about their schooling, their current career path, their achievements, and even what courses they are teaching this year.  I can do this for every nominee, and for every previous honoree.

But what is harder, much harder, to do is to find apt comparisons--how many colleagues from their school or department have similar awards?  Or how many awards have been given for analogous contributions?  I can find the ACM Digital Library radio button on their ACM website page, and assess their publishing history, including their favorite co-authors, but I cannot find much about the passion that led them down this path.

Nor do the acceptance speeches give much clue.   Gracious and gratuitous, they almost always thank their major professor, a small team of colleagues, and usually, their parents and spouse.  But only a few honorees are even allowed to ascend to the podium--time is limited, since with 24 awards and fifty or more newly anointed Fellows, the evening inevitably is overlong, especially for the geriatric attendees.

Is there a way to serve these longings?  Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is YES.   And outlining elements of that answer will be our purpose in the next few posts, as well as encouraging the Socratic Interviews described in the last post.

Socratic interviews

 Say what?   Socratic interviews?    

I've just passed 1,000 PIP interviews--that's some kind of milestone, right?

A PIP is a Previously Important Person, someone who once had a major award given to them, or they held a high-profile job, or they did something remarkable enough to be noticed -- ahem, NOTICED -- as in the Andy Warhol observation that nearly everyone has their "fifteen minutes of fame".

When Ray Price and I first conceived of writing a Hewlett-Packard anthology, we wound up conducting about 120 full interviews, and another 400 episodic discussions in order to learn more about events and issues around the company of which we knew next to nothing.  I had the privilege of knowing nearly all of these interviewees prior to their interviews, having worked at HP for nearly thirty years.   So, in a sense, these were discussions between colleagues rather than formal interviews conducted by historians.

Those HP interviews, done between 2003 and 2008, were recorded and the files eventually stored at the volunteer HP Computer Museum in Australia (created by Jon Johnston).   After Johnston's untimely death in a mountaineering accident, the collection was ultimately sold to the HP CompanyArchives (HPCA), managed by Heritage Works, Inc. in Atlanta, GA.   I am not sure what has happened to 'our interviews.'  

For many years as well, I had been a Trustee for the Computer History Museum (nee Boston, now in Mountain View, CA), serving from 1991 through 2020.   CHM had been dilatory about oral interviews, doing a mere 43 in its first 30 years of existence through 2011.   When Jim Pelkey offered a trove of audio tapes with 81 interviews of networking pioneers from the 1960-1980 era to CHM in 2012, their initial response was that "we don't do oral interviews" for all the good and sufficient reasons that all reputable historians of the time espoused.   

Those reasons are manifold: 

1. Individual recollections are untrustworthy, either self-aggrandizing or denigrating others' contributions, not to mention short on details due to the passage of time.   As one wag put it, "my mother could remember things that never even happened."

2. No one can possibly understand the context of the situation, whatever it might be.   That is the job of the true historian, not one of many participants.

3. Only trained historians are qualified to do these kinds of interviews, and there are too few of them.

4. Decent (i.e. 'correct') interviews are expensive, requiring high-quality studio recording, heavy editing, and semi-infinite fact-checking.

Well, while those arguments have considerable validity, they do not sufficiently value what might be gleaned from 'amateur interviews.'   Which is what I have spent another decade learning how to do.

I, with others, was able to change the stance for CHM.  They have now done more than 1,600 video interviews in the past 12 years, going up by 100x the rate of ascension for the first 30 years.  This has included more than 900 'amateur' interviews, along with 700 conducted by 'proper computer historians.'

Turns out, that two simple techniques help the veracity factor a lot: 1. interviewing multiple individuals about any set of important events to get multiple perspectives, and 2. sometimes putting those folk into a 'group' for recollection purposes (where many times someone will say, somewhat with chagrin, 'ah, yes, George, I do recall now that you were the one who did . . .').

But back to the opening statement about Socratic interviewing--this isn't exactly how 'formal' interviews are done, but it is my approach.  Begin with something like "How did you become who you are?" rather than tell me about "the high-tech whiz-bang for which you're associated."   Ask open-ended questions, with undirected goals, to discover passions and motivations more than 'the facts' of what they did.  Why the quest in the first place, and what challenges rather than what successes resulted.   The highest complements that I get are of the form, "I didn't expect this kind of interview.  This was really fun, and it really made me think about things."

The net result is that I have persisted, and indeed tuned, how to do these interviews, and I believe that it provides an additional set of insights rarely collected in more traditional interviewing methodologies.   Not that it replaces them, but rather that it augments them.

Careful readers might recall that I sang this song once before, in the Blog Post on February 13, 2024, entitled "It's WHO and WHY, not just WHAT and HOW".   But now I know to call it "Socratic".

I now have done perhaps forty interviews for CHM, ditto for the Novim Group for their Science Communication Awards, a couple of hundred for the Cisco Foundation (mostly recollections of many early employees), and a couple hundred for the Association of Computing Machinery.  Other groups have included pioneers in ancillary fields, including Computer Education and Computer Law pioneers, not to mention other unrelated arenas like horticulture and United States history where I have considerable background as well.

And a recent count is sort of like that Hindu cultural saying about 1,000 moons:  The Sahasra Purna Chandrodayam ((सहस्र पूर्ण चंद्रोदयम) refers to a celebration marking the 1,000th full moon experienced by an individual, typically around their 81st birthday (yes, I qualify now for that).   This milestone is significant, symbolizing a long and blessed life, and a time to seek blessings for continued well-being and spiritual liberation.   

And of late, kind of in a spiritual liberation about these interviews, I have reflected on what has changed in terms of collecting these 'first-person' stories, and what hasn't yet happened.   What is good is that universities and professional societies have 'caught on' and the net result is that there are more than 10,000 decent video 'first-person' high-tech stories collected in about a dozen archives--a fantastic collection that has grown ten-fold in a decade.

And, for the most part, they have had decent transcripts produced, with AI-generated text helping considerably.   So, from a text-based search capability, we could do plenty.  But as of yet, these collections are stored individually, so a cross-transcript sort is not yet practical.   

The consequence is sad, in terms of nearly all of these transcripts remain unread, unused, and essentially unavailable.   And that, in part, has been my more recent focus.   How can we make use of this asset?

The next few blogs will describe thoughts along this vein.   Stay tuned.