Category Archives: JOURNEYS IN PROGRESS

Relief

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As reported in the Preservation Planning Journey in this Blog, my document collection has just been exported from the Document Management System (DMS) that it has been in for the last 22 years, and now resides in some 16,000 Windows folders. I feel a strong sense of relief that I will no longer have to nurture two complicated systems – the DMS and its underlying SQL database – in order to access the documents.

Over the years I have had to take special measures to ensure the survival of the collection through 5 changes of hardware, one laptop theft and a major system crash. This included:

  • trying to configure and maintain complex systems I had no in-depth knowledge of
  • paying out hundreds of pounds for extra specialist support (despite the software cost and most general support being very kindly provided free because this has always been a research-oriented exercise)
  • engaging with support staff over phone, email, screen sharing and in person for hundreds of hours to overcome problems (it starts to add up over 22 years…)
  • backing-up and protecting large amounts of data (40Gb total) regularly and reliably.

That’s not to say that DMSs are not worth using – they have characteristics which are essential for high usage, multi-user, systems in which regulatory and legal requirements must be met. However, such constraints don’t apply to the individual. The stark conclusion has to be that, for a Personal Information System, using a DMS was serious overkill.

I guess I’d already come to that conclusion back in 2012 when I set up a filing system for my non-work files using an Excel index and a single Windows Folder for all the documents. That has worked pretty well, however it’s slightly different from the way the newly converted work document collection is stored which has a separate Folder for each Ref No as shown below.

Experience so far with the Windows Folder system indicates that it is very easy and quick to find documents by scrolling through the Folders – quicker than it was using the DMS since there is no need to load an application and invoke a series of commands: Windows Explorer is immediately accessible. As for the process of adding new documents, that too seems much simpler and quicker than having to import files into a DMS, because it involves using the same Windows file system within which the digital files reside in the first place.

Its early days yet so it’ll be a while before I have an in-depth feel for how well other aspects of the system, such as backup requirements, are working; watch this space.

Dust Jacket Augmentation

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I have a bookcase of hardbacks interspersed with the odd paperback. When I started bookbinding last year I decided to turn the paperbacks into hardbacks (something I’d done as a school librarian many years ago). The first one turned out quite well: it was a Pan paperback and I photographed the cover after I had removed it so that I could print out a dust jacket for it.

After that, the cover was cut into front, back and spine, and each of the three pieces glued onto the new hardcover. I was able to use inside sleeves of the dust jacket I created in PowerPoint to reproduce summary text about the author and the book which was present on pages at the front and back of the book (see a previous post about how to create and print out dust jackets).

With this experience under my belt, I started on my next paperback – a history of the Kodak UK Rugby Club for which I played a few games in the 1970s. As before, I photographed the cover after removing it, and set about creating the dust jacket in PowerPoint.

However, this book included no summary text and the back of the cover was blank. I realised that here was a great opportunity to include some additional material from my memento collection. I duly placed copies of the 6 pages of the Club’s December 1976 newsletter on the back cover, and copies of 6 of the selection slips I had received to play in various matches in 1973 on the back inside sleeve. On the front inside sleeve I wrote some words about my rugby playing career and my time with the Kodak Rugby Club.

I do like having glossy covers on books, and this experience has convinced me that a dust jacket can offer even more. It can also be a great non-invasive way to include additional personal material which is then much more accessible on a bookshelf rather than trapped away in a folder in a cupboard. Regardless of such additions the books still look great on the bookshelf.

The Mutability of Books

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There is little point in keeping things if you are not going to enjoy them and/or use them. By applying digital technology, collections can be exploited, made visible, and brought to life. There are a huge number of ways in which you can relate items together, tell stories about them, and use digital technology to present the results in some form or other.  This particular journey will look at ways in which books can be used to exploit the contents of collections.

Since the common experience of books is of finished, immutable, items, the idea of using books as vehicles for exploiting the contents of a collection may seem a bit strange. However, there are a surprising number of ways in which this can be achieved including creating your own books, adding dust jackets, creating portfolio boxes and slip cases, and including additional documents and artefacts into the fabric of a book.  These are some of the possibilities I shall be exploring in this journey.

There is one way of doing this that many people are already familiar with – creating a Photobook.  This capability is widely and cheaply available on the internet through services such as Snapfish, Blurb, Photobox and Truprint, to name but a few; and many people have either created and/or been shown the Photobooks they supply. However, although such services are designed primarily to assemble and print a set of photos into a bound book, It is perfectly feasible to include images of artefacts and documents, as well as descriptive text. They are very versatile and can produce great looking results: this is a link to my first attempt – a seventy page book of my retirement cards and work experiences – and I subsequently produced a fifty page 90th birthday book for my mother. These experiences have convinced me that Photobooks can be used very effectively for all sorts of things and I shall be reporting on my creation of another Photobook later on in this journey.

Keeping on the rails at Christmas

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If you have picture rails in your house, they can be used to hang Christmas cards on a line. However, picture hooks are designed to be pulled directly downwards, and a sideways force just pulls them along. What’s needed are some weighty Christmas-themed framed pictures which could be brought out each year with the other Christmas decorations and hung on the Xmas card line picture hooks to keep them in place. The pictures could be permanent or the frames could have slots for different things each year such as photos of last year’s Christmas party, or the best of last year’s cards.

SPARDS

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It was the combination of my mother saying that she was finding it increasingly difficult to write legibly in over a hundred Christmas cards, and the presence of Alexa in our house, that made me think that we need SPARDS – spoken Christmas cards. They would have recording and playback capabilities so that you could just take one out of the pack you’ve just bought and start talking to the person that’s next on your Christmas Spard list. How nice for the person receiving it, to just make a cup of tea, put it on the mantelpiece, and sit back and relax to listen to your recorded missive and greetings for Christmas and the New Year.

Throwbacks

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The inspiration for this thread for Ideas came from a paper-based Ideas Book which I set up in 1972. It didn’t really get many entries and some of them were more reflection than specific ideas; and it’s lain dormant for many years. So, I’ve just scanned and destroyed the physical Ideas Book; however, for completeness, I’ve recorded below some of the items from it (suitably summarised where necessary).

Throwback 1 – 08Jan1972 – The idea of an ideas book

I guess the first idea to go into this Ideas Book must be the idea of having an Ideas Book. Basically, I think that, although thought is of paramount importance, thought without action is a great waste, both of time and – yes – ideas! So, in future, if, sorry – when, I get some crazy idea – something completely original and far out (like establishing a World Tune Library with a cataloguing system based on every possible combination of notes over, say, a two minute period; when a new tune is sent in to the library it is played into an analogue/digital computer, and this would then produce a ‘catalogue number’ – it would be most interesting to see just how many more tunes were available at any one time), then I will write it down and it will be on record to act upon, elaborate, or even just to read over and laugh! Something quite amusing about this Ideas Book is that maybe the only idea I ever put into it that ever gets acted on will be this first idea to have an Ideas Book….

Throwback 2 – 11Jan1972 – A light design

A light-come-ceiling decoration system could be constructed out of hollow cylinders made of stiff white paper of varying lengths – width 32cm with 2cm of that used for overlap and the varying height resulting in holes of about 10cm width at various different levels. A reflector could be made by covering a sheet of stiff card with bacon foil (to which the vertical cylinders could be secured) which could be fixed to the ceiling using aerofix)

Throwback 3 – 20May1972 – The soundproofing stubber

The vast quantities of cigarette stubs that are wasted could be used as sound proofing material by manufacturing attractive boxes which have a stubber through which the tip would be released into an inner, cheap and recyclable, container which could be removed and sent to a sound proofing company. Profits could be made from the sale of decorative external boxes and from the sale of sound proofing material made from used tips. Stubbing would be cleaner and more efficient; and there would be a reduction in cigarette tip pollution.

Throwback 4 – 21May1972 – Investigating the warping point

Our experience of the world tells us that there is a causal factor for everything. When I look at the stars I think about who or what put them there, because logic informs me that there must be an answer. As I think about this question I assimilate all the relevant information I have until there is maximum capacity thought but an inability to provide an answer. The result is a split second of total confusion. It would be interesting to see what electroencephalograph readings appear when this point – the warping point – is reached. I wonder if other people have the same experience, and, if so, would the measures vary depending on the level of comprehension that different  people have of the question? Would the measures change over time as people increase their comprehension of the question?

Throwback 5 – 01Jan1984 – Simultaneous phoning and computing

It would be useful to have a unit that would interface between a Type 96A jack plug and a home’s telephones/computers. The unit would enable, at the very least, the simultaneous use of the telephone and the use of the computer over the networks.

Throwback 6 – 01Jan1984 – Game designer CBT – and the potential for progs

A computer-based training program could help children design the logic of a computer game i.e. the design specification prior to programming. A program like that could sell for £1 a time. With the right kit at home and a link to the networks, you could design, build and test such a CBT program in the space of 24 hours at home and be selling it immediately over the networks. If it was a novel and good enough idea the mass network market would soon provide 25,000 purchasers; so you could have made £25,000 within 48 hours of first having had the idea.

Throwback 7 – 28Dec1996 – Crucial pursuits

There are five crucial pursuits for members of the human race:

  • Making other individual humans feel good through love, tenderness, intimacy, caring, understanding, and good deeds.
  • Creating the conditions for other humans to have better lives.
  • Learning and understanding about the world and universe about us and about our fellow humans and the way we live.
  • Learning and understanding the origins of humankind and the important findings, discoveries, secrets and developments that humankind has made and encountered.
  • Learning and understanding the origins, secrets, and meaning of the universe and its relevance to ourselves and humankind.

NORNOMOT (nora-no-mo)

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Sometimes you hear about people who are always invited to events but never host any themselves. Similarly, some people don’t respond to communications or Xmas cards; and it’s not uncommon for presents sent to growing child relatives to remain unacknowledged or thanked for. In all such situations the giver begins to feel a little aggrieved with the situation, but perhaps feels it inappropriate to raise the matter directly with the individual concerned. To assist all those in such circumstances, it might help if there was an unobtrusive but clear way of signifying dissatisfaction.  Perhaps a code could be attached to the bottom of an address or invitation in the same vein as SWALK (sealed with a loving kiss). I suggest NORNOMOT (pronounced nora-no-mo) standing for No Reciprocity (or Response) No More Of This. Maybe the greeting card manufacturers could create special NORNOMOT cards which include pictures of a Last  Chance Saloon.

The Minimiser

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I’ve been reading an increasing number of reports about how much time people are spending on their mobiles and of the many negative effects of such usage. Perhaps it’s time, therefore, for the emergence of a new breed of app explicitly designed to minimise one’s usage of the mobile. It would be capable of taking a whole variety of steps to reduce the amount of email you get; to summarise incoming communications for you; and to ask searching questions of you about new apps you want to load and new contacts you want to add. It would measure and report your usage of the mobile, and advise on ways that you can cut down the amount of time you are spending on it or reorganise your usage patterns so as to improve your quality of life.

U6.4 A summary view of the OFC future

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Taking all the material from Units 6.1-6.3 into account, it looks like there will be a period of steady evolution before we start to encounter AI entities with the ability to do things autonomously. During this evolutionary period, the main individual applications that we use will become increasingly sophisticated and central to our lives; and we will make increasing use of applications and internet services which embed a degree of AI expertise and the ability to learn, and we will start to think they are normal and very useful. The amount of digital material we possess will continue to grow. It will become increasingly important to make arrangements for our digital accounts and possessions to be managed after we die. More and more physical objects will contain chips which we can interrogate and control through our computer systems. We will grow used to interacting with our computer systems by voice as well as by keyboard; and we will probably start to get used to virtual reality experiences.

At some point, the computer manufacturers will produce products in which our primary interaction with the system will be via a single AI entity. This will seem normal given what we have experienced before. The AI entity will take care of all maintenance, including backups, and will ensure that our files are always accessible and readable. As the AI entity becomes more knowledgeable, it will start to do more and more for us and we will have to provide less and less detailed instructions. The AI may start to see what we show it and know what it is looking at. There may be other AI in the house in other computers or in robots, and we will be able to interconnect them and instruct them to cooperate. While the digital world will increasingly be taken care of by our AI, we may start to value some of our physical possessions even more.

I can’t say I’m particularly confident that this vision of the future is what it will actually be like. Nor am I sure that it is of any particular relevance to any OFC project you are about to embark on. However, it was interesting to think through where things might be going. If there was any conclusion I would come to from this examination, it is that our digital world is going to be fully taken care of by an increasingly autonomous AI; and that, in the face of this, we should take increasing care of our precious physical possessions as they are the only things that are going to be truly under our control.

This is the last Unit in this OFC Online Tutorial.

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U6.3 The future impact of AI

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term used to signify intelligent behaviour by machines – which really just means them doing more complex things than they have done before. Two significant milestones in the development of AI were when IBM’s Deep Thought programme beat Garry Kasparov, a reigning world chess champion, in 1997; and in 2016 when Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo programme beat a professional Go player. Current prominent AI work includes the development of driverless cars and trucks, and improving the ability of AI programmes to learn for themselves. It is generally thought that AI capabilities will continue to be developed for some time in just narrow areas of application, before eventually broadening their scope to become more general-purpose intelligent entities. Assuming this development trajectory, we can speculate that the way we deal with our digital objects and collections might be impacted by AI in the following series of steps, each one taking greater advantage of an increasingly capable technology:

A. AI to collect virtual objects at our specific request: The Facebook ‘on this day’ function that we can choose to turn on or off, is a good example of this in use in a contemporary system. In future systems we might imagine that we have an AI which is independent of any one system but which we could ask to collect specific objects across the systems we specify, for example, ‘collect all photos that we look at in our email, in Facebook and on Instagram’.

B. AI to collect digital objects at our general instruction: This is similar to step A except that we won’t have to specify the systems we want it to monitor. We‘ll just provide a blanket instruction such as ‘collect everything to do with any shopping I do’, or ‘collect all photos I look at’, and the AI will address the request across all the systems we use. At this stage the AI should also be taking care of all our backup requirements.

C. AI to understand what it sees in the digital objects: If we have asked the AI to collect objects for us, in this step it will be capable of fully understanding the content of the objects, and of having a conversation about what they are and the connections between them. At this point there will be no need for indexes to digital collections since the AI will know everything about the objects anyway; it will be able to sort and organise digital files and to retrieve anything we ask it for. The AI will also be handling all our digital preservation issues – it will just do any conversions that are necessary in the background to ensure that files are always readable.

D. AI to exploit our digital objects for us at our request: Now that the AI has control of all our objects and understands what they are, we may just be able to say things like, ‘assemble a book of photos of the whole of our family line and include whatever text you can find about each family member and have three copies printed and sent to me’.

E. Eventually we leave it all to AI and do nothing with digital objects ourselves: By this stage the AI will know what we like and don’t like and will be doing all our collecting and exploiting for us. We’ll just become consumers demanding general services and either complimenting or criticising the AI on what it does.

The last stage above reflects one of the possible futures described by Yuval Harari in his book ‘Homo Deus’ in which AI comes to know us better than we do ourselves, since it will fully understand the absolute state of the knowledge we have and be able to discount temporary influences such as having a bad day or some slanted political advertising. This clearly represents a rather extreme possible situation many decades hence; nevertheless, given what we know has happened to date, we would be foolish to discount either the rate or the content of possible development. However, we should also remain absolutely clear that it will be us, as individuals, that are deciding whether or not to take up each of the steps described above.

Throughout this period of the rise of AI, we will still be dealing with our physical world and our physical objects. AI may be able to see the physical world through lenses (it’s eyes), and be able to understand what it is seeing, and we may well get the AI to help us manage our physical objects in various ways. However, it won’t be able to physically manipulate our objects unless we introduce AI-imbued machines (robots for want of a better word). This too is a distinct possibility – especially since we are used to having machines in our houses (we’ve already made a start with robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers). However, having tried to think through the various stages that we would go through with using robots, I came to a bit of a brick wall. I found it very hard to envisage robots rooting round our cupboards, putting papers into folders, and climbing into the loft. It just seems unrealistic unless it was a fully fledged, super-intelligent, human-type robot – and that in itself brings with it all sorts of other practical and ethical questions which I’m not equipped to even speculate about. Perhaps all that can be said with any certainty about such a future of AI software and robots, is that humans will take advantage of whatever technology is on offer provided it suits them and they can afford it.

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