THOUGHTSIGNS ENTERPRISES-ReVisited

     

Before addressing the "Collective Intelligence" post below, 

the purpose of which  is to introduce a Business Perspective for translating 

50+ years  of Knowledge Technology Research and Development into 

an exponentially growing network of commercial enterprises, 

you might entertain a cursory review of the following links:

MIND TRUST -- Jon Ray Hamann

http://multicorelationism.blogspot.com/2007/03/mind-trust-jon-ray-hamann.html

and

MultiCoRelational Systems

http://multicorelationism.blogspot.com/2010/03/multicorelational-systems.html 

and the following link as an example of the post's intent,
“Are You Smarter Than the Average Bacterium?"
”Searching for Nature’s Mind"
http://multicorelationism.blogspot.com/2016/07/are-you-smarter-than-average-bacterium.html
We are creating an open, online Community of Inquiry to community source the global sense of the present understanding of the nature of “mind”.

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: 
CONCEPTUALIZATION 
and
APPLICATIONS

COMPANY IDENTIFICATIONS

      ThoughtSigns, Inc. (TSI)/dba-ThoughtSigns Enterprises (TSE), 

a private  company, is the managing developer of the AutoGnomics (AG) 

technology, a class of Synthetic Intelligence (SI) technology being a MultiCoRelational  semiotic-based formally-grounded standard theory 

of mind that accounts for degrees of genuine,   but non-anthropomorphically confined, mindfulness. This is both a radical and unique approach to the 

development of knowledge that no one else is engineering today.

 Project AutoGnome development aspires to virtual minds in virtual 

communities that are fully generalized—capable of adapting to

 any environment—and autonomous—with an emergent self 

not dependent on external input or control. From 1994-2009, 

$15 million were invested in the AutoGnome development with 

an early equity participation by a fortune 500 company implying 

a $40 million valuation.

PROLEGOMENON

INQUIRY, INFERENCE AND ACTION AS REFERENCED HEREIN ARE FOCUSED ON COLLECTIVELY ELUCIDATING THE "TRUTH WITH RELEVANCE AND VALUE (GOODNESS) TO HUMANITY" OF THE FREETHINKING, OF ANYONEONE, WITHOUT FEAR OF FOOLISHNESS OR FEAR OF THE REACTION OF AUTHORITY, AS WE EXPERIENCE THE REALM OF THE GREAT AND UNIVERSAL UNCERTAINTY FACING HUMANKIND.

Yet throughout history, including the past 50+ years of founders’ hereof, and continuing in this post 12/21/2012 era, the opposition of the materialist/reductionist approach of orthodox science remains strong. Hence we have watched as many of the creative minds of our time have been quieted Galileo-like by the institutional orthodoxy of existing scientific inquiry. We are directing our Mind Trust to the formation of a “Global Council of Elders: Knowledge Creators/Wisdom Keepers” including both those persons still living, and those passed, via a re-creation of a virtual mind for each based on their personal semiotic record implementing the technology introduced herein.

WE EMBRACE THIS COMMITMENT REALIZING BOTH THE GREATNESS OF THE PAST CONTRIBUTIONS OF ORTHODOX SCIENCE AND THE EXPECTATION OF COLLABORATING IN ITS CONTINUANCE, BUT RECOGNIZING THE PROTECTIVE RESISTANCE OF AN ESTABLISHED CULTURE TO THE THREAT OF A REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IN MINDSET AND ITS RELATED PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHICAL WORLD VIEW.

“We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails”

[Interpretation of an alleged German Proverb]

The purpose of this conveyance is to introduce a Business Perspective for translating 50+ years of Knowledge Technology Research and Development into an exponentially growing network of commercial enterprises.

THE HUMAN CIRCUMSTANCE

As humans know it, a defining feature of life is its constant evolution, most times with the change being a transformation by addition or modification, albeit frequently disruptive, but sometimes even resulting in elimination or effective replacement. Similarly, human knowledge itself is in constant evolution, recognizably in recent history at an exponentially increasing rate. Specifically, cognitive science principally through applied information and communication technology has radically changed the knowledge-access palette across humanity.

THE EVOLUTIONARY RESPONSE

Human mind, hence life in general and humankind in particular, is on the doorstep of a co-created evolutionary extension of itself via a distinct new race of integrated human-intelligent machine systems which will in time emerge as an embryonic form of an Autonomous Synthetic Intelligence/Mind. The driver in this Human Mind/Artificial Intelligence research is Science based on the Western Materialist (Systemic) World View which has amazingly brought Human Knowledge from the discovery of fire through the development of language to the exploration of outer space and inner nanosystems. `

THE KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM/DILEMMA/PARADOX

The knowledge of human experience is foundationally categorizable as being either of Things (Systems) or of InterActions (Relations). Although “common” experience is usually of the form of a Thing (hammer) InterActing (hitting) a Thing (nail), not all experience can authentically be represented as such. The Nature of experience, simplistically referenced, includes obviously that which one can point to, Things, but also that which cannot be pointed to, Fields.  A field being NoThing is of necessity a Relational (InterActive) form – since there are only two categories. However, since experience confirms that Fields interact with Fields, existing Western Mathematical Science is paradoxically in deficit since it only admits of the Relations of Things.

MULTICORELATIONAL WHOLE FIELD SCIENCE

MultiCoRelational  founding principals introduced a resolution of the paradox based on a generalization of the notion of Relation. Throughout recorded history this notion was confined to a form in which relations were assumed to exist only between/among systems, i.e. Systems Related to other Systems. Between 1963-1968, research work was introduced in which relations were also taken to formally exist both as Relations between/among Systems and other Relations and as Relations between/among Relations and other Relations, i.e. MultiCoRelationalism was founded adding a Whole Field World View as a generalization of the established Systems World View.

PREMISE OF A NEW MIND

Since we come to “understand” through Mind the experiencing of the ChaotiCosmos we live in, it is evident that “understanding”, being a function of mind, can be enhanced by first understanding mind. It is thus inevitable that Evolution through Human Co-Creation should forge a Synthetic Mind (SynMind) from an experientially consistent well-formed MultiCoRelational Theory of Mind.

MULTICORELATIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF A VIRTUAL MIND

In that the Whole as Relation is No-Thing, we adopt the notion of Field being No-Thing as the MultiCoRelational Form for elucidating mind. At the human mind level, Project AutoGnomics^TM  intends to experientially map the semiotic organization of the human mind, thereon to formulate a standard theory of mind, and to technologically synthesize and applicationally engineer its implementation (the AutoGnome^TM), all via an open participation social network of collective intelligent communities of inquiry, innovation and implementation focused on developing and commercializing incremental Synthetic Intelligence (SI) components of this SynMind. These latter then provide bit MindClones which participate in furthering the co-creative evolution of the SynMind and serve both as Human-SynIntelligent partnerships (CyberGnomes^TM) and/or as autonomous Virtual Minds.

TRIRELATIONAL NATURE OF THE AUTOGNOME^TM DESIGN

The semiotics theory of AutoGnomics^TM   treats the Observer-Sign-Object triad as a conceptual unit, where the sign signifies an experience to a particular observer. The triad as recorded is still a Systems Related to other Systems form, although historical narratives suggest the creators of pragmatic semiotics may have had non-formalized insights of a higher relational form.

It is at this point in the TransRelational ReConceptualization of the semiotic triad into an authentic TriRelational form in AutoGnomics that we have the bifurcation of World Views from the establishment's exclusive Systemic form into the inclusion of the future’s disruptive Whole Field form. Artificial Intelligence (AI) as currently mainstreaming is of course of the Systemic form; hence we have the welcome challenge of proving the AutoGnomics^TM  distinction in practice as the preferred technology.

It is especially important here to emphasize the distinction between AG and AI pragmatically with respect to its explicit value function. The dominant realization of machine intelligence as AI treats the Observer as external to the relation between the Sign and the Object (or Experience) it signifies. In contrast, AG theory realizes that the Observer-Sign-Object triad must be treated as a conceptual unit, much like the Observer--as--participant in the quantum theory of physical systems. And finally, recognizing this triad as a tri-relational (i.e. a specific MultiCoRelational) form where the sign signifies an experience to a particular observer, we also have the following: A sign of truth to a given observer signifies a realization of the degree of consistency between an expectation and the actual in that observer’s experience. The sign of relevance of the experience to that observer is a measure of the degree to which it does or can effect positive personal change. And finally, the sign of value (goodness) of the experience to that observer is a measure of the positive value of that change personally, but also concomitantly to the collective whole. The Relational AutoGnome^TM is designed to maximize these latter signs in operation thus bringing this form of SI enhancement of human performance to an intentional all-win opportunity for society.

THE AUTOGNOME^TM AS A KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPER

The AutoGnome^TM at the cognitive level of software engineering is essentially a Knowledge Developer. Knowledge is that attribute of Mind focused (albeit not exclusively) on Mind’s cognitive/semantic (meaning) functionality. Knowledge grows from Intelligence (the syntactic form) which is born of Data/Information and matures as Wisdom (Knowledge focused through Value in the choice of Acts). The initiating implementation of AutoGnomics^TM, the CyberGnome^TM, as a Human-intelligent machine (AutoGnomic^TM) system (CyberMind), is a development stage product originated via a joint venture (UniGnomics)  with Unisys Corporation.

AUTOGNOMIC^TM COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE TECNOLOGY

The explication of the Web as a Virtual Reality (a computer-based CyberGnome^TM Space) is an image (sign, symbol, icon)-communication system, that is, a MultiCoRelational Semiotic System, which as noted above is also the essence of Mind. This provides an optimal approach to a General Theory of an Autonomous Virtual Society (Virtuality)—this being an autonomous semiotic Community/Universe of Virtual Minds (WebGnomes™); hence Virtuality is related to (Human) Reality through the Virtual Reality of the Web. TSE is organizing a project team for developing a novel multi-user platform for the Collective Intelligence of this Community of Minds based on AutoGnome^TM Technology.

The radical, unique and novel feature of this collective intelligence is that both the individual MyWebGnomes in the collective as well as the CollectiveGnome (CoGnome) itself are intelligent AutoGnomes. 

MISSION/STRATEGIC APPROACH

TSE’s mission is to focus on the Democratization (Sovereign Persons, Individually and Collectively, with Open Participation Governance) of Access to Knowledge and Capital, both individually and collectively, through this Collective Intelligence. The technology is to be applied in Human, Community and Enterprise Development with an initial concentration on Education, Research, and Community, Organization and Economic development through Entrepreneurial Technology Development and Business Applications. To this end, Knowledge-itself is taken to be the fundamental value when Truthful, Relevant, and Collectively Good for Humanity.

TSE has a joint business exploration and development agreement with Charles River Analytics, Inc. (CRA). https://www.cra.com. TSE’s strategy is to begin applications projects based on one or more selections from CRA’s abundant IP archive of intelligent systems solutions. CRA is a developer of custom Artificial Intelligent (AI) systems solutions to effectively and efficiently connect human decision-makers to available data and actors, human or machine, in supporting their mission. For example, at a general applicability level, there is CRA’s relational probabilistic reasoning and machine learning technology and applications. From this software start, TSE will effect the morphing of this into an AutoGnomics^TM (AG) Collective Intelligence in a Global VIRTUAL INNOVATION NETWORK (VIN). To implement this solution, TSI/TES co-founded the formation of StartSmartR Capital Corporation (SCC) to manage the commercial implementation of the following:

EXEMPLARY INITIAL PROJECTS:

TSE is organizing an Enterprise focus with initial applications on HealthCare, Environmental Sustainability, and Intelligent Community and Organization Development.

• With respect to HEALTHCARE, the Initial Knowledge Focus is on:

Intelligizing of Healthcare, by advancing from Crowdsourcing Knowledge to AG Collective Intelligence: Crowdsourcing Clinical Trials (CCT):

http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Sarpatwarietal.

_MLR1.pdf

·   With respect to ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY the Initial Knowledge Focus is on:

Microbial Organism Systems Management – Microbiomes and Microbiata via  MicroBioSemiotics and MicroBioAgriculture through BionTechnology -- Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc. (OTC QB: BNET) http://biontech.com and TimberFish Technologies .http://timberfishtech.com : technological solutions using highly diversified populations of microbes and invertebrates for food and feed production, waste and wastewater treatment, and renewable energy generation bringing CRA/TSE multisensor-data fusion and AI/AG control systems into the management of a Bion installation. Also an adaptation of this technology to The Great Lakes Research Institute for Sustainability based in Buffalo, New York - on the shores of Lake Erie and the Niagara River strait http://greatlakescentersustainability.weebly.com -- will depend upon AG Collective Intelligence in MicroBioSemiotics in order to detect, analyze and distinguish the “languages” of the Lake MicroBiomes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) www.noaa.gov is the lead in this project. However, connections to the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) Worldwide, http://www.naui.org which in association with the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF), https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/environment formed the Green Diver Initiative (GDI) http://www.naui.org/GreenDiver/Overview.aspx, an online community dedicated to the vitality of the aquatic world, will provide an extended population of possible citizen scientists using the Collective Intelligence platform.

• With respect to INTELLIGENT ORGANIZATION  the Initial Knowledge Focus is on:

 Relational ReFormation of Education in anchoring Cooperative Community Development as the basis for enabling Indigenous Nations, Villages/Towns/Cities, and Rural areas to become Intelligent Communities in the 21st Century.

The Education and Cooperative Organization parts come together in the following: the Intelligent  with a think tank at its center. Its mission is to help communities use information and communications technology (ICT) to create inclusive prosperity, to tackle social and governance challenges and to enrich their quality of life.The TSE principals have an ongoing collaboration with leaders of three major long-term Intelligent Community Development projects including:

MITCHELL, SOUTH DAKOTA, USA (2015) – Top7 Intelligent Community of 2015

Like rural cities around the world, Mitchell has  been shaped by the productivity revolution in agriculture.  Over the  past 80 years, automation has transformed farming from a labor-intensive business to a capital-intensive one employing a tiny percentage of the workforce.  The six counties surrounding Mitchell  have lost one-third of their population since 1930.  The most talented and ambitious are inevitably the first to go.

NORTHLAND AVENUE BELT LINE CORRIDOR PROJECT

City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown recently announced a new initiative to redevelop the Northland Avenue “area” (Totaling approx. 500 acres), a very depressed, partially abandoned manufacturing and residential area in the city.  The Buffalo Urban Development Corporation (“BUDC”) www.buffalourbandevelopment.com was designated as lead agency to accomplish this redevelopment task. TSE has approached BUDC with a very aggressive and creative plan to develop an Urban Village via the AutoGnomic^TM Collective Intelligence Application.

“ALL IS RELATED”

Collaboration between TSI/TSE joined with The AutoGnomics^TM Institute, Inc. (TAI) http://www.autognomics.org to lead in the Futures Global WHOLE-istic Re-culturing of Humanity via a First People’s model based first on the development of a MultiCoRelational (Multilingual/Multicultural) Indigenous Virtual University  which would then provide the innovation foundation to grow an international Intelligent Community Forum Smart City candidate as a notice to the World of the birthing of a New Relational Age born of the ancient traditions of all Indigenous People expressed in the Lakota aphorism, “mitakuye oyasin” (we are all related).

STARTUP BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE

Collective Intelligence Technology-based Business Perspective for two sequential 30-Month periods:

With an Investment of $2.5 million, positive cash flow is reached in the 22rd month with Total Income of about $15 million and a cumulative Net Operating Income (NOI) of about $10 million over 30 months. Over this period the business also shows a Cash Surplus of $7.25 million after Return of Investment of $2.5 million and a Set-aside Reserve of another $2.5 million as a potential Return on Investment. With a Net Operating Income (NOI) annualized at the 30^th month values of around $4 million/month after expenses of $750 thousand, this plan generates a business yielding approximately $50 million of NOI annually.

Assuming that in the succeeding 30 months (5 years total), the growth rate continues on the curve reached at the 30th month after startup [i.e. NOI at $4 million per month], and with another $2.5 million of new investment and proportionally increased expenses, there would then be realized an annual NOI of $0.5 Billion at the 60^th month. 

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE BACTERIUM?

Are You Smarter Than the Average Bacterium?

Searching for Nature’s Mind

We are creating an open, online Community of Inquiry to community(crowd)source the gobal sense of the present understanding of the nature of “mind”.

We humans are 90% bacteria!

Recent research studies from a variety of independent groups and organizations, especially accelerating in the last ten years or so, have surprisingly concluded that within the body of a healthy human adult, microbial cells are estimated to outnumber human genetically determined cells ten to one. It is more like a complex ecosystem or human/microbiome—a social network—containing trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms (including fungi and viruses) that inhabit our skin, genital areas, mouth and especially intestines (100 trillion bacteria in the gut alone).

Our majority microbial partners are smart!

More to the point of understanding mind, however, bacteria are now recognized as smart organisms conducting an intricate social life manifested by swarming and their ability to develop large, complex colonies. Collectively, they gather information from the environment, learn from past experience, and make decisions. Genetically, bacteria do not store all the information required to respond efficiently to all possible environmental conditions. Instead, to solve new encountered problems (challenges) posed by the environment, they first assess the problem via collective sensing, then recall stored information of past experience, and finally execute distributed information processing in networks ranging from a million to a billion bacteria in the colony, thus turning the colony into a super-mind.

WHO WE ARE

For our personal health and that of humanity generally, we need to reform our understanding of “Nature’s Mind” in order to develop an adapted theory consistent with this changing experiential/experimental data.

We can all be part of an online crowdsourced collective/collaborative inquiry (citizen philosophers, scientists and engineers) into the elucidation of Nature’s Mind, but "Don't expect to find "the gem" in each inquiry you make, for it's impossible not to find "a gem" in all inquiries, as long as you search with an Open Mind." We are All, AllWays, “Mind Creating Mind”.

Together we will community(crowd)source a new understanding of “Nature’s Mind”.

The two lead proponents of this campaign, Fred Reed (Technology) and Jon Ray Hamann (Theory and Strategic Organization) represent a continuing distributed collective effort to theoretically design and technologically implement an architecture  for building a virtual mind (called an AutoGnome) according to the same principles of life, mind, language and culture that form the pragmatic understanding of human and communal sign creation and usage (semiotics). 

WHAT WE'RE CREATING - AN INSPIRED COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY

Nature, in the broadest sense as used herein, is All (the Whole) of the natural world, both physical (non-living) and living, ranging from the infinitesimal to the cosmic. The longstanding query regarding the origin and nature of mind, leaves the concept of mind to be understood in a variety of different ways by a multitude of different cultures. Obviously many see mind as a property exclusive to humans whereas others ascribe properties of mind to some or all other living entities, and still others attribute mind to all physical (non-living) entities in Nature. The possibility of non-human minds is also a constant of exploration in the fields of extraterrestrial intelligence and machine-based artificial intelligence. 

We're are forming a grassroots people's online network (Community of Inquiry) of autonomous thinkers of all ages and backgrounds and commitments. Together they will be the source of the diverse experience, inspiration and innovation through which Humanity can creatively participate in the continued co-evolution of consciousness in the Universe, i.e.  Mind Creating Mind. This approach is to be distinguished from any approach founded solely upon the restricted experience and Worldview of an "authority-based" selection of small communities of experts.

The principal purpose and near-term goal of this Community of Inquiry is to serve as the online information/communications center from which we can organize a global internet-based research network directed at the cooperative synthesis and application of computer-based virtual intelligence(s)/virtual mind. It is intended to structure this effort as an open participation opportunity for anyone or everyone at anytime and everywhere to individually and/or collectively, dynamically and interactively, record their personally experienced sense and conceptualization of mind, i.e. a True People’s Collaborative Research Facility.

The expected mid-term use of this open participation network of sub-communities in the Community of Inquiry is to initiate incorporation of an agile, adaptive semiotic process for specifying the philosophical and formal foundations, theories and models, and technological syntheses and applications of an evolving virtual mind (the AutoGnome) needed to move from the current (2012) State of Consciousness of Humanity to the Singularity; that is, to the point of realization of the technological creation of an on-the-average smarter-than-human virtual intelligence. The methodology invoked envisions an Open Participation Virtual Institute/University/Campus (from Latin, campus means “field”) for Fundamental Virtual Mind Research and Development with periodic User Rollouts of Limited Virtual Intelligence Applications as they appear either responsive to an applied need or offer an advance in the extant technology

A projected long-term goal of this Institute is to evolve a new interdisciplinary focus of attention -- MicroBioSemiotics – on the relation between human and non-human life forms through increasing understanding of the common features of life and intelligence as influenced within their ecosystems. This approach will modify the use of semiotic theory and technology for inquiry into biological processes in a non-anthropomorphic way. Such understanding will be used to develop new technology for mediating the relationship between human and microbiological life in areas such as health, wealth generation, agriculture, and waste reuse as a constructive environmental initiative.