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social, health, political imagery through the lens of G J Huba PhD © 2012-2021

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PART 1 discussed my view that a world wide memory is available to supplement an aging (and especially cognitively impaired) person’s biological personal memory (a.k.a. the brain).

Seems obvious, but is it?

I contend that even though Google and the huge information database contained on the Internet have been around for a while, it is only just now starting to be understood that this information can be “mined” and reorganized for individuals.

It’s not just about Facebook  either although Facebook is an important part of it. As are all of the other social networks, the stuff for sale on the Internet, the old stuff on your computer, and the old stuff on the computers of your extended family.

It’s all about visualization, visual information processing, and rearranging that visual information for the individual. Like your Uncle Fred who is “losing it” or your Mom who has lost it or yourself. Or leaving behind visualizations for your kids and grandkids or your spouse (who even after decades will not know how you view all of the things that shaped you and are important).

In the spirit of visualization, lets go to a mind map for explaining visual thinking.

Please click to expand.

CREATE THE PERSONAL INTERNET TO SUPPLEMENT YOUR MEMORY

Or same map, slightly different format …

2CREATE THE PERSONAL INTERNET TO SUPPLEMENT YOUR MEMORY

I’m getting old. Show me some pictures of Yankee Stadium two blocks from where I lived as an infant in 1951. Or remind me about those kids I knew in High School. Whatever ever happened to my office mate from grad school? Where could I get a copy of my college yearbook? The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were great (I went everyday for two weeks), how about some pictures? What does the home I grew up in look like now (apparently almost exactly like it did after my parents’ deaths, although the guy who bought it from us obviously does not know how to take care of shrub beds). Neighborhood looks almost identical, just the trees are bigger.

Don’t have photos or descriptions of some place or event you went to. The Internet does. Want to make sure the tales you have told for 30 years about freezing your ass off in Minnesota in ’76-77 were grounded in reality. Yup, the stat charts clearly indicate that was the case.

Look up something you seem to have forgotten. Browse information about events and places and you may find that you (with or without the help of the hyperlinks in Wikipedia) can remember even more things.

Are you a caregiver or healthcare provider for an individual with cognitive decline? It’s pretty easy to use the Internet as a big box of memories and pictures and even context to help the patient retrieve memories or relive parts of the past.

Given how I typically feel about the billionaire Darth Vader Juniors over at Google who trample individual privacy in the unending search for more liquid currencies, it’s going to be tough to say, but …

Just Google it.

Find out about your life or your parents’ or retrieve memories or recreate associations.

[Just remember that the world’s memory will also record what you just asked about so as to try to sell you yearbooks, genealogy services, or New York Yankee collectibles.]

Having a fairly accurate, very comprehensive collective world memory will potentially help many who are losing their own biological cognitive functions. It could very well help in caregiving and helping patients maintain or even increase their quality of life. Darth Vader Junior might even make it back from the Dark Side by providing funds and other resources to use the accumulated information of the Internet to help those with aging memory banks and CPUs.

Click on the image to expand it and see how these ideas go together. Form some new associations. The mind map in which the information is presented will help you do that.

Click here for Part 2 of this discussion.

Replace your aging memory with the world's knowledge

This afternoon I went to the local Panera and paid by credit card. My bank declined my charge of $4.82. I figured it was the magnetic strip on the card which had failed or that the new trainee using the cash register may have made a mistake. She ran the card three more times and it was rejected. Then I got four text messages from the bank saying that they are rejected my charges. To text me, they used my phone number.

I called. They had put a hold on my card because they had some questions about my charges from the prior few days. The red flag event was that I had made an earlier charge of $9.65 at Panera about eight hours before. Their computer program was not smart enough to figure out that it was not unreasonable for someone to have breakfast at 6:30am at a Panera in Durham and then walk into a Panera in Chapel Hill later in the day with 30 minutes to kill and had a coffee (and a Danish I probably should not have had) while I played with my iPad on their free wireless connection. The computer also questioned the $1 charge at a gas station this afternoon (which the human representative immediately recognized as the established practice of gas stations opening charge lines with their automated payment systems of $1 when you swipe your card and then next day putting a $92 charge on the card for filling the tank). I was also asked if the payment made on the account was one I had made (I asked the customer service rep if she thought that if someone had paid a bill for me that I would tell her it was an erroneous transaction and she laughed for a long time) as well as a $71 charge to a software company outside the US.

They had freaked out because they could not reach me by phone at three numbers that were old ones not active (I know they have my current number because they sent me texts at it and same bank sometimes calls about my other accounts at the cell phone I never turn off and which has a voice mailbox). Of course, if they did not have a no reply text address, I could have responded to the four texts they sent.

Predictive models have been around for a decade or more in banks as they attempt to identify fraud and protect themselves. The episodes I have with my bank about every 2-3 months illustrate what happens when somebody blindly runs predictive analytic programs through big datasets without using some commonsense to guide the modeling process. Just because anyone can buy a $100,000 program from IBM or others for developing predictive analytics does not mean that the model that comes out of the Big Data and expensive program makes any sense at all.

Or that the NSA or FBI or CIA or Google or Amazon models make much sense as they probe your private information.

If a computer predictive system is going to think that somebody is committing credit card fraud because they purchase two cups of coffee at the same national restaurant chain in a day, we are in big trouble.

The bottom line is that Big Data models are going to have to be regulated before some idiot accidentally turns on Sky Net.

Or maybe the problem is that the NSA or FBI or CIA or Google has done it already.

 

This analysis, that analysis, yesterday’s analysis, tomorrow’s analysis, Uncle Izzy’s analysis … is there anything that is a not a form of analysis? Create your own bullshit anagram and bullshit detector. And then see how well it applies various politicians, political claims, the cable news stations, and others. You’re on your way to become a walking, human bullshit analyzer.

So without much further ado, a new form of analysis. And a make your own anagram template.

bullshit analysis

We have sequestration and a US Congress that refuses to develop a realistic compromise US federal budget and long-term economic plan. Never one at loss for ideas, I propose that the US Congress initiate the following silent auction. As absurd as my proposal is, it seems no more absurd than the ideas expressed on cable news each night by our “striking” employees (the US Congress). Before starting this auction, I prefer that the Members of Congress and POTUS sit down once and for all and do their jobs in managing the economic future of the USA. Otherwise, they are going to have to conduct something like this auction (currently going on in a limited and inefficient manner through lobbyists and Cabinet Level administrators).

Click image to expand.

USA Auction

Here is a little experiment.

iMindMap of newly minted pseudo-words I have never used online before.

torken

Wordle of newly minted pseudo-words I have never used online before.

hypotheticalwordle

I will update this blog post with comments as the experiment continues. My bet is that the engines will find the content very rapidly.

June 4 2013. Thus far, the only word google has found is torken. I am assuming that is because the font and tilt are like normal test.

Thus far, the moral of the story seems to be that if you want google to not find a word in your mind map, use organic mind mapping. Conversely …

Since humans can readily see the words in both the mind map and the woordle, this does illustrate (that at least in this case) google is not working like the human brain. I will check Bing later and update this post.

More to come. I also want to see what happens with the output of other mapping and graphics programs. I would argue that if google cannot detect nonsense words that humans can see in an organic mind map but can see those that appear in a non-organic, flat mind map (such as those from Mindjet and Mindnode, and XMind), then that would tend to argue that organic mind mapping is more like human thinking.

I invite everyone who mind maps to run simple experiments like this. These are very easy to do.

The Research by Google Era (rivaling such earlier eras as the Babylonian Empire, the Empire of Alexander, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages Papacy, the Incan Era, the British Commonwealth,  the American Experiment in Democracy, and the forthcoming Intergalactic Federation) is here.

I think the Research by Google Era is the most “important” one yet.

Go ahead, Google it. How many minorities voted for Obama in 2008? How many times was Bill Clinton sued for “inappropriate” behavior toward female subordinates? How much money did Ghaddafi and family steal from the people of Libya? How many books are contained in the New York Public Library? What is the net worth of Bill and Melinda Gates? Their Foundation? What do they pay the Executive Director of their Foundation? Who should be credited for the “discovery” of the structure of DNA (this one is very complicated; not the DNA model but the politics about who would be credited)? How much did Mitt Romney pay in taxes? Has Mitt ever been audited by the IRS?

Think you know how many Christians, Muslims, and others are in the population of the world? Google it. Now compare the ESTIMATES from the top sources that come out of the search engine. Hhmmm. Kind of hard to tell what percentage of the world’s population is Christian, Muslim, or some other religion isn’t? [I do not hold anyone accountable for knowing the “correct” number of Jews in the world as Jews, to this very minute, are still trying to figure out who is a Jew and who gets a free pass to Israeli citizenship. Nobody has any idea how to count Russians forced to abandon Judaism during the era of the Soviet Union or Jewish dads who married a woman who is not Jewish. It goes on and on. Somehow, I suspect that if I knew as much about Islam and “Chinese traditional religion” (under the Chinese communists) as I do about Judaism and its politics, I’d be just as sure there is little consensus on basic number counts.]

Think counting religions is hard? Try getting data on the prevalence and incidence of health issues-problems.

It makes my head spin every night when I see 99% of the  TV reporters struggling to explain the error of a survey. (They use several different erroneous explanations and once in a while somebody gets it correct.) What if we were to also hold them accountable for knowing whether the information they cite is valid, reliable, biased, consistent. Wow. And I haven’t started to spout equations yet. I watch them Google for data while they are on TV and the results are often so ludicrous that they should cut power at the broadcasting tower. Wait until the lawyers figure out that they can sue for incorrect data as the result of a search and win large judgments. Maybe they will even stop suing medical doctors.

Recently a college student was in the news because he plagiarized a post on a blog and copy and pasted it onto his class-assignment blog. Along the way he changed a numbered list to a text list (presumably by pushing one key in Microsoft Word or Pages). Did he plagiarize from a world expert, someone famous, his professor? Nope. He plagiarized from an 11-year-old boy. Presumably Google helped him identify the 11-year-old as the source of the definitive information on poultry farming.

OK boys and girls. Google does not tell you a number or a conclusion or an interpretation or whether a calculation is correct or incorrect. All it tells you is that the publisher of the information on the Internet knows how to get the search engine(s) to go to that site for information on various topics. If all you do is take the data from Google and cut and paste and reformat it the term “research” does not fit. Google itself states that as their lawyers have instructed them to tell you not to trust the data uncovered by Google.

These days, if I were to believe the bio statements in Twitter and Facebook and Linked profiles, I think that it is reasonable to conclude that there are now more people working to trick Google into citing them and their advertising-laden web sites (these are the practitioners of search engine optimization, an arcane field that seems to involve a boiling pot, wand, broom, and common spices available at Walmart) as a definitive source of information than there are people working on creating valid, reliable, and original information and other data.

The Google Era for research. Don’t get too used to it. The empire will soon fall down.

And yes, apparently an 11-year-old can trick Google (and a college student) into thinking he is more of an authority on poultry farming than the US Department of Agriculture or any university agricultural professor or any science writer at a major newspaper. And yes, both the sixth-grader and the college student failed to mention anything about inhumane poultry production practices, genetically engineered turkeys and chickens, and the use of antibiotics in over crowded production areas. Guess Google did not tell them to write that. Or think that such problems are ones worth thinking about. That’s OK if you are in sixth grade, although it is kind of sloppy. College? Lucky for him that pro football does not care about chickens.

iMindMap is in the very highest tier of the mind map programs. There are no mind map programs that surpass it; some argue that a couple of others are in the same tier. Of the high tier programs this is my favorite and the one that best matches the mind maps I like to use for writing, expressing ideas, brainstorming, and now for making presentations.

iMindMap version 6.1 was released as a free upgrade from v6.0 on November 1, 2012. The update is great and any iMindMap user should be installing it now. Everything works a little better and a little faster and the user experience is improved as it always is with one of their upgrades. I like the fact that the developer of this program (ThinkBuzan) keeps releasing free updates every few months between the major versions (4.0, 5.0, 6.0, etc.).. I have found that each of the upgrades over the past two years has been one which introduces new features.

The “killer” feature in v6.1 is the fact that the iMindMap program now makes incredible presentations that can be prepared in the usual two dimensions or three dimensions just by clicking a button. It’s that easy. It works. Presentations look super-duper and the 3-D graphics can be very easily navigated through an on-screen “joy stick” mechanism. But wait, there’s more. The program now permits you to prepare self running kiosk presentations (video files) or to prepare and upload YouTube videos. The kiosk files can also be uploaded to your own web site although it should be noted that the files, even for small maps at lower resolutions, tend to be in excess of one gigabyte. Because of their size, in many cases it will be necessary to store the presentations on YouTube (as private or public files).

iMindMap v6.1 is a giant step forward. Here is one of my maps as a presentation from v6.1. The map is also a statement of how I think this technique needs to be used: content is the Queen.

I think the 3-D options in the new iMindMap are super-duper, although I do recommend you play with the program for an hour because there are little tricks you can find to make the 3-D mind maps (and their presentations) more artistic and more easily understood. The 3-D maps do benefit from a slightly different approach to map design than one would take for a 2-D map. Here are just a few 3-D pictures of the same mind map (with various branches condensed.

Ok, why not 4-D maps incorporating the passage of time?. Of course you can do this although it is not mentioned in the iMindMap materials. The fourth dimension can be added by using the 3-D or kiosk presentation modes AND adding color coding to show how branches get added, deleted, or re-organized over time. It does require the presentation mode to represent time.  I leave it to someone more gifted in geometry than I to figure out the 5-D mind map.

You heard it here first (just kidding): PowerPoint is dead. The linear structure of PowerPoint neither approximates reality very well nor keeps the audience awake. iMindMap presentations better represent the nonlinear structure of most things, events, and people, and can keep the audience on the edge of their seats by having them guess what is coming next. The addition of 4-D in this program is natural and fairly easy.

PowerPoint is dead. There IS a just god. Abe Lincoln was a great orator (see below).

To receive ongoing information about iMindMap, on Twitter follow @GriffithsThinks for theoretical and design issues and @iMindMap for practical issues and retweets of other mind mapping information.

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In case you think I was a little late in proclaiming PowerPoint’s demise, you are correct. Abe Lincoln (with a little help from the acclaimed computer scientist Peter Norvig) said it (apologies to Honest Abe).

START HERE ==>> The Gettysburg PowerPoint (Abe Lincoln with Peter Norvig]