Summary: It's about T. Toffoli's marvelous "knowledge home" endeavor: an indepth effort to remap the use of computers around individual needs and thinking, rather than vice versa. Much work for all to reach this end:

For consumers -- becoming more knowledgeable about knowledge making, understanding more about the processes and subprocesses of their own information-dependent lives.

For policy makers and the public: coming to understand that all stand to gain from restructuring of the industry, centering it on the individual tailoring of knowledge management using small modules which can be configured differently for different needs.

For software engineers, programmers, financiers, and executives: a respect for the human potential movement, longer-term goals than one year budgeting will allow, and a greater understanding of the deep structure/surface structure relations of effective human behavior.

I finish with a short critique of myopia and amorality (and destructiveness, even if unintended) of computer-centric biasing of policy-making and theorizing.

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I read [via Seb Paquet and Jim McGee ] T. Toffoli's in-depth summary of the the nature, the need for and the uses of the "Personal Knowledge Home" ( A Knowledge Home: Personal knowledge structuring in a computer world). Individuals have have the benefit of any software appliance, Toffoli argues, which allows us to build our personal knowledge base from individual core psychological processes outwards, as it were, to the world.

Toffoli comments:

Unfortunately, for most people today the computer is an alien entity over which they have little understanding, control or real ownership. What is on the market is so powerful and cheap (and, in a shallow sense, so easy to use) and gives access to so many resources that one can't turn down the bargain. Yet it is not clear what it is exactly that we purchase and how much ownership we can effectively exercise over it, as cultural dumping discourages us from developing tthose native skills that might allow us to make the computer our own. Thus, we travel the Information Expressway, we do business at "Information Motels", but do not yet have an Information Home of our own to go to!

He speaks of the societal and organizational momentum working to place computer literacy [later taken to task as relatively mindless-- to be replaced with computational literacy, instead] like the book,into the list of, in effect, compulsory tools for competent and recognized particiption within the social matrix. Reality principle-wise individuals will pursue computer [computational] literacy or be marginalized [ie have the likelihood of survival of "me and mine" decreased]. If this is true, our survival-related strategies are certainly influenced, probably confined, without the acquisition of computational literacy. Toffoli argues that we have three choices:

To physically eliminate the threat (e.g., the Luddite movement, the Kaczynski case)

To pocket the bribe of immediate gratification and ignore the long-term challenge. This risks letting ourselves as human individuals, and eventually humanity itself, slowly be pushed into irrelevance vis-a-vis the [increasingly computer-dominated, computer-mediated world of human experience]

To strive to extend our personal capabilities by grafting computer resources onto our own individual mind and culture-so that the power of the invididual may grow hand-in-hand with that of computers. (paper's preface, i)

The whole paper is thought-provoking, interesting, intriguing. I add my commendations to those of Seb and Jim. Since I've run out of time (and probably your patience) I can only say that Toffoli's focus on the enhancement of individual experience and extensive psychological/developmental background are quite an exciting and worthwhile read. I believe that any market development plan that derives from these sources will lead to more frequent achievement of worthy end goals.

As a finish I'll note one or two other ideas, concerns really, in an attempt to give full dimension to my excitement with the paper .

Note 1: On the subject of "immediate gratification"

I am concerned with the paltry means which we provide for the self-empowerment of so many. At first blush Tofolli has convinced me that the issues of a) the nonmodular present software "packages", and his beliefs concerning consumer motivations for accepting what is offered [however poorly related the offering might be to the goals and subgoals of becoming a better and more empowered version of oneself] are truly obstacles that must be overcome. That said,however inspired, the analysis appears impressionistic to support the mountain moving that lies ahead.

I would would like to see this vision verified using a more grounded, exhaustive and politically compelling methodology. After all, we are talking about hopes and beliefs concerning the next, say, 25 years, not to speak of the years that will be built upon the foundation laid in the 25 years we do focus upon.

This can be done by rigorous planning followed by cross-sectional and longitudinal study of perceived present and future user needs as well as of present usage patterns in multiiple social and cultural settings. I'm convinced that the dynamics revealed through such analysis will be both useful and politically compelling, thus justifying the initial research outlay. Until results with such a basis are available I wouldn't guess that politicians or business leaders or the electorate, as a whole, will be willing to jump into legislation, financing and election fights (via platforms of candidates and of interest groups) based on the present, relatively informal analysis of computer behavior of the richest segment (English speaking Americans??) of the 10.4% of humanity that actually has internet access [according to Global Reach].

Note 2: On the subject of "centaur-like symbiosis".
I was fascinated by the imagery in following passage.

Obviously, one of our goals is to verify the above premises; namely, that the achievement of a certain degree of "universal computermanship" is indeed within the reach of human nature, and, once attained would get positive reinforcement from its rewards to the individual. We stress that we have in mind is not merely a free ticket to an information "bread and circus," but such [an] open-ended expansion of one's faculties as only personal competence in the use of a resource can give. The centaur-like symbiosis [emboldening mine, SPH] between man and horse (as contrasted to flying [in] a plane as a passenger) or the entente between hunter and dog might illustrate such a relationship between a human and an external but intimately personal resource. [these images are quite distinct from the physical merger, i.e., the cyborg)

"Bread and circus" is a good companion phrase to accompany "immediate gratification." Both are indicative of the distractions we all face when thinking of following any "high" path of development. This view is further detailed by the distillation from 'anthropologically'-based resources to the effect that the average individual adult is "ignorant, greedy, gullible and lazy" while at the same time being "not stupid, [?] verbally articulate, alert, curious, interested in life, and willing to go to great lengths for the sake of self, kin and friends."(Knowledge Home,p4) It would be, therefore, no small challenge to get this average, obviously conflicted, individual to achieve the centaur-like symbiosis with a her/his knowledge-home.

Assuming that this transformation is possible, for the moment, I am also concerned here with accuracy and even the ethics, of societal assumptions so monolithic that, in this world of 6.5 billion, it is assumed that the computer and its benefits must be at the center of any vision of what is achieveable and good for the members of the hundreds of cultures and subcultures that exist on this planet. I am worried that we may pursue this vision because we, the computer-using-internet-fascinated, not only benefit from but have become ensorceled by, for want of a better term, "the computer life", this leaving us incapable of clearly envisioning a future reality which has any chance of being suitable to ALL of humanity.

I am also concerned, but less so, that we pursue this vision for all of humanity

because it pays our bills[i.e., we unconsciously select only those futures which offer the promise of continuing to pay our bills in the present manner]

rather than

because it has shown its deep relevance to each thread of the variegated tapestry of hard-earned, legitimate life strategies that exist on the face of this planet.

[Dr 3+ typo edit & Title Augmentation: 6/2/03]