Managing Knowledge: Realtime Inventory Management in Digital Data Demand Chains

This paper addresses inventory control questions related to producing and disseminating knowledge, including artistic and other intellectual property in digital format ~ collectively referred to as digital data.¹ Certain characteristics of digital data present special challenges for originators, distributors, integrators, and users. Some of the issues are unlike those encountered in supply chains of packaged goods, serialized products, or fungible goods. A new data format such as Universal Digital Data Standard (UDDS) is needed to help tackle the challenges. The new format must have more than robust mechanical handling and control features: attributes for supporting emergent digital languages and their metalanguages will be needed.

Content

♦ What is digital data

♦ Whence digital data

♦ Crossroads

♦ Epistemological implications

♦ Pressing needs

♦ Why UDDS

♦ Achieving potential in a real world

...in supermarkets

...in hospitals

...UDDS implementation

...beyond more and faster

♦ Notes

Digital data is typically thought of as coming in four basic flavors or forms: video, audio, graphic and textual.

Videos, big screen movies, iTunes, ring tones, family photos, email, and proposals are examples. Traditional distinctions are merging. Today’s digital data is multi-form. Data is data. Digital data includes any digital information. It’s ubiquitous: woven through our lives in ways often taken for granted.

Consider how cell phones integrate digital data. They communicate voice, graphics, interactive maps, videos, and text. They “snap” digital pictures and process data. Many are internet connected. Some scan bar codes.

Information processing, as practiced today, retains remnants from numerous frozen accidents inherent in any complex system. In its beginning, data processing meant processing numbers with, perhaps, a few alphabetic characters thrown in as an afterthought. The full text capability taken for granted today emerged only after decades of effort and false starts. Traces of the 1950’s 80 column punch cards still found at the core of some communication protocols squander bandwidth and introduce error. Traces of early data encoding schemes that accommodated only 256 characters needlessly complicate today’s requirement for more complex data.

Typesetting was for many years considered a separate discipline immune from interference by data processors. More recently, additional types of data (voice, images, video) were converted from analog to digital and converted then again from specialized digital processors to general purpose computers. Even today, the various forms of data are often considered “different,” each requiring unique encoding schemes and management tools.

Within each type of data certain subdisciplines evolved. Quark and Pagemaker, are used to construct special layouts such as advertisements while Word has replaced the need for Venture’s “automatic page make-up” capability. When audiences first heard Al Jolson in the 1927 Jazz Singer, no one anticipated Warner Bros. would someday wish to distribute films via the internet with watermarks to foil counterfeiters in China. Between then and now a plethora of special terminology, practices, encoding schemes, and tools have evolved which are specific to certain types of big screen video ~ low level lighting, confetti, special effects.

The list of special purpose encoding schemes and tools is lengthy. The list of difficulties caused by an overabundance of options is also lengthy. Most casual users of PC’s have experienced at least some superficial difficulties. Converting from Word’s encoding scheme to WordPerfect and back often introduces error. (For that matter, so does converting from one version of Word to another.) At another level, obtaining the “cooperation” of text, sound, images, and video on a wide variety of PC’s, operating systems, and browsers can be a challenge. At still another level, the motion picture industry invested millions creating a video with example clips selected to acid test potential solutions.

A chronic, unsolved need for improved information management capacity and practices has plagued such industries and applications as motion picture production, satellite and medical imaging, realtime command & control, and home video distribution for several decades.

Meanwhile, the broader market’s information processing needs were addressed with certain incremental improvements and “workarounds” – including higher capacity disk storage, faster processors, special purpose compression methods (e.g., JPEG and MP3), and fiber networks. While reasonably satisfactory for the broader market, such workarounds were inadequate for intensive medical imaging and motion picture applications.

Justified true belief is the Platonic definition of knowledge. Broadly defined rationalist and relativist camps debate the definition’s meaning and whether knowledge is possible. Many in both camps would agree, however, that truth and knowledge – to the extent they exist – have implications.

Knowledge (or at least information) was passed between individuals and generations in verbal form when language first evolved. A new form supplanted verbal when written languages arose. Today, the written form is being supplanted by something more profound than the mere replacement of one form by another. Today’s new “multi-form” is the result of merging two old forms and integrating them with two new forms – images and video.

New tools and practices were needed for writing to become ubiquitous. Printing presses are often mentioned – but punctuation, spaces between words, fonts, storage methods (books and scrolls), intellectual property rights, and conventions such as left to right were important.² Deep regularities within letters and other visual signs³ were arguably the single most profound innovation. Similar, though more complex, issues pertain to the new multi-form.

Each new form changes human cognition at a fundamental level – facilitating thought and conception in some ways, perhaps thwarting them in other ways. Literacy, for example, profoundly affects brain anatomy.⁴ Reading improves speech, verbal memory, and language processing:⁵ what abilities are diminished remains speculative. Postman cites anecdotal evidence that TV (a crude precursor of digital language) impairs certain cognitive abilities.⁶

Information and meaning often encounter natural roadblocks on their way from mind to mind – whether expressed digitally, verbally, or in writing.⁷ Each new form of communicating meaning has its peculiar roadblocks. Much of the classical analysis of discourse and meaning, for example, focuses on statements: descriptions or propositions which are either true or false. In doing so, Kant and others explain some utterances that look-like statements are, in fact, pseudo-statements or nonsense. In How To Do Things With Words, Austin examines "infelicities" that pertain to a separate class of utterances, performatives, that often masquerade as statements.⁸ Wittgenstein broadly tackles language’s inherent ambiguities, pointing out “things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.”⁹

Such roadblocks can be formidable when participants operate in good faith: and, often insurmountable when there is intention to deceive. St. Augustine defines eight types of lies.¹⁰ Lies, infelicities, bull, forgery, tampering, fabrication, and theft assume new dimensions with digital data. Cyberspace conflicts and malware such as Conficker dramatically raise the stakes.¹¹ So many new viruses were unleashed in 2009 that Symantec and McAfee needed to create a new signature every 8 seconds: up from one every 20 seconds in 2008.¹²

Additional epistemological issues are also raised. To what extent, for example, can knowledge be commoditized and what are the consequences of its commoditization?

Disney wants to preserve its equity in Bambi. We may care whether a budding Wilfred Owen survives financially to write another day. And, society has an interest in justifiably believing its data is “true” – in the sense that data "is" its author’s unadulterated work. If a Steven Hawking article states, “there are no quarks,” we want to be justified in believing Steven Hawking did indeed state “there are no quarks” and the article was not manipulated by an anti-quark fanatic. Otherwise, meat-eating relativism and social constructivism will prevail by default.

Many, if not most, of the great transformative events in human history were transformative because of certain cognitive implications. The emergence of human speech, written language, printing press, telephony, aircraft, television, and internet changed perceptions of time and space. They also moved humanity along a path toward realtime collective intelligence. The linking of individual intelligences to create a Gaia-like community intelligence – analogous to how human synapses link to create individual intelligence – remains the stuff of science fiction. The internet and Wikipedia, however, proffer tantalizing glimpses of what such fiction may one day look like.

Objects tend to be discussed at the level at which they are perceived. It is, for example, possible – even usual – to bypass statistical mechanics by conversing on the level of thermodynamics. A billion internal combustion engines have been manufactured and used with little thought given to atomic forces within the individual gas molecules that push pistons and turbine blades. For building cars, such consideration is irrelevant.

From early childhood humans perceive and discuss cars, flies, and dogs. We tend not to think in terms of atoms that make-up a fly – or the filaments on its antenna, or the rods that comprise its compound eye. We are programmed to discard data in order to simplify. It is not in our nature to operate at a level that does not lose data.

But now we must. The gap between the sensory and physical worlds is widening:¹³ touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight explain little about quantum probability clouds. And unlike gasoline engines, the making of satellites, cell phones, and computers increasingly requires an understanding of particle physics and quantum mechanics. New conceptual and visualization tools may help bridge the gap.

Consider Abbott’s 3rd dimension alien, Sphere, performing a Flatland miracle by non-invasively excising a 2-dimension cancer from a Flatlander.¹⁴ Extend the concept to a 4th (spatial) dimension surgeon similarly excising a 3-dimension cancer from a human – a miracle by today's standards. A 320 slice CT scanner gets us halfway there. It confers the power to "see" a malfunctioning heart valve with the clarity of a 4th dimension alien; but, not the power to non-invasively patch it.

Demand for high definition images and the growing ubiquity of video threatens to swamp the world’s basic information processing and communications infrastructure. The problem is more than mere lack of capacity or speed which can be solved by piling on more computing and transmission resources. Google’s electric bill, our difficulty in visualizing quarks, and YouTube’s video of Dick Cheney shooting a White House Easter bunny suggest the problem is more fundamental.

For some years the need for a more efficient information encoding scheme that accommodated text, audio, images, and video has been recognized: we do not need both scrolls and books. What was more difficult to define, however, was what management information should the encoding scheme support ~ watermarks, audit trail, billing support, privilege control and security.

Higher resolutions and rapid expansion of video usage gave new urgency to finding a solution. Higher resolution increased image and video file sizes exponentially. One frame of legacy TV fare is 0.5 megabytes (“MB”) in size. Typical HD images are 1.4 MB per frame. The new 2K and 4K digital cinema standards range from 10.0 MB to 53.1 MB per frame. At the highest resolution, this means that a movie running at 24 frames per second consumes 1.3 gigabytes of information every second ~ roughly 9.5 trillion bytes for a full feature film. In 2007, theaters were using only 5,000 digital projectors. The number is expected to increase to 30,000 by 2015. Theater chains and producers will wish to distribute via LambdaRail or a private party “internet.”

Phillips and Toshiba 256-slice and 320-slice CT scanners create 10 gigabytes per scan. Discrete images are processed into 4D (volumetric data plus time) clips to view blood flow and organ movement. Although fewer than 20 USA installations existed at the end of 2009, providers are expected to install thousands over the coming decade. Providers, physicans, and patients can be expected to demand rigorous management controls and access to high bandwidth distribution.

Approximately 100 million scans were performed in the USA during 2009 – most on older, lower resolution scanners which generate smaller data files. Had 10% of the 100 million scans been performed on 320-slice scanners, the resulting data would be approximately 100,000 trillion bytes – roughly equivalent to 10,000 4K movies

Advances in brute force solutions (e.g., cable, DSL, fiber, storage capacity, faster processors, multiplexing) were made during the past ten years. However, relatively little progress was made with how data itself is organized and stored prior to the advent of UDDS (Universal Digital Data Standard) ~ an emerging “gold standard” which integrates most current special purpose formats such as MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, JPEG, and PDF.

Maintaining control of work-in-process was difficult in the days of film. With digital, complexity is compounded. Thousands of video segments, some as short as a second, may be produced by disparate specialists using numerous technologies and techniques. Specific “pieces” may require intense collaborative, interactive effort by personalities ranging from artists to computer engineers.

Hundreds of individuals have access to work-in-process. A thousand hours of raw material may be massaged, edited, and manhandled into a two hour release. Numerous products are packaged – general release, foreign language, culture specific, director’s cut, trailers, and more. Missing and mislabeled inventory inevitably happens – so do questions such as, “who added a mole on Gollum’s cheek in segment DD2-675 – and when did he do it?”

When the first bootleg version shows-up, immediate questions are, “what version was stolen, did it come from our labs, and if so, who had access to the video? If it was pilfered in distribution, from what location was it pilfered – while enroute to a theater – or after it had been shown in theater – if so, from which theater, on which projectors in the theater had it been shown, and when was it pilfered?“

Similar issues pertain to novels, MRI scans, courseware, contracts, music, financial records, email, satellite images, medical records, and command & control data for Predator drones.

Market adoption of the UDDS multi-form information standard has been driven by features which address data management, transmission time, energy consumption, privacy, and piracy. In comparison to other data formats, UDDS offers five primary technical advantages:

1) Integrity – UDDS preserves all information contained in digital data’s native, RAW form.¹⁶ RAW data that is converted into the more efficient UDDS format – and subsequently tagged, stored, processed, and distributed may be converted back into the original RAW format without losing or modifying a single pixel.

UDDS data integrity contrasts sharply with commonly used special purpose formats. Significant amounts of information are lost when RAW data is converted into most of today’s standard formats such as JPEG. The losses do more than make it impossible to reconvert data to its original form: further editing is rendered impractical.

Losses are often severe enough to be unacceptable to viewers in “low expectation” mediums such as YouTube; almost always severe enough to be generally unacceptable to “big screen” audiences; and, always too severe to be acceptable for many applications in law and medicine. Such formats – formats which “lose” information – are referred to as lossy.

2) File Size – UDDS file sizes approach the mathematically theoretical minimum that is possible without losing data. UDDS file sizes are as much as 98% smaller than data in its native RAW form: as much as 80% smaller than data stored in compressed, lossy formats such as JPEG.

3) Control – UDDS supports a level of control originally pioneered for mission critical applications such as nuclear submarines and commercial aviation. Fingerprints and tags may be embedded in UDDS formatted data. Taken to extreme, a forensic “chain of evidence” may be embedded to permanently record who “touched” the data, what data they touched, and what they did to the data they touched. The controls also support the “next generation” of information user privileges and fee structures. Think of it as a vehicle for maintaining a total transaction audit trail comparable to well designed accounting systems.

4) Security – UDDS supports multi-level internal encryption as well as external encryption envelopes.

“Tunable” distribution is another UDDS security feature. Resolution, pixel depth, and other factors may be adjusted to coordinate visual quality for specific viewers. Files may be tuned, for example, to exploit all that an iPhone has to offer – but to appear pixilated on a PC. To the extent lossy tuning is elected to increase security, distribution file sizes are further reduced.

5) Ubiquity – Approximately 85% of the world’s PC’s can view UDDS files without downloading new browsers or readers because UDDS supports embedded decoders for commonly used viewers and “readers” such as Windows Media Player, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and iTunes. Rather than supporting only one or two “types” of digital data (e.g., audio or graphic), UDDS supports them all.

All linguistic (broadly defined) and knowledge devices experience dynamic tension between "correct" and actual useage. Language evolves. Standards lose rigor under everyday workaround pressures. Dramatic change fosters controversy. Attempts to Romanize Chinese characters have, for example, been described as "an early sign of senility in Sinologists."¹⁷ On the other hand, proponents of simplified Chinese characters have described traditional script as "writings of ox-demons and snake-gods."

UDDS is no different. Although, it’s merely a format with potential to resolve certain digital data issues, its widespread use will be disruptive. And, if its potential is to be fully realized, practice changes – some painful – will be required. New tools – some not yet developed – will be required. There will be backsliding.¹⁸

Information control challanges – in industries as disparate as publishing and financial services – can be exacerbated by failure to fully consider the demand (or supply) chain. To the extent this is true, and as distasteful as it may be to some, lessons can be learned from companies such as Wal*Mart and the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.

A chain's extent – or even whether it is primarily a demand or supply chain – is not always obvious. A Wheaties demand chain may begin with a growl in a consumer's stomach – and stretch to fertilizer manufacturers and growers of wheat seed stock. A movie supply chain may begin with an idea for a film script – and end in the minds of viewers, in all their many forms.

Visualization Facilitation Example

~ how mugs = donuts ~

dynamic graphic helps visualize why, topologically, coffee mugs are the same as donuts

Film industry production metadata standards are another example. Standardization, analogous to that collaboratively undertaken by GMA and FMI members, is a critical issue in transitioning to full digital integration. Reaching consensus on standards is sometimes more difficult than overcoming technology challenges. A single item, something as deceptively simple as subtitles, can take years to resolve.

Three attributes particularly distinguish digital data from physical data: replication; mobility; and, mind-to-mind. A $100 memory stick, the size of a chewing gum pack, can suck-up 64 gigabytes of data (millions of social security numbers) – which can then be duplicated at will and sent anywhere in the world over the internet. Billions are spent annually combating financial data losses due to this ease of replication and mobility. The mind-to-mind attribute receives somewhat less attention.

Data, information, knowledge – by whatever definition – has inherent value, including the ability to trigger "ah-ha" buzzes. According to Biederman, “The infovore system is designed to maximize the rate at which people acquire knowledge under conditions where there may be no immediate need for the information.”¹⁹ Without enabling tools, however, much of the value remains unrealized: an issue faced by any storage tool such as UDDS. Data’s impact begins only when put to work in human minds or, in a fairly recent development, indirectly in artificial processors.

Medieval storage tools, manuscripts, are an extreme example. Access was so limited that data’s value was essentially restricted to future generations. When printing presses opened manuscript databases, they triggered a slow-motion Metcalfe network effect that dramatically increased data value. Tools such as dictionaries, indexes, and attribution mechanisms also added value.

Today, much of the iPad and Kindle appeal stems from value added to the basic data by electronic tools. Examples include:

♦ Navigation links – contents, index, bibliography, footnotes, bookmarks

♦ Reference links – dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, translator, internet search

♦ Acquisition – transaction cost, speed, process, and selection improvements²⁰

Tools also benefit authors. In a PBS interview, Pat Buchanan described his quality control process for quotations and references in the books he authors. He maintains a library of the publications he cites. Slips of paper, indexed to manuscripts in progress, are inserted at each citation's location. Before going to press, the entire package is turned over to a researcher for vetting. More extensive databases and forthcoming tools promise to largely eliminate the drudgery.

Other tools will potentially improve database integrity and reduce misconduct such as plagiarism. Roots-like missteps are less likely to slip through the cracks when whole manuscripts can be automatically bounced-off most of the world's written record to detect duplicate phrases and ideas.

Consider an example familiar to most supermarket shoppers. When a barcode is scanned at checkout, the register “knows” the item is 28oz Heinz ketchup and rings-up $3.49 less a $1.00 frequent shopper discount. How this happens changed during the past 30 years.²¹

When register scanners first appeared, supermarkets built databases that contained little more than each item’s barcode, description, and price. Data formats were neither mind nor machine friendly. Processes for keeping lists up-to-date could be Kafkaesque. It was not uncommon to see thick 400 page computer printouts that listed 30,000 items or more.

Data application tools, such as CRISP,²² were gradually developed that focused on how data could be more easily used by minds and computers to facilitate doing a supermarket’s job. Computers, for example, can readily look-up an item in a 30,000 list: humans can’t.

It’s difficult for a human to figure out what to order by lugging a 30,000 item inventory list up and down grocery aisles. So, CRISP keeps inventory records current by tracking sales and deliveries – and places orders automatically when inventory dips below preset levels.

Keeping track of hundreds of price changes each week is also difficult for humans. So, CRISP provides visualization tools which help managers work with vendors to plan specials months into the future. Prices are automatically changed and shelf labels printed as scheduled events occur.

Humans also need to organize data into categories. It makes no sense to carry 800 different condiment items and only 10 of bread. CRISP enables managers to organize items into hundreds of categories and subcategories. One popular categorization scheme, USCR,²³ has more than 850 discrete classifications.

Providing each employee with precisely the data needed to make decisions and removing the burden of mindless number crunching, does more than empower employees and help them be more efficient. It makes the database more secure. The raw CRISP file (think of it as a special, grocery-specific UDDS file) is maintained in a secure encrypted form. Fewer individuals have access to all the data and an audit trail of every access to each snippet of information is preserved.

A Citibank Chairman, Walter Wriston, once said “Information about money is almost as important as money.” In that spirit, CRISP maintains inventory control of its "data products" – i.e. information about grocery transactions and activities – with the same rigor given to tracking physical products.

Hospital patients span a continuum of age, race, nationality, culture, language, and physical and cognitive capacity. Many find hospitals disorienting or threatening. Some have been admitted for routine procedures. Others have been newly diagnosed with serious or chronic conditions. Their communication and information needs often exceed traditional means of delivering spoken and written language. More than legacy TV and phone is needed.

Valenz’s eCAS general purpose data management system uses UDDS as its internal “native” format and is certified to create and process all UDDS features. Most commonly used data formats and operating systems are supported. Multiprocessor versions (up to 256 parallel processors) are available for Mac, PC, and SGI platforms.

The core technology is a proprietary set of advanced mathematical algorithms. Algorithms offer several advantages. They are more general purpose; more readily adaptable to future technology advances (such as massively parallel computing); and, more difficult to circumvent than “software-only” or “hardware-only” technology. They can also be inserted in video capture devices (such as the iPhone) and playback equipment (such as “big screen” video projectors).

As of early 2010, the patented eCAS algorithms were the only methodology available for realtime UDDS processing needed to support certain high performance applications in such areas as: network broadcasting; massive-multiplayer internet games; medical; homeland security; and, military command & control.

The algorithms are available in a software-only implementation called DONAR. Speeds on mid-to-high speed consumer-grade PC’s are adequate for commonly encountered applications. For example, sustained transmission of 60 fps for 4K HD movies (including ASC/DCI StEM material)²⁴ is supported on LambdaRail.

More intense applications such as RED ONE’s 28K/30fps-2K/250fps EPIC digital camera,²⁵ Hollywood’s sixty year film backlog, historical seismic and weather databanks, and NSA’s decades of satellite reconnaissance will require the additional “horsepower” of Valenz’s THOR. THOR, a software/hardware implementation of eCAS, includes proprietary hardware accelerators and support for massively parallel computing.

Digital data management appears adequately addressed by UDDS. Anticipating future needs, and assessing whether UDDS has the right stuff, is another matter. Digital language emergence and evolution may pose more complex challenges, such as structure and metalanguage relationships, than today’s relatively straightforward mechanical issues. CDXIV/XLVI, for example, requires more metalanguage than 414/46: spoken and written languages took centuries to get it right.

Digital is, potentially, language. As written English and Mandarin are different languages than their spoken counterparts, so too are digital English and Mandarin: only, more so. Digital would be language if it only integrated speech and writing: even if it did not also integrate images and video. The journey from tally marks to tokens to robust languages, however, will not happen overnight. Insight about the journey may be gained by looking to reading and writing.

Changizi’s research shows that the world’s writing systems, and most visual signs in general, share basic similarities despite superficial differences.²⁶ Regardless of culture or type of language: a small set of shapes, “visual phonemes,” are used; the shapes are topological rather than geometric and are distinguished by how they intersect; and, the frequency of each shape’s relative usage approximates its relative occurrence in nature.

Specific sections in the brain are sensitive to these basic shapes and to certain other shape primitives with non-accidental properties (“geons”) that are used to parse and identify visual images, including letters and characters. Research by Johansson, Blakemore, and others suggests these “shape primitives” may have “movement primitive” analogs which stimulate other brain locations.²⁸ Frame-to-frame changes within images also appear to have unique brain processing regions. Such neuronal resources are potentially more exploitable by digital than by written languages.

Separate pathways³⁰ and centers in the human brain cooperatively contribute to unraveling meaning encoded in speech and writing. In expert readers, these neuronal resources cooperate using strategies that vary according to the type of words and sentences encountered.

Misspelled words, for example, first activate centers associated with speech sounds and then centers associated with meaning. The opposite is true of frequently occurring words such “have” and “eye” whose pronunciations are irregular. They first fire-up meaning centers, and then speech centers.

Dehaenes’ Reading in the Brain traces how science – from Dejerine’s early dissection of brain lesions to ingenious experiments with today’s best brain imaging technology – has tackled a mysterious puzzle.³²

“How has our brain come to possess cerebral circuits specialized for reading? Why does visual word recognition always engage the same region of the brain in all readers [regardless of language or culture], at positions that are always within a few millimeters of each other? By what impossible coincidence is this region equipped with all the features needed for efficient reading, including capacity for spatial invariance, an ability to learn the abstract shapes of letters, and adequate connections to other language areas? ...The invention of reading is far too recent for our genome to have adapted to it.”

Reading is only possible because certain human physical, including neural, machinery evolved for reasons unrelated to reading that could nevertheless be used for reading. The story of writing is one of humans inventing and shaping a convention to exploit preexisting human attributes. Dehaene calls it “neuronal recycling.” Developing the conventions and standards necessary to fully recycle this neuronal raw material took centuries. Dehaene quotes a passage from Augustine’s Confessions in which Augustine comments on a phenomenon that he judged strange enough to mention.

“When [Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still... When we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.”

Hundreds of years after the invention of writing, readers were still struggling through texts without spaces or punctuation and sounding out individual words. Today’s users of integrated digital languages are arguably at an earlier stage – perhaps comparable to the Egyptian hieroglyphic jumble of phonetic glyphs, logographs, and determinatives.

Digital languages will need several rounds of neuronal recycling. Fundamental changes in presentation conventions, for example, will be required including some that perhaps offend today’s cinomagraphic sensibilities in the same way manuscript artists were offended by rigid formats and "ugly" spaces. The task is more complex than what was required for reading: digital languages are multi-sense, are used in more ways, and deploy larger semantic toolkits.

Retinal position invariance, receptive fields, opioid receptor stimulation, semantic priming,³³ and competitive learning ³⁴ are more easily exploited by digital than by written or spoken languages. Digital is also better equipped to facilitate language writ large: including its culturally and contextually dependent metaphors, analogies, and referents. "Literal" is often meaningless. Dictionaries miss “man the hunter” context in the word Bambi: and, “wastrel” in grasshopper. Access to much of the world’s literature, science, and transactions gives digital language unique potential to find and convey meaning – a feature already being exploited in translanguage communication.

The path, like writing, will be circuitous and ongoing. However, UDDS is capable of handling the languages and their metalanguages – whatever twists and turns are taken by cognitive scientists, linguists, philosophers, educators, Shakespeare's, teenagers, and Dr. Johnson's.

In The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan expresses cautious optimism about America’s future ability to surmount core challenges including: population growth, pollution, education, and energy. His optimism is conditioned upon maintaining economic growth and productivity increases: which he suggests will require more effective education methods and breakthroughs in creativity.³⁵ Greenspan’s call to action comes from a cautious, practical economist. When he speaks of developing human capital and expanding knowledge, he speaks of ‘knowledge’ in its true epistemological sense.

Greenspan, and other economists posit long term productivity increases have historically “maxed-out” at approximately 3%. The barrier is not imposed by lack of technology or innovation: human societies seem unable to adapt more quickly. Further, exponential information growth may even retard change by encouraging narrow focus and over specialization. Transformation rates of operating practices within a wide spectrum of subcultures, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the US Military, tend to anecdotally support the macro view. Greenspan expresses optimism that somehow methods of improving education and creativity will be found enabling the 3% barrier to be broken.

Cognition, not more or faster data, is the challenge. While access to information is virtually unlimited at negligible incremental cost via Internet, data hits a brick wall at the end of human optic nerves. There, some studies suggest, reading comprehension bandwidth narrows to approximately 30 Hz.

address comments and suggestions to...

Danielle Miller-Coe
info@sybergroup.com

Anecdotal evidence exists that second language acquisition improves cognition. Studies, to date, tend to be subjective and qualitative. Syber Group’s Cognition Research Project seeks quantifiable data. Hard empirical data will enable ROI justification of investments to expand second language training and exploit courseware reformulated in more efficacious digital language.

A modest comprehension rate improvement would significantly increase intellectual capital formation. The economic impact of raising the productivity ceiling from 3% to 4% would be dramatic.

1. Truth wars are not germane for this paper. Knowledge is broadly defined: as discussed here, it merely shifts mediums. Whatever formerly passed, or not, for truth and knowledge by various camps – whether realism, relativism, quietism, or eliminativism – may still be enclosed, or not, in sneer quotes.

2. Or, at a more basic level, should symbols encode ideas, syllables, or phonemes?

6. Postman, Neil Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business New York: Penguin. 1986 Neil Postman

8. Austin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1975 J. L. Austin

9. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations (translated by Peter Hacker and Joachim Schulte) Wiley-Blackwell 2009

10. St. Augustine “Lying” Treatises on Various Subjects Volume 16 (translator: Mary S. Muldowney) District of Columbia: Catholic University of America Press 2002 chapter 14, p86

12. Carr, Jeffrey Inside Cyber Warfare Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media 2010 pp 150-151

13. Planck, Max Scientific Autobiography and other papers (translated by Frank Gaynor) New York: Philosophical Library 1968 and Planck, Max Where Is Science Going? (translated by James Murphy) Woodbridge: Ox Bow Press 1981

14. In Flatland, Abbott introduced 4-D concepts to 19th century audiences by drawing comparisons to how inhabitants of a 2-D world (Flatland) might react to “aliens,” such as Spheres, from the third dimension. Abbott, Edwin A. The Annotated Flatland (edited by Ian Stewart) Cambridge: Perseus 2002 For additional imagineering concepts see... Stewart, Ian Flatterland New York: Basic Books 2001 Edwin A. Abbott

15. The motion picture industry is in transition. Film is the primary shooting and exhibition format, although some shooting and exhibition are digital. Most interim steps are digital. Converting to a pure end-to-end digital workflow is a work in progress.

16. RAW data is collected by photosites in camera sensors. See discussion of digital photography in... Miller-Coe, Danielle Perfect Knowledge Cheyenne: Teton Sands 2009

17. Moser, David "Why is Chinese So Damn Hard" Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday (Editor: Victor H. Mair) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Department of Oriental Studies 1991

18. The origins of XML, HTML, CSS and other internet metalanguages can be traced to a 1960’s Government Printing Office (GPO) full text data format. The format was developed in conjunction with GPO’s Master Typography Program (MTP) for internal use on their IBM 360 mainframe and Mergenthaler Linotron 1010.

GPO's format, based on “Locators” was widely adopted by numerous suppliers and government agencies, most notably CDSI’s ETS system (the first true full-page make-up typesetting software) and the IRS with its version of GPO’s full text data format. As conceived and enforced by GPO, Locators within data files were pure classifications of data types that did not imply format. GPO policed the tension between data “purists” and those who would insert formatting codes in the name of expediency. Inevitably GPO lost control. Without GPO’s iron fist, the concept evolved into XML and gradually morphed into the mess used on the internet today.

20. Transaction costs are a major, and too often under-appreciated, driver of behavior and economic activity according to Coase. Coase, Ronald H. The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1990. pp 33-56 Traditional economic theory largely ignores transaction costs athough the sector grew from 25% of USA GNP in 1870 to more than 50% in 1970 according to economists John Wallis and Douglass North. Wallis, John J. and Douglass North "Measuring the Transaction Sector in the American Economy: 1870 to 1970" Long Term Factors in American Economic Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth (edited by Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman) Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1986 pp 95-125 UDDS, together with appropiate data tools, have potential to exploit the oversight by significantly shrinking transaction cost. Ronald H. Coase

22. CRISP is an advanced grocery retail enterprise software distributed by Cash & Carry America (CCA). Sample CRISP report supplied courtesy of CCA.

24. StEM (Standard Evaluation Material) is a digital movie used in cinema testing. The material provides a standard for evaluating digital projectors, compression techniques, and transmission methods. The 12 minute movie features a variety of lighting conditions, colors, textures, and other photographic variables including confetti, rain and fog. The StEM project is a collaborative effort by Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

25. The modular EPIC 617 has a 168X56mm sensor. Supported images range from: 28K (28,000X9,334 pixels) at 1-30fps (frames per second) to 2K (2,048X1,024 pixels) at 1-250fps.

26. Changizi, Mark “The Topography Of Language” Scientific Blogging (http://www.scientificblogging.com) Sep 17, 2009 Also see... Changizi, Mark The Vision Revolution Dallas: Benbella Books 2009

28. Jansson, G. et al (editors) Perceiving Events and Objects London: Psychology Press 1994 is a reprint of the original classic. See also.. Johansson, G. “Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis” Perception & Psychophysics Volume 14 1973 pp 201–211; Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne and Decety, Jean “From the perception of action to the understanding of intention” Nature Reviews Neuroscience Volume 2 August 2001 pp 561–7; and Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne and Frith, Chris “The role of motor contagion in the prediction of action” Neuropsychologia Volume 43 2005 pp 260–267.

30. The dual ventral and dorsal pathways, the “perception-action” model, have spawned cognition experiments and philosophical debate. Ungerleider, L. G. and Mishkin, M. “Two cortical visual systems” in Analysis of Visual Behavior (editors: Ingle, D. J., Goodale, M. A. and Mansfie!d, R. J. W.) Cambridge: MIT Press 1982 pp 549-586; Goodale, M. A., and Milner, A. D. “Separate visual pathways for perception and Action” Trends in Neuroscience volume 15 1992 pp 20–25; and Shmuelof, Lior and Zohary, Ehud “Dissociation between Ventral and Dorsal fMRI Activation during Object and Action Recognition” Neuron Vol. 47 2005 pp 457–470 Also see Neuropsychologia’s special edition retrospective of David Milner’s work… Volume 47 2009 Editorial

32. Dehaene, Stanislas Reading in the Brain New York: Viking 2009 Dehaene participated as a mathematician, neuroscientist, and experimental psychologist in helping unravel some of the mystery during the past twenty years. The story is told with the skill of a le Carré and eye of a cold case detective. Also see Dehaene, Stanislas The Number Sense Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999

33. A recent overview of the field is... McNamara, Timothy P. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition New York: Psychology Press 2005 For an example of advances in subliminal research see... Kouider, Sid et al. “Cerebral Bases of Subliminal and Supraliminal Priming during Reading” Cerebral Cortex September 2007 (17) pp 2019-2029

34. Competitive Learning follows from Selfridge’s classical “pandemonium” conjecture whereby excited neurons shout for attention like an unruly Parliament of “daemons.” The loudest prevails. Selfridge, O. G. Pandemonium: A paradigm for learning (editors: D. V. Blake and A. M. Uttley) Proceedings of the Symposium on Mechanisation of Thought Processes London, 1959 pp 511-529 Numerous neural and cognition models use the concept. Fritzke, Bernd Some Competitive Learning Methods Systems Biophysics Institute for Neural Computation Ruhr-Universitat Bochum draft 1997 Also see model demos at.. http://lcn.epfl.ch/tutorial/english/competitive/html/index.html

Participants in the Syber Group multilingual cognition project now include linguists, philologists, physicists, educators, students, entrepreneurs, mathematicians, and computer scientists.