How Many Issues Do You Have?

I saw someone with this funny iPhone case in Starbucks.

It says, "More Issues Than Vogue."

So I was curious how many issues of Vogue have there been...

And I learned that they have published this fashion, beauty, and culture magazine since 1892--more than 120 years!

And in the Vogue archive, they claim to have "more than 400,000 pages in full color."

I suppose even some of the biggest nuts out there rarely have more "issues" (and pages)...although maybe many would certainly come close. 

But Vogue wins! ;-)

How Many Issues Do You Have?

Records Manager Appreciation Day!

Records Management is not about 45s, 33s, or 8-track music collections, but managing key document and electronic records. 

It's critically important for an organization to be able to archive and access needed information for managing their business, and enabling transparency and accountability. 

Managing records saves us time and money in the long run.

Moreover, as information workers in an information economy, information is power! And we need to be able to get to information, whenever and wherever we need it. 

While records may not be sexy unless you're Lady Gaga or Madonna, information is the lifeblood of the 21st century, so say thank you to your records management and information access professionals today! ;-)

Records Manager Appreciation Day!

To Archive Or Not

Farhad Manjoo had a good piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Forever Internet vs. the Erasable Internet.

The question he raises is whether items on the Internet should be archived indefinitely or whether we should be able to delete postings. 

Manjoo uses the example of Snapshot where messages and photos disappear a few seconds after the recipient opens them--a self-destruct feature.

It reminded me of Mission Impossible, where each episode started with the tape recording of the next mission's instructions that would then self-destruct in five seconds...whoosh, gone. 

I remember seeing a demo years ago of an enterprise product that did this for email messages--where you could lock down or limit the capability to print, share, screenshot, or otherwise retain messages that you sent to others. 

It seemed like a pretty cool feature in that you could communicate what you really thought about something--instead of an antiseptic version--without being in constant fear that it would be used against you by some unknown individual at some future date. 

I thought, wow, if we had this in our organizations, perhaps we could get more honest ideas, discussion, vetting, and better decision making if we just let people genuinely speak their minds. 

Isn't that what the First Amendment is really all about--"speaking truth to power"(of course, with appropriate limits--you can't just provoke violence, incite illegal actions, damage or defame others, etc.)?

Perhaps, not everything we say or do needs to be kept for eternity--even though both public and private sector organizations benefit from using these for "big data" analytics for everything from marketing to national security. 

Like Manjoo points out, when we keep each and every utterance, photo, video, and audio, you create a situation where you have to "constantly police yourself, to create a single, stultifying profile that restricts spontaneous self-expression."

While one one hand, it is good to think twice before you speak or post--so that you act with decency and civility--on the other hand, it is also good to be free to be yourself and not a virtual fake online and in the office. 

Some things are worth keeping--official records of people, places, things, and events--especially those of operational, legal or historical significance and even those of sentimental value--and these should be archived and preserved in a time appropriate way so that we can reference, study, and learn from them for their useful lives. 

But not everything is records-worthy, and we should be able to decide--within common sense guidelines for records management, privacy, and security--what we save and what we keep online and off. 

Some people are hoarders and others are neat freaks, but the point is that we have a choice--we have freedom to decide whether to put that old pair of sneakers in a cardboard box in the garage, trash it, or donate it. 

Overall, I would summarize using the photo in this post of the vault boxes, there is no need to store your umbrella there--it isn't raining indoors. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Spinster Cardigan)

To Archive Or Not

Willy Wonka Wears Google Glass TOO

I can only say that my fascination with Google continues to grow daily. 

Years ago, I used to joke, "What is this G-O-O-G-L-E?"

But now, I know and marvel at how Google is information!

And every type of information from news and facts to shopping and entertainment: 

Research is Google.
eCommerce is Google. 
Entertainment is Google. 

Google this...Google that. 

Archive, index, search, discover, access...learn, grow.

Google has quite literally ushered in a new age of enlightenment, no really!

The focus is on information...Google's mission statement is:

"Organize the world's information and make it universally acceptable and useful."

If you believe that knowledge and learning is one of the core underpinnings for personal growth and global development then you can appreciate how Google has been instrumental in unleashing the information age we are living in. 

Of course, information can be used for good and for evil--we still have free choice. 

But hopefully, by building not only our knowledge, but also understanding of risks, consequences, each other, and our purpose in life--we can use information to do more good than harm (not that we don't make mistakes, but they should be part of our learning as opposed to coming from malevolent intentions). 

Google is used for almost 2/3 of all searches.

Google has over 5 million eBooks and 18 million tunes.

Google's YouTube has over 4 billion hours of video watched a month.

Google's Blogger is the largest blogging site with over 46 million unique visitors in a month. 

But what raises Google as the information provider par excellence is not just that they provide easy to use search and access to information, but that they make it available anytime, anywhere.

Google Android powers 2/3 of global smartphones. 

Google Glass has a likely market potential for wearable IT and augmented reality of $11B by 2018.

Google's Driverless Car will help "every person [traveling] could gain lost hours back for working, reading, talking, or searching the Internet."

Google Fiber is bringing  connection speeds 100x faster than traditional networking to Kansas City, Provo, and Austin. 

Google is looking by 2020 to bring access to the 60% of the world that is not yet online. 

Dr. Astro Teller who oversees Google[x] lab and "moonshot factory" says, "we are serious as a heart attack about making the world a better place," and he compares themselves to Willy Wonka's magical chocolate factory. (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

I like chocolate and information--and yes, both make the world a better place. ;-)

(Source Photo: here by (a)artwork)

Willy Wonka Wears Google Glass TOO

From Holocaust To Holograms

My father told me last week how my mom had awoken in the middle of night full of fearful, vivid memories of the Holocaust. 

In particular, she remembers when she was just a six year-old little girl, walking down the street in Germany, and suddenly the Nazi S.S. came up behind them and dragged her father off to the concentration camp, Buchenwald--leaving her alone, afraid, and crying on the street. And so started their personal tale of oppression, survival, and escape. 

Unfortunately, with an aging generation of Holocaust survivors--soon there won't be anyone to tell the stories of persecution and genocide for others to learn from.

In light of this, as you can imagine, I was very pleased to see the University of Southern California (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and the USC Shoah Foundation collaborating on a project called "New Dimensions In Testimony" to use technology to maintain the enduring lessons of the Holocaust into the future.

The project involves developing holograms of Holocaust survivors giving testimony about what happened to them and their families during this awful period of discrimination, oppression, torture, and mass murder.

ICT is using a technology called Light Stage that uses multiple high-fidelity cameras and lighting from more than 150 directions to capture 3-D holograms. 

There are some interesting videos about Light Stage (which has been used for many familiar movies from Superman to Spiderman, Avatar, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) at their Stage 5 and Stage 6 facilities. 

To make the holograms into a full exhibit, the survivors are interviewed and their testimony is combined with natural language processing, so people can come and learn in a conversational manner with the Holocaust survivor holograms. 

Mashable reports that these holograms may be used at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. where visitors will talk "face-to-face" with the survivors about their personal experiences--and we will be fortunate to hear it directly from them. ;-)

(Photo from USC ICT New Dimensions In Technology)

From Holocaust To Holograms

A Seeing Eye

This video from NOVA is an amazing display of the surveillance capabilities we have at our disposal.

ARGUS-IS Stands for Automated Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System.

Like a "Persistent Stare," ARGUS provides continuous monitoring and tracking over a entire city, but also it has the ability to simply click on an area (or multilple areas--up to 65 at a time) to zoom in and see cars, people, and even in detail what individuals are wearing or see them even waving their arms!

Created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ARGUS uses 368 imaging chips and provides a streaming video of 1.8 gigapixels (that is 1.8 billion pixels) of resolution and attaches to the belly of a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone. 

ARGUS captures 1 million terabytes of a data a day, which is 5,000 hours of high-definition footage that can be stored and returned to as needed for searching events or people. 

The Atlantic (1 February 2013) points out how using this over an American city could on one hand, be an amazing law enforcement tool for catching criminals, but on the other hand raise serious privacy concerns like when used by government to collect data on individuals or by corporations to market and sell to consumers. 

What is amazing to me is not just the bird's eye view that this technology provides from the skies above, but that like little ants, we are all part of the mosaic of life on Earth.  We all play a part in the theater of the loving, the funny, the witty, and sometimes the insane. 

My Oma used to say in German that G-d see everything, but now people are seeing virtually everything...our actions for good or for shame are visible, archived, and searchable. ;-)

A Seeing Eye

You Can Better The World

I am really excited about this new Social Media application called Betterific.

It looks a lot like Twitter but is focused on ideas to better the world. 

Every Betterific starts under the heading of "Wouldn't it be better if" and you fill in the rest. 

Whether you have ideas for improving products, companies, policies, or even the way we treat each other--this is a great way to get your ideas out there. 

You also add tags (metadata) to make the ideas more easily searchable by others. 

Like Twitter you can follow topics or other innovative people, friends, and family members. 

A great feature is that you can actually vote--thumbs up or down--for the ideas, and through crowdsourcing great ideas can rise to the top.

There is also a bar at the top where you can look up better ideas by search term--so individuals, organizations, or brands can harvest this information and hopefully act on them.

One of the featured Betterifics when you sign in online is from someone who suggested that toilet seats come with a pedal lift lid (like a garbage can)--being a little germophobic myself, I vote definitely yes to this one!

I hope this type of app catches on so we can all innovate and get our ideas out there simply and clearly.

This has the potential to become a tremendous archive for great ideas that can be accessed, prioritized and most importantly implemented--so we can all really make a difference for the better. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

You Can Better The World

How Good Is Our DNA

Where do we store the vast and expanding information in our universe? 

These days it's typically in 0 and 1s--binary code--on computer chips. 

But according to the Wall Street Journal (18 August 2012), in the future, it could be encoded in the genetic molecules of DNA.

DNA has "vastly more capacity for their size then today's computer chips and drives"--where a thumb size amount could store the entire Internet--or "1.5 milligrams, about half the weight of a house ant could hold 1 petabyte of data, which equals to 1,000 1-terabyte hard drives."

As opposed to binary code, DNA will store information as strands made up of four base chemicals: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). 

Just like letters in the alphabet make up words, sequencing of these 4 base chemicals can store biological instructions (e.g. 3 billion for a person) or any other information. 

Using DNA for storage involves 4 key steps: 

1) Encoding information into binary code
2) Synthesizing the chemical molecules
3) Sequencing them in a string to hold the information
4) Decoding the molecules back into information

Overall, DNA is seen as a "stable, long-term archive for ordinary information"--such as books, files, records, photos, and more.

Researchers have actually been able to store an entire book of genetic engineering--with 53,426 words--into actual DNA, and "if you wanted to have your library encoded in DNA, you could probably do that now."

With the cost declining for synthesizing and sequencing DNA, this type of data storage may become commercially practical in the future.

And with the amount of information roughly doubling every 2 years, large amounts of reliable and cost-effective memory remains an important foundation for the future of computing. 

Frankly, when we talk about storing so much information in these minute areas, it is completely mind-boggling--really no different than the corollary of imaging all the stars in vastness of sky.

It is almost incredible to me that we have people that can not only understand these things, but make them work for us. 

With NASA's Curiosity Rover exploring Mars over 34 million miles away, and geneticists storing libraries of information in test tubes of DNA coding, we are truly expanding our knowledge at the edges of the great and small in our Universe. 

How far can we continue to go before we discover the limitations to our quest or the underlying mysteries of life itself?

What is also curious to me is how on one hand, we are advancing our scientific and technological knowledge as a society, yet on the other, as individuals, we seem to be losing our knowledge for even basic human survival. 

How many people these days, are proficient on the computer in an office setting, but couldn't survive in the wilderness for even a few days. 

Our skills sets are changing drastically--this is the age of the microwave, but knowing how to cook is a lost art to many. 

So are we really getting smarter or just engaging our minds in a new direction--I hope we have the DNA to do more than just one! ;-)

(Source Photo: adapted from here with attribution to Allen Gathmen)

How Good Is Our DNA

The Internet Lives

While the Internet, with all its information, is constantly changing with updates and new information, what is great to know is that it is being preserved and archived, so present and future generations can "travel back" and see what it looked liked at earlier points in time and have access to the wealth of information contained in it.

This is what the Internet Archive does--this non-profit organization functions as the Library of the Internet. It is building a "permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format."

In the Internet Archive you will find "texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages" going back to 1996 until today.

I tested the Archive's Wayback Machine with my site The Total CIO and was able to see how it looked like back on October 24, 2010.

It is wonderful to see our digital records being preserved by the Internet Archive, just like our paper records are preserved in archives such as The Library of Congress, which is considered "the world's most comprehensive record of human creativity and knowledge"), The National Archives, which preserves government and historical records, and The National Security Archive, a research institute and library at The George Washington University that "collects and publishes declassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act...[on] topics pertaining to national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States."

The Internet Archive is located in San Francisco (and my understanding is that there is a backup site in Egypt).

The Internet Archive is created using spider programs that crawl the publicly available pages of the Internet and then copy and store data, which is indexed 3 dimensionally to allow browsing over multiple periods of times.

The Archive now contains roughly 2 petabytes of information, and is growing by 20 terabytes per month. According to The Archive, the data is stored on hundreds (by my count it should be about 2,000) of slightly modified x86 machines running on Linux O/S with each storing approximately a terabyte of data.

According to the FAQs, it does take some time for web pages to show up--somewhere between 6 months and 2 years, because of the process to index and transfer to long-term storage, and hopefully the process will get faster, but in my opinion, having an organized collection and archiving of the Internet is well worth the wait.

Ultimately, the Internet Archive may someday be (or be part of) the Time Capsule of human knowledge and experience that helps us survive human or natural disaster by providing the means to reconstitute the human race itself.

(Source Photo: here)

The Internet Lives