Yesterday I felt a great relief: At noon we had the launch of the new intranet of my office. We had been working for the launch for over one year – and the whole process took more than two years. (I had mentioned the project in a number of posts.)

About 2 months ago we saw that part of the project had to be taken out into another project: The document management, which shall replace the file explorer, turned out to be more complex than we had thought during the concept phase, so it will be developed in a second tranche of the project – again me as the project manager. We will start when I’m back from January’s holidays in India. It seems that this will again be a long project, we will start with a pilot.

Being the project manager I had a lot of trouble with instructing the team, finding and describing mistakes and cleaning the system. The last weeks we had been working on the migration of the content from the old intranet into the new system, and the team of our info-managers had done a good job, but – mostly out of ignorance – also created several “crises” by trying to adapt things in a “try and error”-way. I sometimes was reminded of Hercules fighting with the Hydra: Having cut off one head, two other heads appeared. The mistakes of the system didn’t seem to take an end.

Hercules fighting with the Hydra. Image of Antonio Pollaiuolo, from Wikimedia Commons

And then the launch – the director giving congratulations, the head of the agency speaking about the pioneer work and me about the team-work and the surprises of the process –  happy faces all around.

An hour after the launch new problems popped up – no safeguarding possible with different pages, strange way of presentation of the news in one of the news aggregators. This morning some other questions popped up…. The last months my patience has been tested a lot – and quite some times I failed. It seems that my personal testing phase isn’t over yet.

An old sewing machine – not so complex than a modern web collaboration technology, but also helping to stitch different matters together.

Some days ago I came across a news about a brain stimulating thinking cap. I first thought it was a hoax, for there were so many quotes in blogs and online magazines of the gossip type. And when I found the website of the scientist of Sydney university (Center for the Mind), it still didn’t look like inspiring confidence at the first sight. Nevertheless, thoug the professor Allan Snyder seems to be a bit grumpy, he has done a lot of research and publications on “What Makes a Champion” or a genius.

Entrance of the site of the Center of the Mind, Sydney.

They have established a state of the art mind laboratory (MindLab), with magnetic pulse stimulation (TMS) and brainwave sensing (EEG) apparatus. Therer they have developed a device that works with magnetic impulses, which by swifting on and of over or under-active parts of the brain, thereby unlocking its hidden potential. Wearing the hairnet-like cap for a few minutes is said to have improved artistic ability and proofreading skills. Once perfected, the device could be marketed as a cap slipped on to boost creativity and intellectual capacity.

No wonder that all the media is crazy about it. The professor was in many TV shows, won famous prizes for his study with autistic savants and geniuses, and he even had talks, together with the Dalai Lama and many others… In Bejing, during the Olympics, they helt a What Makes A Champion? forum which was opened by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair and other celebrities, and they got a global media coverage.

In spite of all the publicity the hope seems to be a bit airy – to discover the magic wand in order to open up the hidden genius of man. No tedious exercises for spiritual evolution, but just a magnetic cap, and then the brain functions at its optimum. Inner transformation work for refining the brain, to reflect the soul? No need, materialistic science dreams of finding the clue. The only thing they forget that there is no shortcut way on the path of evolution. Transformation work needs refining the personality through culturing the character. If you don’t tackle the fundamentals, the development will stand of feet of clay.

Man’s potential cannot be unfolded through a technical trick. Even a crystal skull isn’t enlightened but from an outer source of light. Photo of a friend from an exposition in Paris.

For most of us it is so normal to have electricity coming out of the wall outlet that we hardly can imagine living without. But for people living far away from the network of technical industrialization it does not at all go without saying. In third world countries, especially in rural areas, having access to electricity is often great step ahead – and be it just to charge a mobile.

A group of African Harvard undergraduates and university scientists, have created a social enterprise working in off-grid energy delivery and lighting technology in Tanzania. They call it “Lebônê“, pronounced [La – bo – ney], a Northern Sotho word for light, lamp, or candle.

They “combine efficient lighting technology with a simple energy source readily available to all Africans in the form of microbial fuel cells. These inexpensive fuel cells run on animal and plant waste and naturally occurring soil microbes, and are framed around a flexible substrate (wood, steel, etc) that can vary by geographic availability. This is truly electricity right out of the ground. These fuel cells are used to charge a battery or cheap supercapacitor, which in turn will be used to power a high-efficiency efficient LED or PLED lamp.”

To reach the target group of people they combine their innovative technologies with an innovative implementation strategy that will promote local entrepreneurship and youth involvement.

Another very innovative approach is the initiatve of a retired Swiss journalist in Kenia, Peter Baumgartner. He has realised a magazine for sustainable agriculture called “The Organic Farmer“. They are publishing “relevant, reliable and ecologically sound information which is both, appropriate as well as applicable for farmers in Africa.” It is monthly magazine with 18’000 copies, distributed nation-wide in Kenya and reaches around 100’000 readers. The electronic version can be accessed free of charge and has been used so far by farmers and researchers in over 20 tropical countries. Since end of August 08 they are also on the radio in Kiswahili and they offer the programs as MP3-files. They are supported by different sponsors, among others the Swiss government and www.infonet-biovision.org, an information platform for ecological control of plant pests and disease transmitters.

Their initiative has a very strong resonance, with more than 150 e-mails, sms and phone calls after every emission. People are asking questions about pests or other kinds of information. They have a team of specialists. One strength of the magazine is the intelligent distribution structure via farmer groups, church organisations and schools. So they can spread the knowledge of a gentle biological farming with a minimum of chemicals. The journal with 8 to 12 pages per month has also spread to neighbour countries. Each copy is read by about 7 – 9 persons in the average.

A very inspiring initiative for supporting local farmers by sharing know-how – good will in action.

A meadow in Switzerland – biological farming is also an important factor here.

Some days ago I came across a video of National Geographics about a new generation of robots which “express themselves”: Developers have created robots that appear to make human expressions and show human-like emotions. There is a mechanism imitating the muscle movements of the human face – eye movements, smiles etc. What the cinema shows in films like Star Wars in perfection is a bit less perfect with these robots, but nevertheless creating a strange fascination for many: Making forms in their image and likeness.

Animatronics – employing electronics to animate motorized puppets – is quite a developed technology of the illusion-creating industry, as you see here with a human on the site of a Californian special-effect studio. They say: “We can replicate the likeness of virtually any character imaginable. We create realistic looking animals, creatures, and humans. These life-like creatures move, walk, talk, and simulate breathing.”

The dream is old, like with the creation of Pinocchio by the woodcarver Geppetto, or Frankenstein, or, a bit older, of Prometheus, who brought the divine fire of understanding to mankind, or the biblical creation of man out of clay. The modern robots are in the same tradition. There is a certain hybris hidden behind the hopes of technical betterment of man’s living conditions. Robots, however, have become a part of modern life, be it in automobile production or in surgery.

So have a look at the Salvator DaBot, the portraitist robot. He “recognizes human faces in its surroundings and extracts relevant characteristics from them. By using its uncanny artistic talent, it then draws portraits of the participants from the captured images by converting them into vector art and by using inverse kinematics to control the robot’s arm.”

The woodcarver Gepetto creating Pinocchio. Scene from a doll’s house in Berne

I normally don’t do „corporate marketing” in this blog, but today I got a news release announcing a new way of communication to cross language barriers, which sounds very fascinating:

Together with IBM, the phone company Jajah has just started today a real-time free phone translation service called Jajah Babel that allows anyone in China, the U.S., UK and Australia to call a local number, speak in English and immediately hear the message back in Chinese Mandarin. It also works the other way round. So you can simply hand your phone to the other person or put the phone on loudspeaker, so they hear the message.

I wonder how the system manages to understand the ambiguities of language, which automatic translation programs don’t hit (for example: “Bill Gates” as the bill for the doors…), but nevertheless it is a great step ahead in finding a way out of Babylon.

Scientists from 79 countries have just published the first geological map of the world, onegeology.org: “Making Geological Map Data for the Earth Accessible”. (The technology still has some difficulties and the application doesn’t support the latest Firefux 3, only 2 and IE 6 and 7).

The site will officially be presented tomorrow in Oslo at the 33rd International Geological Congress. It is the first online map of this kind, and it is the biggest geological mapping project with data from more than 15’000 geo-scientists. They hope more will join, for the countries involved cover about 70% of earth’s surface, but from many countries the information isn’t easily accessible and of the latest quality.

The information they want to provide isn’t visible from space like those pictures Google Maps shows, but of the different kinds of stones or the shiftings in the crust of the earth. Especially in these times of climate changes a sound knowledge of greater interrelationship is highly needed. So the map should help preventing risks like floods or landslides and easily transfer the knowledge to those who need it.

One Geology shows the earth without any political boundaries, like one earth, for geology doesn’t know boundaries. So it helps gaining an understanding of the greater whole.

It would be very interesting if one day a map could be created  not of the stone structures, but of the major field or levels of consciousness. It could be measured by the kind of content published on the web, for these reflect the mental activites though not of all, but of great groups of human beings. So the map could show how many sites show content belonging to the lower strata of attention (of the physical and emotional realm, like sexual or criminal activities), of the different kinds of entertainment and daydreaming, of the activities driven by possessive instincts of gaining money and power, of humanitarian commitment and of selfless intelligent services for the upliftment of humanity. It would be quite a multi-coloured map of the consciousness of the world.

A view of the world created by NASA photos ©.

A map of central Europe with the major geological formations, by One Geology ©.

The US Space agency NASA is celebrating on July 29th its 50th birthday. They are going to launch a website with a tremendous archive about millions of pictures, videos and sound documents. Though it is planned to launch the site  nasaimages.org  officially next days, it is already online. They want to merge 21 collections, which up to now had been dispersed, into this one archive. Have a look at this fantastic site.

Cassiopeia A: Remnants of a supernova. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/O. Krause (Steward Observatory)

I today got the link to a Buzzword-Generator: Whenever you come across some high-sounding technical expressions, they might come from this generator: “Bussword can create over 1 million buzzwords that mean nothing but sound impressive.” So when you read something about “Stand-alone coherent function” or “disintermediate logistical access” or “total responsive implementation” – these are just outputs of the generator. So have a try.

Hopefully this is not just a bussword generator: My laptop keyboard.

I today got from a friend the link to an interesting video about a conference on UFOs (with Spanish subtitles). I’m normally not much interested in any UFO-hype, however screened through the film and found the witnesses honest and competent. There is a website about “The Disclosure Project“, from which this video is::

“On Wednesday, May 9th, 2001, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena.”

“The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.”

Their efforts to document the findings and convince government officials in the US shows how difficult it is to cause a change in belief systems, and the case is the same on the spiritual path. It takes a long time of inner work and discrimination to get through the two poles of sceptical refusal and credulous superstition.

A Sun Chariot from 1400 BC found in Denmark, photo of my son from an exposition in Switzerland

The agency with whom I’m realising the new intranet for my office invited me last Monday for a visit to the Microsoft Solution & Innovation Center near Zurich and for the football (soccer) match Holland – Italy of the EURO 08 in Berne. I couldn’t resist and accepted the invitation. About the football match you’ll read in the next post.

The Microsoft Solution and Innovation Center is one of 4 centers world-wide, it opened in November 2007. It is some kind of a future-lab, to develop visions of what the electronic world may be in a few years.

In a futuristic setting (“It’s something like Spaceship Enterprise…”) with a 360-camera in the middle and surrounded by 7 large presentation screens we were entering into Microsoft’s visions of how a big enterprise might organise its collaboration, with video-teamwork, electronic white-boards, touchscreen-tablet noteooks and innovative mailing systems, with facilities beyond today’s scope and design.

The head of the innovation center told us, just like the automobile industry develops concept cars, computer technology develops concept workspaces. It was thrilling to see how the virtualisation of collaboration will be progressing, a quality of the Aquarian age.

However, when she asked for feedbacks, I told her that in my job one of the difficulties isn’t technical feasibility, but the humans working with the system. Of course the youth of today is very naturally handling electronic tools, but the human factor remains the center and not the electronic instruments: Instruments are for expressing ideas, helping to manifest them, they aren’t an end in themselves. In spirituality the body is realised to be the instrument of the soul, which has to get hold ov the vehicle, and not the vehicle becoming the master, like it is often the case.

We had a second presentation about the development of unified communication, where Microsoft sees a convergence between the different end-user’s instruments: Not the instrument matters for the communication, but the message to be transported. This too, goes into the same line of a spiritual principle that the instrument has to be the servant, not the master.

Inside the building: Cool style like the technical world, but without the breath of vegetation life.