Don
Study of ExoBrain II Videos. I’ve just completed the 3 Confidential Briefings and the 31 ExoTech Demonstration Presentations. Ground-Breaking, Mind Blowing, Ingeniously Simple, Unimaginably Unique… I’m totally stunned – my paradigm has definitely shifted. I am profoundly gobsmacked.
ExoTech is not just another piece of computer software, it’s a relationship builder, it’s a virtual creation entity, I’s true A.I. It’s just so many things and so much more.
The brilliance of this is reflected in its application: Does it help? Can I use it? Will it make me more productive? Yes, Yes, Yes and many more Yeses.
The proof of the pudding is definitely in the eating!
ExoTech is so obviously applicable and ingenious; in fact, it’s so obvious that the early and not so early computer guys decided not to build a computer the way us humans think. It makes total sense that for humans to successfully interact with computers and vice versa, they MUST think and act like we do in our optimum state.
Computers and their associated bits and pieces are complex things – that by the way is the understatement of the century.
The “…2 billion lines of code in Google…” are a testament to that. There’s been a whole lot of computer confusion going on which probably explains why less than half the people on this planet have a computer.
Aviation “Drones”
I’ve worked in Aviation for over 35 years. I’ve flown lots of things and taught others to do the same.
A few years ago, and in fear that I may not pass another pilot medical examination (No medical pass = no job) I piloted and entered a new and growing sector of aviation – Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems. Most people know them as “Drones.” A potential multibillion-dollar a year industry. And as you don’t sit in the thing and fly it, the medical standards are almost non-existent. A great job for a pilot who has the onset of something or other physically nasty.
So, without a license or any past drone experience I applied for and got a job with a world-leading Australian Engineering Company. They wanted to jump on the billion-dollar gravy train and give drones a shot. We were essentially their newest science experiment.
Myself as the Lead Pilot (I was officially the only pilot, so I led myself) and with the Chief Pilot we created a new Division within this Engineering Company called “Aerial Data Management.”
Suddenly the job got cooler. Our executives were in discussion with Lockheed Martin, which is a huge aviation defense force contractor. They had a military drone that they wanted to commercialize. It was called “The Stalker.”
For obvious or maybe not so obvious reasons we eventually changed its name to the less creepy “Endeavour.” Look up Captain Cook in Wikipedia and you’ll discover the “Aussie” significance.
As part of the advanced executive team we flew to the “States” and held talks with Lockheed at their “Skunk Works” facility. We had lots of discussions about the aircraft and other things but not much regarding the captured data – where it was stored, how it was stored, how secure is it…etc…etc. I think you get the picture; it was of subordinate importance to them as they just wanted to sell us the craft and its sensors.
We returned to Australia and the “Stalker” followed soon after.
For the next three months we flew and demonstrated the Endeavour’s ability in the air to several Victorian State Government Departments. Within five minutes of launch the external stakeholder’s began asking questions not about the craft but the possible data sets. I was a pilot so really had no clue.
Initially, I thought drones were all about the aircraft, It’s not, it’s all about the data and the security of it. All of our potential clients were mainly interested in the product (Data Sets). They didn’t care how we got it; they just wanted a secure, uncorrupted and usable data sets. More on this shortly.
A few years later I got a job as Chief Remote Pilot – essentially a Project/Operations Manager and the liaison terminal with the Australian Aviation Regulator to ensure safe and legal flight operations. My pilots and I did everything from wind turbine inspections in South Africa, Solar Farm Inspections in Vietnam to large mining land survey data capture.
For some reason, little things started to go wrong data-wise:
I. Our pilots returned from a job which cost tens of thousands of dollars to project manage with corrupted unusable data. Not to get too technical, the software failed.
II. On another job the pilots returned without a hard drive full of data not backed up. It got lost somehow.
III. The hard drive itself full of data returned from another expensive and potentially lucrative job; however, we figured it had received a severe knock and the data was not retrievable
IV. …Et alia…
After completing a full investigation, I came up with a checklist (by the way, pilots love checklists) which involved about 20 steps pre- and post-flight to ensure the security of the data captured.
The data was more secure with all the steps done as written, but it added an extra 1 to 2 hours to the days work. That’s really 1 to 2 hours of non-production and 1 to 2 hours of administrative B.S.
So, what’s my point?
1. The above did not fit Peter’s definition of “Ease of Use – What you do not have to do in order to do what you want to do.” We could have saved tens of thousands in dollars and man hours alone if we had access to ExoTech. That is, the 20 steps above could have been reduced to 3 or 4 saving the company tens of thousands of dollars over a year.
2. We didn’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on measures to secure our data. ExoTech is fully encrypted.
3. Many of clients required us to have an ISO Certification (International Organization for Standardization) regarding data management and security. ExoTech would have satisfied much if not all the criteria outlined by that organization.
4. We captured data for emergency services (Prisons and Police). Continuity of Evidence (C of E) is a big deal to these guys. C of E is defined as “Continuity, as the name suggests, involves the movements of something from one place to another. Basically, it is the question whether the thing at point A is the same thing at point B. If I was required to give evidence and continuity was in dispute, then the case would have been lost. And, believe you me, trying to keep track of the above “20 Steps” would be impossible to prove. Not Guilty most likely with costs!!!
I could go on, but industry in general is screaming out for a better, more secure and user-friendly computer, which ONLY ExoTech can satisfactorily supply.
Security
As I hover over my computer, there’s always something a little unsettling or something about it, I just don’t trust. I need it but it could let me down at any time.
Just the other day I purchased an off-line wallet for my cryptocurrency. I received an email from “___” explaining when it was going to be delivered. Not 2 days later I received another email from another crowd saying they have my device and I just need to remit $1.50 via my credit card to release it.
a) How in God’s name did they find out that I had ordered something.
b) And worse; I almost fell for it.
Over the last 20 or so years of using computers I could tell you hundreds of these types of stories.
And passwords – don’t get me started. I have hundreds of them “securely” [sic] located on an Excel spreadsheet, just sitting in my computer waiting to be hacked.
So, please give me access to an ExoBrain – I’ll pay anything.
Programming.
Not even halfway through the 31 Demonstration presentations the light suddenly went on. “Why have I been having so much trouble with computers?” Simple Answer: It simply doesn’t think like I do. I’ve been bashing away at the keyboard for years forcing my thinking process into something that thinks on another and different sub-level and hoping one day for some type of synergy or partnership. After studying the 31 Demonstration presentations I’m certain I’ll have a computer and system that works with me – the way I want it to – toward a new level of productivity using the computer as a tool.
Project Management
In my last job as Chief Remote Pilot of a Drone Company, I fell into “Project Management” and I actually quite enjoyed it. By “falling into it” I mean that during my initial interviews for the job, no mention was made regarding that type of work activity. I thought I was going to be flying a few drones around and training and directing others.
One of my first of many Project Management jobs was to dispatch 2 pilots into Vietnam in order to inspect a very large solar panel farm and provide thermal imaging of the whole site to our client.
Several internal and external stakeholders were involved together with my Operations Team. During the project management stage, which took about 3 months while being interspersed with other jobs of equal financial importance, loads of data and communications were floating from computer/s to computer/s.
I’d write a document and then forward it to several people; then I’d have to make document changes then re-forward. Then other documents were created which needed changing which also had to be forwarded…blah blah blah… ad infinitum. And then there was the problem of where and how to file all this stuff. The stuff was not accessible, even after attempting some kind filing structure that I hoped everyone could follow. No one followed it and “stuff” was literally everywhere.
Despite all this the job was a success – but what a nightmare for everyone involved during the initial project management stage.
I loved Peter’s videos regarding the handling for the above-mentioned – all-too-common scenario, which is no files and no directories and getting rid of having to navigate to find something.
By discovering “the relationship of meanings” which “automatically relate all incoming data correctly” … So that means that you can correctly query an ExoBrain and find out [stuff]…” And so “…Metadata can be used interchangeably with the recorded data to help find needed data. You just tell it what you can remember in the metadata or in the data and it will find it and any combination of that…”
Peter later describes this as “Human Find” – “To find something, tell ExoBrain whatever you remember, and press Find. Like a person would, ExoBrain asks you for more data, when necessary, in order to find exactly what you want…”
So, the upshot of all this is that if I had ExoTech in my Project Managing Days:
1. My people could have easily found stuff
2. I could have amended all my stuff, and everyone would have instantly had the updated version.
3. No need for actual filing; my guys would have just, “Human Find.”
4. Countless hours and precious funds would have been saved and our fingers wouldn’t have been continually crossed hoping the job/s would succeed.
After studying the last few presentations, it’s becoming extremely apparent to me that the large computer tech companies (Microsoft, Apple… et al.) make a whole lot of assumptions about the end user and what they’re capable of. Do they survey? Most likely to some degree, but clearly not about the capacity of the end user. Do they take some type of mean intellectual average and somehow massage the product toward that demographic? Probably? Who knows?
And here’s an imponderable; why is it that a 12-year-old appears to have fantastic computer savvy when all the statistics point to an overall decline in educational standards. Are computers teaching our kids to think erroneously simply by using them and duplicating their complexity or way they “think.” In Australia alone High School dropout rates peaked at 79% in 2018 and have since dropped to 72% in 2019.
ExoTech could be just the product to reverse the intellectual and educational decline with a computer that assists the end user and allows creative interaction.
So-called Help… Why have these computer companies, especially mobile phone companies such as Apple, stopped providing user manuals on their products? “Here ya go and good luck with that!!” Due to the complexity of their computers or whatever device a manual is definitely required, but not provided. But do you know that most of the ExoTech applications require no manual – Why? – because of its ease of use and intuitive nature. Because the computer operates and functions like I and we do; then, of course, we don’t need a manual; I know exactly how I think and function – I’ve been practicing for the last 57 years. So, with the ExoComputer you turn it on and away you go… Start creating.
So, Peter has clearly put great care and knowledge into the ExoTech product and I’m proud to be part of the team and journey.
Presentations
I can’t tell you how many PowerPoint presentations I’ve sat through and delivered. I’m sure we’ve all heard the expression “Death by PowerPoint!!!” I’ve also been guilty of delivering several of those in the past.
As a young Flying Instructor, the presentation technology of choice at the time was the Overhead Projector – I still have a few of the transparencies in a box somewhere. This thing, however; was subject to overeating, bulb blow out or they just wouldn’t turn on. You also needed to be a Da Vinci to make them look any good, and I wasn’t.
When I discovered the Microsoft Power Point Presentation tool, I thought this would make my teaching life a lot easier; it did to a degree but there were still the odd pain points. Peter mentioned one, if not the biggest – “…in today’s presentations, you present a slide of this, a slide of that, a slide of the other and that’s it…”
Allow me to give you an example of this. A Flying Instructor must be able to fly the plane and teach its theory. The very basic subjects include Meteorology, Navigation, Engines and Systems, Air Law and a few others.
Early student lessons consist of a 1-hour “board” briefing (Theory), 10-minute pre-flight briefing; the flight itself related to the previous briefings and then a post-flight briefing. Stalling is one of the fun ones (mostly for the instructor). The student is shown and then purposely stalls the aircraft in order to identify one before it happens and if it does – to recover from the dangerous and unwanted abnormal flight condition.
In order to write this, I’m sitting here looking at an old PowerPoint theory briefing on the “Stall.” It consists of over fifty individual slides and, to make a point, you may have to come off the actual presentation and refer to numerous other associated documents and images. You may have to refer to legislation, cockpit view images, cockpit instrument images, aircraft design features, flight manual performance data, and so on. What a dream it would be to have a presentation whereby all the data could be located and presented all from the one slide, eliminating the need for multiple slides on the one subject point.
Well; Peter has achieved that. Buttons can be placed on an ExoSlide relating to different aspects of the subject in question allowing Instructors to present all kinds of relevant stuff – at the click of a button – and then seamlessly return to the original script also at the click of a button. The instructor can easily go “…from anywhere to anywhere by putting a button for one thing on another thing.”
And imagine sitting there as a student; barraged with all this data watching the instructor fumbling around and flipping from external document to external document and knowing very well, he/she will have to purposely “Stall” a plane very shortly.
Peter’s ExoBrain Presentation features may not ease the student’s apprehensions regarding the imminent flight, but a less-involved theory briefing may assist.
As a flying Instructor, one may have to teach students with Science degrees who can assimilate scientific data quite easily and the next lesson could be with a well-off aviation enthusiast with minimal education. Giving the less-educated guy a simpler briefing would assist the cause. “ExoTech Presentation” allows any flying Instructor to produce gradient-scale briefings and ready to present at the click of a mouse…” we created this sort of a presentation where you could go to very detailed, least detailed, very detailed, back to no detail….”
Finally, if I’m asked a difficult question during a briefing, I’ll verbally ask my “ExoComputer” and voila! the answer delivered in seconds.
I can think of hundreds more real-life applications using ExoBrain, which every user can create for themselves and personalize toward their liking. I can’t wait to eat some of the “ExoTech Pudding”!!!!
Thank you, Peter, for developing this fantastic technology and thank you to the ExoTeam for making Peter’s dream a reality!!