A Virtual 3D Health Observatory

I reported in another blog (Breathe COPD:  https://breathecopd.blogspot.com/) about the UNGA (yes, the United Nations General Assembly) opportunity that we were given last year, to talk about our 3 year study of COVID around the globe.   Since the work was directly related to InnovaScapes Institute, it properly should have been reported here as well.   Rather than reprint them, just go to the blog above and see, for example, the March 28, 2024 post ("UNGA 78: A Day in Court"), the two April 25 posts ("Telling the Story" and "Telling the Bigger Story"), and then on May 31, "Revisiting the Story").

Well, that has spawned some additional opportunity, and challenge, for which AstroVirtual people have become increasingly excited.   Our colleague, Dr. Martin Curley, is the leader for the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) (https://ivi.ie/) at Maynooth University in Leixlip, Ireland, and he has continued to keep us both informed and engaged.   Dr. Curley is the lead sponsor / creator of the "Stay Left, Shift Left" initiative for the European Union and indrectly for WHO (the World Health Organization).  Importantly, he was the former director of digital transformation and open innovation at the Irish Health Service Executive.   He also has been recognized as teh European CTO of the year (with Intel Corporation), and the Innovation Engineer of the Year, and a Leader in Learning.  Quite the pedgree!

He periodically gives speeches at key medical conferences, such as the Padua World Health Forum in March thi syear (https://worldhealthforum.it/en/), for which we supplied a key 2 minute video of our COVID study as it related to Western Europe.   This was an animated clip that showed the build-up of COVID cases for 14 Western European countries from February 12 through April 12, 2020, a period which began with less than 50 cases across the area, but within two months had 778,000 cases and 83,100 deaths.   That was an astounding 11% fatality rate for anyone who became infected--measured as though people died the day they got infected.   In fact, though, deaths usually were a week to three weeks later, which revealed that 19% of the first million infected died, and if you were over 65 years of age, it was more like 50% of the oldsters died.   Serious material.  Here's the video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJajOIDzeqI

Well, this week we were invited to showcase our current status for the Virtual 3D Health Observatory, for the IVI / Maynooth International Digital Health Summer School (https://ivi.ie/events/idhss24/), with a cast of speakers and attendees that boggles the mind.   

I was invited to give a 15 minute presentation, for which we prepared a 20-screen diorama in a large auditorium organized roughly like the United Nations main auditorium.    The screens  illustrated voluminous data from our COVID studies, but also showed that each screen was able to be interactive with a wide array of source material--websites, emails, YouTube videos, Powerpoint slides, free-form interviews, etc.   Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RaYBTCbdY0

This presentation in essence previews our scheduled trip to the United Nations General Assembly in September in New York City, where we'll show examples of nearly 30 chronic diseases as well as pandemic data.   

Stay tuned.

Busy times

 We're entering that incredible phase of "50th anniversaries" -- celebrating the XeroxPARC Alto last year, and now this past week, the Internet.   Yes, I know, I know, which date and which event do you pick?

My good friend Brian Berg has an answer for "which event".  Brian heads the IEEE Milestone committee, a group that honors BIG IMPACT PRODUCTS around the globe for our industry (actually, for IEEE's full industry, which is pretty broad, all things considered).   They've done something like 247 awards, going all the way back to Ben Franklin and his kite in 1751.   Ten awards for work before Maxwell's 1860 equations, 87 awards since 2016.  Here's the comprehensive list of honorees:   https://ethw.org/Milestones:List_of_Milestones

Brian has single-handedly revitalized this program, culminating with 6 awards presented in three ceremonies this past week.   SRI/PARC hosted one last Friday, and another one on Sunday, that celebrated PARC's Alto and the dawn of PC's, the Local Area Networks (Ethernet), and the Laser Pritner.

The Computer History Museum hosted the third on Monday, citing another three:  TCP/IP, IEEE 802, and Google's Page Rank system.   

Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe showed up, and spoke at length, both on Friday and Monday, as did many others who were involved to one degree or another.   Now, granted, these weren't all 50th anniversaries, but they are indeed all significant.   Berg is especially proud that many awardees (and these are plaques for the organization, not individuals for whom there are many other awards), choose to mount these plaques in prominent places (like the front door or the main parking entrance of "Headquarters" for Pixar, Qualcomm, and Microsoft)).   Kind of ironic that HP's Milestone (their only one, which is nuts), for the HP35A, had been misplaced some years ago.  Brian and I have been working this one for 'who was at the ceremony' and 'where did the plaque go?' for the past few weeks.  We've now solved the riddles, and Brian hopes to get the plaque properly installed at HP (which HP, and which site, we might ask?) soon.

Brian gave a summary talk each day, repeating his great talk at the 50th Asilomar meeting last month.  Oh, did I forget to report on that meeting?  Here's Brian's talk there:   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zpYnscFnp6VW_IgDT2q_m111tSalVpY5/view

And here is my talk there, during the RATS session (late at night, ten minutes max):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UldbgcTl8Pg

There are 'other milestones' of course.   The MacIntosh turned 40 this year; Jenny is still enthused.  And the first Logic State Analyzer, the HP 1601A, turned 50 last September (WESCON, remember that?).

Sigh, we're all moving along.   Kids today probably could care less.  Oops, strike probably.

Some always want the DETAILS

 Okay, okay . . .  there are in fact two versions of truth.  The USPTO publishes most patents in Black-and-White format, but if the filing includes color images, those may be included in a second-level (I would describe it as Premier Seating).   Here is the Color-bound version of our patent

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:aae1cf67-d31b-485b-8e2e-99259bf720b5

And here for your reading enjoyment and comparison is the Black/White version

https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/11935195

Same info, just that one recognizes that color changed the movies, and later, HP printers.

Happy to answer questions about any of this

Chuck

Progress -- PATENTS . . . Slow and Sweet, but sometimes a bit faster

 I've been describing our AstroVirtual Environments in this space for about a year and a half now, and in particular, the Museum "Proof of concepts" that we have modeled for several potential situations.  The "anniversary" in fact was September 16, 2022, as noted in the December 16, 2022 blog post.  We showed a crude mock-up at an ACM Workshop Sept 30, 2022, and we have just (as in "just last month") been invited to write that up for a Conference Proceeding.  Writing these things down takes a while, right?

Did I ever mention the AstroVirtual website?   https://www.astrovirtual.com

I probably didn't mention a new Storyboard that describes the ACM Virtual Hall of Fame that we took to New York City last month.   This builds heavily on the ideas of that mock-up in September 2022.

Check this out:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k2Ve_PkkPCc3MKf9-Uufl0JdhbWKBaLu/view

More significantly today, we reached a different milestone--we were officially awarded our first patent on the AstroVirtual technology.   Coming out of the Workshop, we felt that the reception merited some true follow-up, and as a result, we tried to codify our thoughts into a coherent stream, that we then presented to a retired Patent Attorney.   

I always struggle with the idea of patents--both for the cost and time involved, but also for the relatively low probable return.   After some initial discussion though, we were convinced that it might be worth the investment.  We filed 42 claims on December 13, 2022, of which 27 were for "Method" and 15 for "Apparatus".   Along the way, the two were separated for reasons that are obscure to me, but the key fact is that the "Methods" were fast-tracked because the two inventors--Scott Futryk, my partner, and me--are both 'elders' and they want to get this done while we're still sentient apparently.

Well, it worked.  Today March 19 2024, the USPTO (US Patent and Trademarrk Office) issued Patent #11,935,131 B1 for 27 claims to Scott and me, assigned to our fledgling company, AstroVirtual Inc.

My last patent, # 7,904,323 B2 was filed by 8 inventotrs on December 23, 2003, and finally issued on March 8, 2011.   So the 'fast-track' worked.

Ironically, or maybe not so ironically as you think about it, both patents are in related space.  Here are the two titles, and the respective 'inventors'     Intel is the assignee for the Multi-team patent

Anyway, just wanted to note this occasion, and acknowledge the terrific work of my colleague, Scott.

It's WHO and WHY, not just WHAT and HOW

We've been preparing a proposed Virtual HALL of FAME for the ACM Council (you all know ACM, right?  The Association for Computing Machinery, not the Academy for Country Music).    In particular, ACM awards 20+ major awards every year, plus a slug of newly elected ACM Fellows.  Prize money is now appraoching $2M per year, with some fantastic support by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Infosys, IBM, and Two Sigma.

And the ACM History Committee has been embarked now for nine years on 'capturing' more about the winners, especially the Turing Award winners.  I've personally done something like 165 video interviews in this connection.

BUT, those interviews, like thousands at the Computer History Museum, the Babbage Institute, the Silicon Valley archive at Stanford, the Bancroft at Berkeley, the MIT Museum, the Dupont Museum (the Hagley), and other such places, are usually relegated to a dry transcript and on occasion a posted un-indexed video, that you have to KNOW that it exists for a specific person to find it, and your patience gets tested pretty hard to read and/or view and enjoy it.

The proposed Virtual HALL of FAME would illuminate these heroes, make their lives more accessible, and their importance more prominent--for students, teachers, professionals, and yes, even historians.  We'll show a 'walk-thru' and summarize a couple of key elements in the next post.

And when all is said and done, it is fascinating to me that most of these thousands of interviews focus on WHAT they did, and HOW they did it.  Naturally, you say!   That's why they're being interviewed--they did something that has been deemed important for their university, their company, their discipline, or even society at large.  And that is truly important, no question about it.

But the meta-message for me, taking in 'the set' of them, is WHO were these people, and WHY did they do what they did?  That is the story for the next generation.  "We" are enthused by the specifics of what they did and how they did it, because "we" were sort of in the trenches with them, and we can therefore appreciate what they accomplished.  But the next generation takes all of this for granted--they don't know a world before iPhones and ubiquitous Internet, and soon they'll not know a world pre-AI driven.  A story about how the iPhone keys got realized isn't too pertinent.   So, what's the 'constant' here?

I submit that the constant is "Where does the inspiration come from to do work of this caliber?"  And stories of "Who these people were, the difficulties they faced, and how they surmounted them" are more important to serve as motivation for a youngster (or even a middle-aged erstwhile practitioner) than the details of their achievement.     

For example, what Steve Jobs did on returning to Apple, and re-invigorating it with the iPod, the iMac, and the iPhone are wonderful stories, and Walt Isaacson does a great job telling them (via Jobs' own recounting), but somehow the fact that it took Jobs seven years to get Apple back to sales and profitability as it was when he re-arrived is omitted from the story.  If he hadn't 'owned the Board' he'd have long since been evicted a second time.   WHY was he able to persevere in such straits?   Did he have personal doubts?  Was the company morale affected?  Leadership in those circumstances had to be dramatically important, in ways not even hinted at in the best-selling biography.

Stories about how the mostly unsung heroes who did the public domain human genome project both persevered and succeeded against the organized 'for profit' teams--the latter headed by 'the big names' that have been extolled--are mostly absent, but think where the world would be if that vital technology were 'controlled' for private gain.   How do we even find out such stories if we focus on WHAT and HOW the genome works, and fail to include the WHO and WHY of the 'unsung folk'.  

So our thinking is that a HALL of FAME should include 'the whole story' -- not just WHAT and HOW, but WHO and WHY.   And, not incidentally, this has to cover more, MUCH MORE, than the "big names" that make the journalism headlines.  So we propose to cover ALL of the honorees of ACM, which is about 1,500 Fellows and nearly 1,200 Awardees, selected by peer groups over 50+ years in 20 categories of computing,    Not just the 'big names' although of course some are here, such as Vint Cerf and Steve Wozniak.   And a lot of 'big names' for Wall Street are not here, including Steve Jobs.   In fact, CACM, ACM's premier magazine, bemoaned Jobs' negative computer science research impact   https://cacm.acm.org/news/136161-what-did-steve-jobs-do-for-computer-science/fulltext?mobile=false.  Some consider this chary; others are quick to note that ACM acknowledges technical success vs. business $$.  And certainly, Jobs has gotten considerable acknowledgement, but our point here is that there are LOTS of other key contributors in our field--computer science is both broad, and a team game.

Our proposal has many hurdles to surmount to make it a reality, but in the scheme of things, we remain confident that illuminating WHO and WHY for many of these innovators will be valuable for students, teachers, professionals, and yes, even historians who seek to understand even years hence how this discipline changed the world forever, and WHO and WHY they did it.  

Actually, think about it--the whole world needs to and may well want to know about this--lay people, citizens at large, homemakers, grandparents all may savor more stories to appreciate these incredible innovators and their creations.

Baseball History factoids

 This blog, while primarily dedicated to InnovaScapes Institute 'business data', is sometimes corrupted by my personal interests.  And those, as many of you know, include unusual historical serendipity.  And as I was composing the note about AstroVirtual in the previous post, I mentioined "Astro" and the Houston ball team, and I thought about baseball and Nolan Ryan.

So, dear reader, be patient with me, and hear me out on this (or skip ahead to more relevant stuff).

The movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, was a wonderful baseball fantasy, set in an Iowa cornfield, extolling the venerable game and its pull on the American psyche.   And it resonated in our family, a LOT actually.   It came out May 5, 1989.

My Iowa-born namesake paternal grandfather, Charles House, played Double-A ball in his youth; his younger brother Louie made it to Triple-A baseball.   My dad was the pitcher for his high school team when he met Mom.  And grandpa took my brother and me to all the Los Angeles Angels games for years circa 1950-1955, even introducing us to other ballplayers.  I got to know Warren Hacker, for example, the year that his knuckleball fooled enough batters that he vied for Most Valuable Player in the National League, with the best WHIP, and best Hits per game, and 3rd lowest ERA in the league.

When the Dodgers moved the Los Angeles, my dad took my brother and me to the 2nd World Series game ever played in the Los Angeles Coliseum.  The day my daughter Cynthia was born, I was at Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine its first year, with my grandfather, father, and brother.  The scoreboard announced that I was now a new father.  Cynthia has never let me forget that.   I didn't know yet that my wife's first cousin, Jim Didion (yes, brother to the famous Joan Didion). was the realtor for Chavez Ravine, and had a box behind home plate where he intro'd me to Tommy Lasorda Opening Day 1997.

And luck be with us, my grandfather was still alive, at 96, when Field of Dreams debuted.   And he loved it.   And he knew Bob Feller, the original strikeout king, born in rural Iowa a year after my dad was born a few miles away.   Feller still holds the most 1-hitters (12) in major league history (now tied with Ryan).   Feller did hold the most no-hitter record (3) until Sandy Koufax tied him in 1964 (and passed him in 1965, to end with 4).   Koufax only recorded 2 1-hitters though in his total career.

In 1989, my dad was a golfing partner with Koufax at their local Paso Robles CA club.  And daughter Cynthia, see above, was now a marketing associate for a little Texas company, Home Sports Entertainment, which launched on 1/4/1983, airing home games for the Houston Astros.   Their star pitcher was Nolan Ryan, who had just passed Koufax with his 5th no-hitter in 1981.  

Through HSE, Cynthia got to know Nolan Ryan, and then Prime Network bought HSE in March 1989, and Ryan moved to the Texas Rangers.  And then, Ryan got his 5,000th strikeout on August 26, 1989, like 3 weeks after my grandfather saw the Costner movie.  And Cynthia got Ryan to sign a baseball for him, and sent it to him.   Wow!   Cynthia's brother Warren owns that baseball today.

I arrived at my daughter Cynthia's home in Plano (next to Dallas, and near SMU where she graduated)  to find a life-size picture of Ryan on her bedroom door, signed "To Cynthia--Love, Nolan".  Puzzled, I asked "How did this happen?"   She smiled and said, "Dad, I threw the Prime Network party for Ryan."

So, today I went to Wikipedia, and found more info than I expected, that also resonated.   Ryan was born in rural Texas, 40 miles south of Victoria.   My maternal grandfather, Henry Coates (I am Charles Henry House, named for both grandfathers), was born 30 miles east of Victoria (La Ward, a town of 189 folk todayl).  Refugio (Ryan's home) is 2,730 folk today, MUCH larger.   La Ward kids went to school in Edna (pop. 5,940), and their league included Refugio High.  SMALL WORLD, huh?  Van Meter IA to Jewell IA for one; Refugio TX to Edna TX for another.    

But how about that.  We had personal connections to three of the greatest strikeout artists in baseball history.  Only one other pitcher in the past 140 years of the sport has matched Feller on no-hitters, that being Justin Verlander in 2019 for his third while with Houston.   And Ryan for total no-hitters and strikeouts, and Koufax for 2nd most no-hitters, to go along with Feller's 3rd most no-hitters (and he missed four peak seasons due to WWII) still stand among more recent sensations such as Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Randy Johnson, none of whom grew up near my grandparents.

Oh, yes, Cynthia, the girl for whom I missed the birth, took me to my 2nd World Series game, in San Francisco against the Texas Rangers, the 2nd game of the 2010 World Series.   Cynthia showed up, in a 95% Giant fans stadium, in Texas Ranger clothes--and I said, "Whoa."   And she replied, "Don't you realize that Nolan Ryan owns the Rangers now?"  Touché

Launching AstroVirtual Inc (AVI)

 My goodness, where did the time go?   My last post to this blog was in December, 2022.   Actually, there were five posts that month, the only ones for 2022.   And NONE for 2023.  Have you nothing to say?

Well, in truth, there is plenty to say, but seemingly 'no time to say it'.  Ever have that problem?   People in the middle of crisis don't generally take time out to describe it or write a book about it--they just ACT.  

Well, we've been acting.   My partner, Scott Futryk, and I formed a corporation last year, to little fanfare but with a lot of enthusiasm and hope for a couple of elder citizens.   Its name--AstroVirtual--says much.  It aspires to be "heavenly" or "star-struck" or whatever you'd imagine with an "ASTRO" prefix.  No, not the baseball team, although they've had some remarkable records over the past few years.   (Yes, Nolan did pitch for the Houston Astros, and serve them as an advisor years later).   More about Ryan and baseball in another post; this one is about our new company.

The posts of December 2022 describe our fledgling prototypes in modest detail.   Those have been updated, and some signal events have occurred along the way.  Here's a quick unverified chronology:

1. We filed a slew of patent claims early in 2023; these were 'fast-tracked' by the USPTO (US Patent and Tranemark Office), with the happy result last week that we've received advance notice of a major patent award for a sizable number of claims, along with encouragement to file additional materials (as funding permits, we'll certainly do this).    I don't know about you, but we've discovered that patent work is often a bit of an expensive hobby all by itself, and start-ups are usually lean mean machines (meaning cash starved--"oh, really?").

2. In July, Chuck was invited to SIGGRAPH '23, which was actually the 50th anniversary for SIGGRAPH.  He went as a "pioneer" thanks to his pioneering computer Display, the HP 1300A, from 1966, eight years before SIGGRAPH began.   It was heady, sitting alongside Don Greenberg, Andy van Dam, Jim Blinn, and Alvy Ray Smith in the "Memories" sessons.  And Don and I were invited to have the 'front row seats' for Nvidia's keynote by founder Jensen Huang, and then escorted by his aide to see him privately at the end.  WOW!!!

3. Huang's talk was amazing, and it is up on YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2VBKerS63A.  Because it is on YouTube, we have permission to 'play with it', and we took the opportunity to post it into our "Network Control Diorama environment".  Here's our AstroVirtual four minute extract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv--Why9LLo&t=244s  This extract essentially indexes multiple speaking points within his talk with separate video screens in the diorama--try that with your standard YouTube version!

4. We added two new environments to our "Standard" repertoire, raising the number of screens for an environment from 22 in the Standard Diorama model to 55 for an Exposition Center, and more than 100 in an EIS (Executive Information Center).    Every screen is dynamic, interactive, synchronous, with real-time pixel streaming.   The compute power to deliver this performance is stunning, but amazingly available at reasonable cost from compute streaming services (we're using a bank of top-end Nvidia servers to make all this run seamlessly).  

5. We unveiled the Exposition Center at the United Nations General Assembly in NYC on September 27.  This was an unexpected and terrific opportunity to showcase both the AstroVirtual environment and its visual power, with the three year COVID-19 Dashboard analytics that InnovaScapes Institute pioneered with the complex Dashboard designed earlier by Scott Futryk's "AnywhereAnytime" LLC.  The UN General Assembly, held twice a year with multiple focused workshops, has included a focus on Digital Health for the past three years.  For InnovaScapes to be invited to speak was a real privilege.  Here's the key talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63I88yOUIc

There were other highlights, but this list is adequate for now to give you a taste of our progress.  Thanks again for taking time to read and comment.  All the best for 2024

Chuck