Christmas

We were invited to Seattle for Xmas by my son Warren and his lovely bride Laura. Three sunny days greeted us, and we toured the greater area, including Everett, Bellevue, Redmond, and the Kirkland waterfront. Laura showed us her building on the Boeing campus, and we saw three new Dreamliners (of the seven currently built). Wonderful time...
We went by Coroware, and got an issue of Linux Journal with our Corobot on the cover. Played with the two robots and also with the Vidyo immersive collaboration tool. Great fun.
The highlight, aside from Sanibel the wonder dog Boston Terrier, was the 1000 piece puzzle celebrating 100 years of major league baseball. Took us two nights and a day to solve it!
They wing their way to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris tomorrow, celebrating Laura's 30th birthday. We were so fortunate to be with them for the holidays

Thanksgiving

Thanks indeed, for life and friends and family

We drove down to Cindy's, stopping at my sister Sharon's home (which gave Jenny a chance to meet my 'new' sister and her husband).  We had a delightful several hours with them; all finding that life somehow gives every one of us a chance to deal with adversity.  It just seems so obvious that no one escapes trials and tribulations; the whole secret of enjoying life is in how you deal with those challenges rather than in avoiding them.  

The next night we were playing a word game at Cindy's, with her step-son Dylan and his new bride, who happens to be an Aussie.  Well, one word was frivolous, and she politely inquired, "what does that mean?" and her new husband, as quick-witted and wry as his dad, quipped, "that means 'without frivol'."  I mean, like we were all convulsed with laughter, which may say something (I agree now) about both the hour and the libations that we had enjoyed.

May your life be filled with 'frivol' and 'love'

spoke way too soon

the following week, I missed work most days. Friday though, for the T'day party, it was raining and I drove, but couldn't find parking except at the hospital employee lot (long walk sans umbrella) in an "A" section. Walked back after the party, moved the car to the far end of the Cantor museum parking, double long walk. Big pain in my side by end of day, enough that I couldn't do exercises with Alan on Saturday morn.

Then, Saturday, went to Big Game with the Hollars, and we all listened to Jenny hollar for da Bears. "Go, Bears". It would be Stanford's only loss in the final four games, games that most figured they'd lose all four. But instead, they wreaked havoc on Oregon (league champs), USC (perennial league champs), and even Notre Dame last night.

Meanwhile, I awoke with huge pain in that side (kidney area on right), and shooting pains going up my right arm. So, about 2am, we went to ER. Lots of students in there, "sleeping it off". One awoke about four, was ready to go, said "where are my shoes?" to which the orderly said, "you didn't wear any in". A gal slept peacefully as the doctors shook her bed, screaming "earthquake". A third, at eight in the morn, upon leaving, said, "would you mind telling me whether that is eight in the evening or eight in the morning?"

One said, "I had a lot to drink", and they said, "wine, beer, hard liquor?" And she said, "yes, all of those, and more". An orderly told us that usually the Stanford students come in before the game, and the Cal students afterwards. Another averred that both schools raise idiots, that if you go to a school like San Diego State, they teach you how to party.

I felt relieved when they told me (after multiple tests of various kinds) that "it isn't life-threatening". Good words to hear.

A week later, the pain persists, but is "under control". Don't climb on ladders.

spoke too soon

Well, the hematoma swelled, eventually being a major swelling on my right thigh. Maybe it was not wise to get on the plane to Minneapolis, but Madi had her new driver's license and we really wanted to see her. She has a 'new' car, a Jeep Liberty with 22,000 miles. Is she proud! And a very good novice driver, not too timid, and not too aggressive. We 'trucked' all over the place, when I wasn't napping (and that story has to do with the leg damage). Great fun

Madi has a schedule not unlike that of other members of this family -- gone by 7am for band, seven major classes during the day, and dance practice from 5:30-8:00pm, every day. She is at a dead run, not exactly panting from the exertion, but certainly looking a bit mobile.

Coming home, Jenny insisted on upgrading me (at no mean expense) so my leg had some 'legroom' so to speak. It was nice, actually. And then, I stayed home the next couple of days too, just to keep a heating pad on the spot (especially after they tried to 'aspirate' the wound on Monday and that didn't work very well).

Meanwhile, the patio off the living room has been surfaced, w Connecticut Blue Stone (hauled by covered wagon from CT, I think, judging from the price). It is gorgeous, might even be ready for the neighborhood Holiday party December 6th.

Otherwise, about back to normal here

heady week w the book but then fell off the ladder

The book must be selling... both Amazon and Barnes/Noble have it back-ordered for two weeks. Several folk who have read it have submitted "nitpicky" (their term) improvements on factoids; but people seem to like it. The Forbes.com review by Geo Anders was especially nice.

Last night Jenny hosted her longtime women professionals group here; I did my flower arranging and had a ball doing it. Found three dozen long-stemmed David Austin roses at the Ladera Nursery; spectacular! if I do say so.

And then today all the gals went to a spa for mudbaths and facials and stuff, so I had a "free day". I climbed on a short stepladder to saw down a big limb on an oak tree in the "back forty" and just before I saw'd thru it, the ladder collapsed, and I tumbled like a hot rock. Ouch, as they say. After shrugging it off for about an hour, and then looking at it again (all swollen on my thigh, and throbbing), I thought, "well, maybe having it checked would be a good idea". But I forgot the book I wanted to read (you always have a long wait in the ER on Saturday, don't ask how I know this), so I came back home after getting halfway there, and got a book. Good thing, given the nearly three hour wait.

The really good news -- nothing broken, a massive hematoma, probably swell for another week, and I'll be "good as new" in less than a month, they averred. Dammitall, lots to do, but I am at the moment "taking it easy"

the book is finally done, wow!

Wow, a beautiful glossy black jacket, with a bold yellow starburst. "The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation", it says, by Charles H. House and Raymond L. Price.

I got to hold the book, in fact got ten free copies from Stanford University Press this week. They "flew" out the door, all gone already. Have to buy them now! It is thrilling to see your book in print, and the book jacket is indeed attractive (maybe it's like with your own child, they look SO precious to you even if to no one else). And I even saw it on a shelf, at the Stanford Bookstore, yesterday, the first day it was officially available through bookstores. Amazon had it last Tuesday. Stanford Bookstore ordered ten, had already sold seven. Hubba hubba.

Mike Malone tells me that this is the proudest moment for an author, to see it on a shelf. He also says the worst day of your life is to see it on the "remainder table". And the trick is how many days or weeks are in-between. My guess is it also matters which bookstores actually carry it. I know that Kepler's in Menlo Park is carrying it, and I might go down and photograph that for posterity today.

The best news is the book is rated # 9,082 this morning on Amazon popularity, better than Thursday's # 157,064. Hardly the Top Ten list, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

autumn is fast upon us

A "big blow" is apparently headed our way. Rain, from one to three inches, or maybe four to eight inches, and winds, gusting to 60 or 70 mph, should wreak havoc on our town tonight or tomorrow. And one neighbor is, predictably, out nailing down the new tar paper on the new roof in the making tonight at eight-thirty pm in the dark -- since we've heard about this storm for five or six days, one wonders why he didn't start nailing sooner.

We had a little contest between the landscapers and the builders over what needs protecting, and how best to do it. The net was I found myself out with a pickaxe and shovel, digging the trough surrounding the building deep enough to drain the puddling area next to the house. Lotsa fun, though I wasn't sure just why I was doing it...

Anyway, we'll see. We'd get those "huge storm" predictions in Deer Valley, and the clouds would scud through with hardly a trace of moisture. Then, with no warning, we'd have a Big One. Must be fun to be a weather predictor.

Naked, Drunk and Writing

Title of a new book, getting rave reviews!  I like the idea, sort of how it worked to do the HP book, so there are those who think she has the right notion.   But in a world where many (most?) observers are predicting the End of the Book, why would anyone try more writing?  

And Google's new proposal makes sure that the consuming public does well, if not authors.  But then have you weighed a recent copy of Business Week alongside an issue from a decade earlier?  For grins, I compared and found today the issue is about 76 pp. vs. 180 pp. ten years ago.  Missing a lot of ads is the first observation.  Missing judicious reporters might be another sign.

But, writing is a lonely pursuit anyway.  I think you mostly write for yourself, and then if you are lucky, someone else might read it as well.  If you are really lucky, a dialogue might start.  Note how many rejoinders are in this blog, for example.  Tom Peters, with the most popular business book of all time -- six million copies in two years -- got 36 letters, only eight of which asked deeper questions.  His cryptic comment -- "I did better than one in a million!"

Get Naked and Drunk sounds actually more like a Jimmy Buffet theme.  Sounds good to me

Greetings from the House House

Well, it finally happened today. The final inspection -- FINAL INSPECTION! -- for our modest abode in Menlo Park occurred today. All the lights work, all the utilities are safely connected, there are stairs or deck landings outside every door, and unbelievably, we are now free to begin to get an actual mortgage.

The saga has been lengthy, almost entirely due to the crazy bank mania of the past year. From having one appraisal to needing three, from having a local appraiser to requiring one "untainted" by local knowledge and probable collusion with a lender, from "work in progress" funds to everything must be done to qualify for the funds you need to finish...

This would make a book nearly as good as "Marley and me" but I don't have the heart to write it. Instead, I picked up a copy of "Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary" by Bert Patenaude that came out yesterday. It is gripping, and certainly reveals that we mostly live mundane lives compared with someone of his visibilty and stature.

"May you live in interesting times"

Eyes are pretty valuable

I had a chance yesterday to benefit from new modern technology. Jenny had eye surgery at five years old to correct a problem -- back then, it was a very invasive process. I had 162 "shots" at 380 milliwatts for 30 milliseconds each, delivered by a 3x3 matrix argon laser "gun" to spotweld a retinal tear. Love the precision!

The release form you sign says "there may be a slight amount of pain". That was certainly true, in fact, they overdelivered on that one! I was quite relieved when the final shot had been fired, and I certainly am not eager to repeat the experiment soon.

On the other hand, I was quite lucky compared to some other friends. One good friend recently endured a fully detached retinal event, while enbound for a trek in Africa. It happened on a street, inexplicably, in London. Needless to say, their trip was interrupted, but so was his life, for the next six months, as he struggles to regain full eyesight. And he is lucky as well. He is regaining his sight.

Along the way, via the too lengthy diagnostic process -- four visits to four different docs at four facilities, escalating the specialties as we went -- I was entranced by the OCT machines that could build a "depth profile" of the layers of cells underneath the retina. This fabulous technology is an outgrowth of recent work at the MIT Media Lab, plus early work by Marvin Minsky at Harvard nearly fifty years ago. It is part sonar, part time-domain reflectometry, and way cool for its diagnostic ability for macular degenrative disease and macular "pucker", both of which I am currently experiencing as well.

Fearsome words to some, including me, but tell you what -- they're just aging issues, and as the doc said, "you are balding too, and you don't call that an illness"...

So, recuperating today -- slept an amazing twelve or thirteen hours, but certainly privileged.

Multiple Generations for Twitter and Facebook

Michael Wesch is currently on a Skype connection into our MediaX Social Media Collaboratory workshop being taught by Howard Rheingold

(see http://mediax.stsnford.edu/WSI/collaboratory.html )

Wesch has some YouTube clips -- the one I think everyone should watch (and many have, with some 10 million downloads to date) is called "The Machine is Us/ing Us"

Compelling stuff, re why MediaX exists, and what we might profitably study. The OLPC project is a good example, but there are many, many things -- the use of checkout counter automatic cameras which might have an infinite focal plane, the use of in-home monitors for medical aid that might get the oldster committed to an institution earlier than might be desired/apropos, etc.

Where does this go? Is there a predictable endpoint? How many generations of Media Users will we have (our grandkids are adept at things we scarcely imagine, let alone adopt and use. Today the fourteen year olds know MUCH more than the nineteen year olds seemingly; the eleven year olds are excellent at stuff the fourteen years old have not yet learned. And if you're (gasp) over thirty, Jerry Rubin called it at Berkeley (tho he borrowed the phrase from Jack Weinberger apparently) -- never trust anyone over thirty!

invention vs innovation

Communications of the ACM published a great paper in June 2009 by Ken Kraemer et al about OLPC (one Laptop per child) and the failure of the program to achieve even remotely its ambitious goals. I applauded the paper, for its thorough-going analysis of economic, political, and technical issues -- seldom does ACM or IEEE indulge in wideranging analysis of the multiple facets that go into engineering successes or failures, and this was a landmark article. See it at http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/6/28497-one-laptop-per-child-vision-vs-reality/fulltext

The program failure, though few like to use that epithet, is palpable: against a goal of 150 million units in five years (not exactly one laptop per child for the globe, since there are 3 billion or so), the program has delivered 350 thousand machines. Hitting 0.2% of market goals in many companies would be considered "a miss"

Oddly, the article, good as it was, did not address perhaps the most fundamental issue of the project, which in our view would be the question of whether the machine could deliver the right educational experience for the intended user. At our MediaX center at Stanford, we try hard to imagine and construct experiments to test exactly such premises. And we had presented Kentaro Toyame of Microsoft Bangalore with a great lecture last October on exactly this point. You can see it at http://mediax.stanford.edu/video/toyama.mov

So I wrote to the editors, and lo and behold, they printed my submission, which you can view at http://mags.acm.org/communications/200908/?pg10&pm=2&u1=friend

Kinda fun...

nice surprise

Monday nite, the 40th anniversary of the Moon Walk by Neil Armstrong, we were in Chicago at the Omni hotel for a Gates Foundation dinner. Inexplicably, I was introduced as "the birthday boy" and the emcee tied it to the anniversary for Armstrong's walk. He invited a few words about the way the TV signal came about, and I got one more of those Andy Warhol moments. Nice!

And then, the emcee went on, and said, over at the next table we have a real live astronaut, and introduced Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space. She today is the Director of the Battelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs for Ohio State University.

And as we worked yesterday (Tuesday) all day on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education issues for America, her perspective and wisdom infused the group. I marveled one more time at how privileged I am on occasion to be included with such insightful people.

and where should I go?

I had told the group -- a PostDoc cohort at the University of Utah -- that I had degrees from four "schools" -- engineering, science, humanities, and business -- plus five minors. Moreover, I had worked in five major disciplines, one of which was one of the nine areas of study. Thus, my conclusion is that you cannot, certainly should not consider your schooling to be the ticket for your career.

So what did I recommend? First, it is obvious that the world is being "connected" in such a way that every professional will need to link with others across distance, time, and culture. So learning how to use the tools that facilitate this seems paramount. Second, it is obvious that explicit learning is the least apt to brng strategic value or insight, let alone empathy or community. Thus physical travel becomes key. I rccommended three weeks in a foreign country every two years for a decade to build that visceral understanding. A decade of that, and you'd have a chance.

Afterward, a beautiful woman came forward, and said "where should I go?" I asked 'where have you been?' She'd been born in the Ukraine, traveled to London as an adult, then to California, her dream. She'd been in the US 7 yeare. I brightly said, "CHINA"! She retorted that she already knew China. I said "how?" She said she'd read books, watched documentaries, and talked to Chinese friends. I asked if she'd known about the US that same way and she nodded vigourously. But upon asking if the US was like she learned while in the Ukraine, or even London, and she replied, "oh my NO."

I was silent. Maybe a minute went by, she said YES

Nothing beats bein' there, doin' that

Carver Mead and faint praise

Flashback -- when Liesl and Cindy came to the ACM Black Tie ceremony last month, it was reminiscent of the night eleven years earlier at the National Academy, when the Smithsonian sponsored the "200 Wizards" event around a book. Something like 120 of the 200 assembled, also a Black Tie event, and I was privileged to take the lecturn to give the Allan Newell Award from ACM to Carver Mead. I made a short speech re 'knowing hin longer than anyone in the room' and his role in inventing the Cochlear implant. Vint Cerf and his wife were in the front row, and I told the story about him calling her from the White House re his Nat'l Technology Award -- one of the first telephone calls she ever heard. She was in tears, so was Vint, and Carver came forward and accepted the award graciously. I was "off the hook"

Carver is semi-famous, could have been more so since he created "Moore's Law" for which Gordon (co-founder of Intel) gave the talk that coined the name of the famous law about how fast semiconductor capability would develop.

After dinner, Carver was to give a talk at this soiree. My three daughters -- Sharon, Cindy, and Liesl -- were all there, along with Jenny; we all sat in the second row, expectantly. I didn't expect, though, to hear Carver start by saying that he had been thinking about the Newell award on the plane ride to D.C. The Newell Award is for fantastic teaching. Carver said that he tho't about how many PhD students a professor will have in a lifetime -- maximum, 400. He said that it was easy to recall the Best Ten. They knew the book cold, they could give the lecture better than the professor, they had no problems with calculations or the issues.

He went on, to say he could also easily remember the Worst Ten. The audience murmured, YES they could too! He said the Worst Ten didn't know there was a book, or they argued with it, or they never came to class, or ... The room was atitter. And then he looked at me, and said: "and one of them just introduced me"

I was stunned. My daughters all turned in unison to me, and screamed "DAD!" And what seemed like minutes went by, in kind of a daze.

And then Carver went on to say: "and the pictures in this book, and on these walls, I have found out in the past forty years, are from those in the second group, not the first. Whew!

BLACK TIE(d)

ACM is a wonderful professional society, even if it is a little snobbish about who all can join its ranks. I joined once, when I migrated from EE hardware design to CS software design (only to discover that "purists" {e.g. ACM'ers} only count 'real' software, not microcode or machine code)

So, I un-joined, and something like eighteen years later, Gwen Bell saw me on a cross-country airplane ride and persuaded me to run for President of ACM, to which I didn't even belong. I rejoined, and won somehow. At my first SIG meeting, though, the irascible chair of SIGADA bellowed out "what qualifies you to be President of ACM?" One minute into a perfunctory opening speech, this outburst brought me up short. And directly, I had an out-of-body experience, one of those things where you kinda look down and see your lips moving, but you have no idea what they're about to say...

I heard the following utterance: "you, sir, have the wrong question. The question is, 'why didn't you have anyone qualified out of sixty-two thousand members?'" Hal Hart, the impertinent questioner, didn't ask any further. When I finally figured out that he too worked in industry, for TRW instead of "my HP" (our best customer in fact for years), and he too lacked a PhD, and he was consigned to work on ADA by his company's military mission, I actually felt sorry for him.

That kind of arrogance seems inbred to some of these groups. Eric Sumner, long-time Bell Labs guru, had a similarly smug salutation when I joined the IEEE Executive Committee. No question that Sumner was talented, even brilliant, at what he was good at, but civility and manners were missing in his curriculum. Sort of like Barney Oliver at HP. One wonders how much more they might have accomplished if they had been able to tolerate help, never mind encourage it.

So, on this night in June 2009, I'd been invited to a soiree, to receive acknowledgment as an ACM Fellow. Jenny came, as did two daughters -- Liesl and Cindy. I stood beside Alan Kay, in a cohort that included Pat Hanrahan (Pixar and Stanford), and Bill Buxton (Alias Research, GUIs) so it wasn't exactly like I was the last one admitted. It was satisfying, and much appreciated!

Odd, though, I'd have thought that somewhere along the way, maybe in the past thirty-six years, that ACM might, just might, have come to appreciate that Logic Analyzers and Microprocessor Development Systems are the reason that 99% of computing systems today are not mainframes or mini's, but are instead micro-based such as PCs or even micro-controller based such as the automata that open our doors, calculate our fluctuating gas prices on the pump and control our traffic signals. Never mind the micro's that run our cellphones, PDAs and iPODs

No... the award wasn't for any of that, nor for the Moon Monitor. It was "for service to ACM" by which they meant "served as ACM President without sullying the office" and helped later (sort of ) with the mnority report on job migration (how should I have known that the purpose of the report was to endorse outsourcing and offshoring?).

It didn't mention the ACM Digital Library or Project Argus for ACM itself, the first widespread semi-integrated Computer-Conferencing / Video Conferencing / Data Conferencing system deployed at HP, the code coverage work that helped secure Honeywell's processes from 'boomettes' (think of Union Carbide and the Bhopal, India disaster), done at Veritas, or the secure fail-safe kernel OS that was the underpinning for Los Alamos and the "traveling defillibrators", plus of course the original Palm Pilot. Each of these was useful, meaningful, unique software. But no, I didn't write the code. So, what's to honor?

Nonetheless, the award felt good. I was not as chary as Groucho Marx, and his famous remark that he wouldn't accept an award from any group dumb enough to give him one. It felt actually just great.

YeeGawds a BIG birthday

A lot of people key on BIG birthdays, like 16 or 21 or 50. I've gotten to where I think any of them is a key milestone. My own pending big day is "69", sometimes considered phallic or prurient, but by this age, some of that thinking seems... well, mostly thinking. Feeling, emoting, sensing -- all seem better than thinking on occasion, and this feels like one of those occasions.

On my 29th B'day, Neil Armstrong strode confidently onto the Moon's surface, and an editorial in today's San Jose Mercury-News lamented that within another sixteen months, America will have foregone the opportunity to keep that technological capacity. It is a good editorial, by Charles Krauthammer. See http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12852490

I was impressed, of course, on July 20, 1969 that we were able to SEE the foot land on the moon. Until 4 months before, the plan had been to do a radio broadcast, not TV, but the HP1300A with a modified 20MHz z-axis amplifier enabled space video transmission. This is the semi-famous box that earned me the dubious honor of The Medal of Defiance from Dave Packard, awarded a mere thirteen years later.

Question -- since we learned today also (front page story) that NASA erased the Moon Walk video some years later (seems they were too broke to buy new videotape, so they erased 200,000 tapes and started over) ; see the story titled "Oops, we erased the Moon Landing" -- how significant was this event? How many people watched it? How memorable was it?
What compares with it for audience reach? Would it have made as much impact if only radio?

whence cometh our strength

we're going to a fiftieth birthday party in a few minutes, for Oddgeir. Not a regular American name, and he is not a regular American. He is instead, a Norwegian, a Norski as some of my high school buddies would have sneered. But the Olsen twins used to say, "ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, pursued by one Norwegian".

Odd how your life unfolds. I married a girl whose grandmother emigrated from Oslo Norway, three years before the 1905 revolution from Sweden. Then, as luck would have it, my first seatmate at HP was Johann Sverdrup, whose grandfather was the admiral of the navy in 1905 when they won independence from Sweden. When my daughter Cindy and I traveled to Tallberg Sweden and then toured Norway, we landed in a small village and found a statue near Alesund erected in his honor. Our discovery included the fact that he mostly ran a small ferry boat service, and that was a prime source of his Admiralty title. In fact, his father was Prime Minister and earlier had been Minister of the Navy, and they did have two gunboats.

Kristiania was the capital of the new monarchy in 1905; the name was changed later to Oslo. Oddgeir is from a town 200 miles south, Kristiansand, as is Signe Churton, married to Jenny's nephew David. I visited Kristiansand in 2005, staying with them and touring the area, including a lot of the Nazi armament areas, especially out on a neighboring island, Ny-Hellesund. As it turns out, Oddgeir has built a war commemoration for his homeland that attempts to capture some of the horror and anguish that such events cause for humanity. He has been at Stanford for a term, studying in the Communication school, and leaves for home this month.

Ironic too that another Sverdrup, Harald, is credited with leading Scripps School of Oceanography to new heights of excellence, and hiring Roger Revelle as his replacement in 1947. Revelle and James Lovelock would use Don Hammond's HP temperature probe to begin the deep ocean measurements that underpin much of our current knowledge about global warming.

Yet another relative, Otto Sverdrup, became known for his Arctic sea explorations, including claiming three islands off the coast of Canada for Norway, still known as the Sverdrup Islands. Norway ceded claims to these in 1930.

The world is a wonderfully small place. We are privileged today to go honor Oddgeir.

You look like my grand-dad

He answered the e-mail graciously, saying he'd love to talk about the upcoming four hour hike, as well as the Nature Preserve. I noted in the e-mail that if he were the son of Sharon, then I "knew of his grandfather from Scouting in Inglewood" a long long time ago.

We met; he greeted me with a big smile and a hearty handshake. For fifteen minutes, he regaled me with stories about the land, restoring the native flora, and how this all happened. Then, to the hike question, which I parried by saying I really had a different question by now, for which I needed to ask his confidence and his indulgence.

As I started the phrasing, he stopped me, backed away, and said, "you are the spitting image of my grand-dad; I've been looking for the Masonic ring, you're like a ghost from the past." The story unfolded easily from there, until he asked if his mother knew. As I said "no" he blurted out "well, she is pretty open-minded. Do you want to meet her?"

Ten minutes later, as I walked up to her door, she met me with folded arms and a quizzical look. "what's the story" she demanded. I froze, and blurted out, "do you want the short version or the long one?" She said, "let's try the short one" which turned out to be a show-stopper.

Recovery was not instantaneous. But when it happened, it was marvelous in terms of humanity and bonds that can exist even though we don't know them, or can't even imagine them. We embraced; we cried; we laughed.

And then, myriad questions. Who, how, how long, did she, did he??? It turns out that genetics does determine lots of things we decided that afternoon -- hobbies, habits, mannerisms, looks, attitudes, figures of speech even. Wild. Delicious. And somehow fulfilling to know, finally.

Meeting your sister for lunch

I met my sister Sharon for lunch a few weeks ago. Not so remarkable, most might say. But those who know me said, "I didn't know you had a sister." And, as it turns out, my sister didn't know she had a brother either.

It was actually quite a story. She is 73 years young, spry with a great dimpled smile, and teasing eyes that danced and sparkled -- just as I had imagined for years. I am her "little brother", four years younger, the result of a tryst between her father and my mother when they worked together. Each was married to another, and the resultant "love child" -- me -- was raised by my mother and her husband without (to my knowledge at least) him ever knowing that I was sired by another. I had one younger (half)-brother with whom I was raised; she had an older sister who died in early adulthood.

I've known that my origin was "mixed" for fifty years, the result of a coincidental blood test when I first got engaged to be married. Twenty-five years after that, my mother confided in me on a trip we made through Europe -- my genetic father by then had passed away. Ten years after that, at a 60th wedding anniversary for our Scoutmaster, I wound up chatting, no it was more like chattering, to a girl I was certain that I knew -- and she likewise, but we could find no common ground. The next morning, my mother said softly "that was your sister, but I couldn't introduce you there"

Well, as it turns out, it wasn't -- she was a first cousin; fifty-five years and a similar name does confuse things a bit. But on her deathbed, my mother asked me to "find out" if I could, and once her husband (my father, as I have called him for my whole life) passed away, I was "free" to pursue the question.

It was not as easy as the genealogy books would have you believe. But the real test was once I had an idea of who to seek, the next immediate question was HOW? Do you just knock on the door, and say, "Hi, I'm your long-lost brother." I decided against that strategy.

The real dilemma, of course, was that the other party, upon learning the news, may just not view it as the greatest of stories. Anger, denial, a rude dismissal -- all could be likely outcomes. How this transpired, and how it unfolded was in fact a wonderful story in itself.

Video Immersive variations

There are several basic modes available today for Video Immersive environments that have significantly different predicates and display modes:

1. Big wall environments for multiple-person conferences -- these are thought of primarily as the heavily hyped and expensive HP Halo and the Cisco Telepresence "rooms". The basic configuration -- six people in three blocs of two people -- on "each side" of a wide video wall is set up to approximate two groups of people who are not proximate, able to discuss topics while viewing the body language, facial expressions, and contextual settings of the "other side". Each system can be reduced to a "smaller room" for two people; a variation allows and sometimes emphasizes multi-point meetings, using each of the three two-person screens to represent a new site. Sound-actuation switching can multiplex many such "rooms" -- we've experimented with up to one hundred participants for ten hours in fifteen sites -- a major tour de force.

2. Big TV screen "windows" for multiple-person conferences -- these are seen in LifeSize, Tandberg, Polycom, and Vidyo systems among others. Each can show "another person elsewhere" in High Definition image, or with various "windowed" tiled pictures (think TV Picture in Picture), can show multiple attendees from multiple locales simultaneously.

3. Small Picture Point-to-Point. Think Skype Video, which is essentially a Video Phone ala the famous "failed experiment" of AT&T in 1964 and 1970.

4. Specialty systems -- The Northrup / Applied Minds capability features heavy "war-room" interactive screens for integrated artifact display and spreadsheet and textual presentation plus social networking tools, along with augmented video walls with blurred edges between "rooms" and experimental "auto-director" editing plus archival / retrieval capability.

Mistrusting your collaboration system

John Canny, EE/CS professor at Berkeley, said it well yesterday at our demo fair -- "The vendors are all busy selling Eye Candy, the High Definition screens for Video Conferencing, while ignoring Eye Gaze which is the most important single ingredient in effective communication."

I had opened the conference by asserting that every single system today on the market, with some minor exceptions in the HP Halo system and "the sweet spot" for Cisco Telepresence, builds subconscious mistrust, because they all have optics that nearly completely precludes looking the other person in the eye. Every culture on the globe, and virtually all animal species as well, use eye gaze for engagement and trust establishment. Every system that disbars eye contact creates a barrier to effective communication.

Jeremy Bailenson's opening keynote elaborated on my assertion; twelve speakers during the day affirmed the point, and the evening demos clearly established the problem, as well as some suggested technical solutions.

But Tuesday afternoon, LiveSize presented at the Sun Microsystems' sponsored MediaX Spring Lecture series, and said High Definition was the key, and that users "quickly" adjust to the lack of eye contact. Suzie Wu at HP confidently told Harlyn Baker, on the original HP Halo research team, that "people integrate the perceived view". And this afternoon, the Cisco and HP tours will allow the conference participants to form their own judgments.

Make no mistake -- these systems are awesome in many respects, and represent substantial improvement in capability (and sometimes cost) over anything previously available. But they ignore basic human psychology in dramatically important ways. It would be wonderful to imagine that the teams at the key companies -- Cisco, HP, Polycom, Tandberg, LifeSize, and the interesting newcomer, Vidyo -- would be putting key research into these subtle but vital aspects. Alas, the evidence is otherwise.

Immersive Video communications

I'm currently in the midst of a fascinating conference, IMMERSCOM 2009, for which Ruzena Bajcsy and I are co-chairs. It is being held -- the first conference ever in this new site -- in the new CITRIS building at U C Berkeley, a grand testament to interdisciplinary research into IT (information Technology) and its impact on society.

At the moment, four of the best programs in the world in IT and its Impact on Society (what I called ISIS at Stanford for my course in 1984-1989 to honor the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility and nurturer of the earth) are on the West Coast -- our own MediaX at Stanford, the CITS program at UC Santa Barbara, the STS program at Santa Clara University, and the CITRIS program, mostly at UC Berkeley with outposts at Merced, Santa Cruz and Davis. I co-initiated the UCSB program, and still sit on the Advisory Board. Over the past two weeks, the Chair of both the Santa Clara program (Bill Coleman, the "B" of BEA Systems) and Ruzena Bajcsy, the director of CITRIS, have reached out to propose joint activities amongst us.

It is high time... in my opinion... to consider the IMPACT of our technologies on the users and inhabitants of the world, rather than just focus on the Whizziness of the Technologies. Hard for us technologists to say, let alone do. But a few quick examples may make the point, which I will do in some subsequent posts.

The Dogs sure set up a racket

Memorial Day weekend dawned cool and windy in our part of the world. Needed a coat to walk the dogs, and I decided to forego planting for a couple hours. But by the end of Saturday, the rockwall out front was finally completed, and it looks almost like it had been there for years.

Sunday was Indianapolis race day, something that my dad never missed (except for once when we went golfing and Jenny turned off the recorder that he had so carefully adjusted to capture it). Castroneves won, despite my rooting for Danica Patrick. Jenny knew Castroneves from the Dancing with the Stars program -- fame has a great way of traveling.

And Monday, more of the same. Chilly. And then the dogs, barking and growling at a woodpile from our ongoing construction. Wow, noisy beyond belief. And then, directly, the cause -- a very large, very angry raccoon that they'd treed in our smallish Persimmon tree. He/she was quite upset with the din, and Zoe especially seemed oblivious to the idea that this thing was able to defend itself.

Fortunately, he was able to get from the tree branches onto the roof, and then onto the spruce tree out front, which he climbed with ease. Four hours later, he was still ensconsed some thirty feet up in that tree. Jenny came home, and saw this great pile of fur and she was mighty impressed. We were both glad that Zoe missed her goal.

The next morning, today, no sign of the big creature.

IMMERSCOM 2009

The thought was a good one, or so it seemed at the time. Gather the designers and key users of these new Video Immersive environments -- known as HP Halo, or Cisco Telepresence, or LifeSize, or pick your favorite other system (e.g. Polycom, Tandberg, Vidyo...) -- and have a deep and penetrating conference about what works, and what needs improvement, for these new tools.

Put it in Silicon Valley, the mecca for innovation, and you "can't miss". Well, we reckoned without the dire economy, even though these tools are one of the best ways to mitigate costs by eliminating most travel needs and enhancing the teamwork and hence productivity of designers. So, the conference has about half as many attendees as we'd have liked, which means that we'll be lucky to break even.

But today, at MediaX, we hosted Casey King, the CTO for LifeSize, who described a company that has doubled every year for the last five, with now some 10,000 companies using their products, with High Definition Video for relatively low cost, and his enthusiasm was palpable, as it was for the host company, Sun Microsystems, which reported on the productivity increases due to such tools.

And Thursday, we'll tour HP and Cisco facilities to experience first-hand these wonder tools. If you haven't been in one of these uber-centers, run rather than walk to experience this stuff.

Why so few attendees? Could be the esoteric titles on the papers, or it could be the time of year or the travel budget issue, or maybe there is no capital equipment money even if things looked great. Or maybe people are so "heads-down" that they have no capacity to consider change?

Seems odd to me. It feels strangely like the old joke about the machine gun salesman showing up at the castle, and the wife explaining that her knight doesn't have time to listen, because he is putting on his suit of armor and mounting his horse to go fight in the Crusades.

Ah well. We'll have a great time

Where has the time gone?

The last post I made was the day before we moved into our new home. Now, a mere five months later, I surface again! Howze that for tunneling...

A lot has happened in five months. For one, the economy has not gotten much better, despite some semi-heroic government actions. For two, the fact that many kings and noblemen lack clothes is becoming increasingly apparent. Most obviously, the greed and corruption that is being reported daily seems like the ultimate insult to the American Way. The AIG bonuses, the Sacramento water scam, the egregious bankers, and the arrogant Detroit moguls seem of a piece, and not so very far from Bernie Madoff actually. It wouldn't be that hard to find targets at most of the large corporations where seemingly the "family atmosphere" is gone, and the drones of the movie 1984 seem curiously apt.

The issues have become more basic for many who are out of work. What next? Where to? And how can we survive this calamity?

In these kinds of times, there is opportunity to be sure, but it has some of the feeling of the "we were sent in to drain the swamp, but these damn alligators have us under siege".

In our small part of the world, it is not particularly sanguine either. Jenny's work is booming, thanks to the stimulus package for education, and she is so busy she cannot hardly keep up. Profits are elusive, but the work is there, so we are thankful for that. MediaX has had several great opportunities as well, including a fantastic DATA VISUALIZATION exhibit that we have from now through December on display in Wallenberg Hall, open to the public.

And our Summer Institute has its widest variety of offerings to date. See http://mediax.stanford.edu/WSI/ for an eclectic set of seminars and workshops.

But corporate philanthropy, on which our program depends, is at an all-time low, and the cries of distress from the largest companies -- IBM, HP, and Boeing to name a few -- would have you think that they are facing imminent bankruptcy. Maybe they are, and they've carefully shielded us from that fact, kinda like Bernie, but more likely, they are hoarding their billions and making sure that they wring every productive ounce of profit from the system. It seems to me to be a clear case of penny-wise and pound-foolish, but then old Ben Franklin has been dead so long....

Maybe I will develop more energy for the next post...