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Sumathy Ramesh

Sumathy Ramesh

Every Human Matters

Published Apr 24, 2023

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Show of Case for the need for Immediate correction of Inexplicable Professional Interference in Personal and Social Space of Unsuspecting Humans

Sumathy Ramesh

Founder, lzerobzero, a nascent, sole-trader social enterprise

Monday 24 APR 2023

Show of Case for the need for Immediate correction of inexplicable professional interference in personal and social space of unsuspecting humans is difficult in 2023, a year where security of cyber identity is virtually non-existant for many millions of us, and the distinction between objective evidence that has been system-generated and human-created is diminishing.

My name is Sumathy Ramesh.

I founded lzerobzero, with the intent to develop it as a social enterprise on 30 APR 2018; one of the core intent of the business is to regulate cutting edge technology incorporating autonomous decision making algorithms (AI/ML), through exploring solutions for the assurance of the integrity of the personal and social space of humans from intended or inadvertent interference from their own or external professional spaces related to or unrelated to their own professional space.

As with many of us, I have also been a direct victim of relentless adverse interference in my personal and social space and professional space far beyond the the scope of the engagement at any given time.

Its difficult to nail which one of the hundred and odd professional entities I have interfaced with during my career is responsible for the infliction, but I can reasonably state, my experiences are root-caused at intended professional interference in my personal and social space with total disregard for the law of the land on scope of individual employment/service-engagement and the dignity, life, liberty, security and freedom of thought [Declaration of Human Rights, Articles, 3, 5, 12, 18, 23, 24 and 27, 1948] of myself and my immediate family [Data Dictionary, 2021]; I however allow benefit of doubt to the individuals and entities they are/were affiliated with as lack of sufficient understanding of how I relate to my immediate and extended family and friends, or the breath and depth of my professional relationships and the intent of the law of the land.

I request immediate help to correct and prevent the infliction of such interference; its highly likely that my circumstances are not unique, that consequences to the society as a whole from the proliferation of such practices is hitting the tipping point, even before we add potential misuse of the connected telecommunication technology in advancing such practices, and their irreversible consequences to humanity. I refer you to the Sydney Morning Article... while I have thought through several possible approaches in varying levels of details, as a sole-trader pounded on the cyber space, I can not do it alone. Hence the request.

Specifically I request assistance with sponsorship/funds to enable hiring resources for the,

1. Establishment of a committee to review the employment code of conduct for clauses/absence of clauses for full transparency in all external communications about a given previous-employee in the professional space with copy of the communication made available to the previous-employee; care should be given to ensure autonomous system generated information has been adequately reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness for the given context, especially if the systems are run by external service providers (For example, I had received system generated information indicative of continued employment, well past my completion of employment with certain entity; email addresses that should have expired and bounced, continued to exist potentially opening up vectors for cyber-abuse)

2. Communication(other than recognised under the scope of emergency contact) to persons in the social and personal spaces are beyond the scope of any employer whether during their employment or beyond completion of the employment; extensive care must be exercised when using social platforms, recognising an employee's page sits on par with their employee's page, with equal independence.(For example, on several occasions, repetitively, I was left to resolve mis-perceptions in my social space and vice versa of situations referenced/spoken out of any semblance to context; other occasions, there were misperceptions that employee's social page and their content belong to the employer- they don't, many of us have an active professional life outside of a given employment, at any given time and an equally active social and personal life)

3. Establishment of a committee to review the use of autonomous algorithms in user and clinical trials either as incorporated in the solution under trial or as incorporated in the tools used for conducting the trials; care should be given to ensure the autonomous algorithms do not perform any unvalidated action. (For example, as with many who are users of devices with the capacity to locate us and collect/monitor biometrics, I have never ever consented to any mapping of any of my faculties or enable learning from any of my use of any of my faculties; yet, it would be difficult to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that biometric/voice/chat fed engines such as Chat GPT or other AI racks do not have copies of my responses to stimuli as a path to learning on some-stream or other; even more scary is the potential for one or more of my ailments or manifestation of health experiences to be root-caused in the efforts of the learning racks pointing at my faculties, irrespective of the nobility of their intended purpose- probably the reason, every one from the head of the UN is loosing sleep on it)

Sincerely,

Sumathy

Sydney, Monday 24 APR 2023

An artistic interlude as a mirror for unobtrusive self-reflection (grand correction article 4 of n)

I am soliciting sponsorship interests to run a three-day conference on Grand Correction. [ADDENDUM- the conference I run will be in Sydney]

The broad scope of the FIRST DAY of the conference is as below; the scope of the other two days will evolve as I put my finger to the key board in the coming days.

8:00 - 10:00 ice breaker at the lobby (ref: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ice-breakergrand-correction-article1-n-sumathy-ramesh)

10:00 - 12:30 strong governance (ref: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strong-governance-grand-correction-article-2-n-sumathy-ramesh)

3:00 - 5:00 email (ref: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/email-grand-correction-article-3-n-sumathy-ramesh)

7:30 - 8:15 உருத்திரன் (Rudran), a dance recital with original poetry, music scores and choreography. The poetry is in Tamil, my mother tongue, the music scores would be in the Carnatic music traditions, my mother tunes, the dance would be in the Barathanatyam traditions, my mother gestures.

I understand Ruthran as an avatharam of Sivan where by he renders his beholders tearful either because of their own realisation of the wrongs they have been accountable for or because of the abundance of joy that springs as the wrongs that were inflicted on them get corrected.

Below is the poetry for the centre piece of the margam, viz., padam where the dancer establishes the message of margam in the minds of the audiance. Other pieces are to be written. (refer to post script for an extract from my booklet Kannagi enbathen peyare on my understanding of the other pieces of the margam; note, not trained in the artform myself, its what I have assimilated as a "user"/audiance of many a margam, and may differ from the learned)

The fabric or state of mind I used for the padam is typical of a ragam known as Bairavi in the Carnatic tradition. Its one of the richest ragams with ample scope for processing thoughts restraining anger in adversity and channeling it for recovery action; hence the choice of ragam for the centre piece for the artistic interlude for lzerobzero's efforts on Grand Correction.

Padam (5th of 7 pieces)

உருத்திறன் அறியாது உருவினை சிதைத்து உம் 

உயிர் வளர்க்கும் அறிவிலாய் சிற்றறிவினாய் 

உருத்திரன் திறம் அறிந்த எம்மை சிதைக்க உம்

உருவினுக்கு திறம் இல்லை என அறிவாய் 

Meaning: 

You of superficial/artificial intellect, with no direct understanding whatsoever of the intent and capacity of each nerve/tissue fibre defining us as holistic human, including our faces and limbs, and hearts and brains, eyes and ears, hands and feet you grow your own livelihoods, distorting/destroying us

Such partial understanding is inadequate for the purposes of your efforts to distort those of us who have developed a complete understanding of Rudiran as manifest in our individual conscience, holding us accountable for correcting the wrongs and rejoicing in the corrections breaking the bindings.

post script:

extract from my poetry collections, Kannagi Enbathen Peyare (ISBN978-06451052-1-6)

*** I understand Alarippu in the margam as a piece to synchronise the dancer as well as the audience through a composition strung on rhythmic syllables. I have taken the liberty to overload a few syllables with meaningful words to engage the audiance into the message of the portrayal of Kannagi in the whole margam.

I understand Jathiswaram in the margam as a piece to synchronise the dancer as well as the audience through a composition strung on rhythmic syllables. I have taken the liberty to overload a few syllables with meaningful words to engage the audiance into the message of the portrayal of Kannagi in the whole margam. In doing so I employ a spark from the அகண்ட ஜோதி பிழம்பு of their virtuosity: the structure of the rasikapriya jathiswaram by Sri Lalgudi Jayaraman and a unique aspect of concert format KVN used in some of his concerts, chossing the ragam of the main piece of the concert for the varnam to set the bavam for the whole concert experience.  

I understand Saptham in margam as a piece wheer the dancer dissolves the audiance into the characterisation to be protrayed in the main peice Varnam by claming their intellectual responses to the componets of the art form viz., layam and ragam into bhavam with the use of lyrical constructs. I am hopelessly in love with my mother tongue, Tamil; not wanting to miss an opportunity to flaunt its richness and phonetic beauty, I have chosen to fix the constituents of the rhythmic construct required by the grammer for saptham for the lyical interludes as well, even though I understand the grammer only requires alignment at the level of the whole rhythmic cycle as opposed to the individual constituents

I understand Varnam in margam as the piece nailing the message of the margam. The channels for communication of what the dancer want to convey and the receptors of the audience have been tilled and tuned to perfection, where there is nothing left but the seamless flow of the character from the sole and body of the dancer fills the sole of the audience elevating their body to the level of virtuosity of the dancer - touching them in a way the dancer becomes part of the audience for life.

I understand Padam in margam as the piece establishing the message of margam in the minds of the audiance as if its their own, having won over by the dancer in the varnam.

I understand Thillana in margam as the piece where the dancer and the audiance indulge in the jubilance of their mutual understanding of the margam through the various pieces.

I understand Mangalam in margam as the piece where the dancer and the audiance exchange mutual plesantaries before leaving each other equally enriched by the experince

email (Grand Correction, article 3 of n)

Reproduced from the my notes in the strawman-form, exploring the possibility of developing a standard for email. [ref: enquiry BSI 00324799]. I couldn't proceed as I couldn't bring myself to ask my husband to chip in 120 000-150 000 British pounds to cover the costs!

1. Purpose of the standard- Why is it needed? What issue(s) will it address?

The purpose of the proposed fast-track standard is to specify the mandatory requirements for implementation where the service offering includes provision of adequate interfaces for the unambiguous compilation, editing, formatting, sending, receiving, and storing electronic mail (email) and sufficient underlying infrastructure/platform for ensuring the integrity of the compiled information as edited and formatted by the sender via the visible interfaces, as transferred and as received and presented to the intended receiver. 

Many a business and peoples globally rely on the integrity of emails for their core operations/survival and core tele-communication, including but not limited to key communication of compromised identity, personal and sensitive information and available support measures. 

As the already vulnerable cyber space is rendered further fragile by admissions of breech/compromise of many a large entity impacting significant customer base, there is a dire need for atleast one reliable/cross verifiable mechanism for electronic communication. The specification, when implemented correctly as certified for compliance by the standards body/designated other parties, is expected to vouch for the provision of such a need. 

Its my intention that upon completion the standard would be adopted as an integral part of the ISO/IEC 27000 series of standards as a self-contained off-shoot in line with the intension of the remaining standards in the series. eg ISO/IEC 2700n:2023 Information technology- email where "n" is an appropriate sequence number issued by the standards organisation. 

2. What type of standard will this be?

Specification of requirements or Code of practice/Guide of recommendations or a Test method or a management system?

The proposed fast-tracked standard would incorporate:

• a specification

• a method for verification of correctness of implementation

• a hybrid management system for certification including manual process and use of automated tool to augment and cross verify the out come of either method

3. How will this document be used, for what purpose?

The document will be used primarily to derive design specifications for implementing the email service provision.

It will further be used for deriving protocols for verification of correct implementation and subsequent rollout of uniform assessment of implementation of various vendors for the purposes of reliable certification.

4. Who will this document be aimed at/used by? (Primary stakeholders)

The document is intended for:

- vendors or service providers who design, implement and deliver email functionality either as a standalone product, or as a component for integration into other products

- standards body that develops and publishes the standard and designates who have been approved by the standards body for their ability to assess and certify compliance to the published standard

5. Who will be affected by this document? (Secondary stakeholders)

Exisiting vendors or service providers who design, implement and deliver email functionality either as a standalone product, or as a component for integration into other products; unless they update their service provisioning to demonstrate compliance to the newly developed standard, it could potentially leave reasonable doubt in the minds of consumers as to the hidden vulnerabilities in their claims

6. What would be covered?

The proposed fast-tracked standard would incorporate:

• a specification stipulating implementable requirements 

• a method for verification of correctness of implementation

• the architecture of a recommended hybrid management system for certification including manual process and use of automated tool to augment and cross verify the out come of either method

7. What would not be covered?

The document will be written in system independent language enabling implementation in various programming language/platform/development environment/hardware. 

Thus, programming language/platform/development environment/hardware limitations will not be covered, nor will workarounds if such limitations prevent compliance to one or more clauses of the developed standard.  

8. What other standards/regulations would it refer to?

Applicable provisions of applicable articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(1948)

ISO/IEC 27000:2018 Information technology — Security techniques — Information security management systems — Overview and vocabulary

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security management systems — Requirements

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security controls

9. What will be the benefits of this standard and for whom?

All businesses and peoples globally who rely on the integrity of emails for their core operations/survival and core tele-communication, including but not limited to key communication of compromised identity, personal and sensitive information and available support measures will benefit from adoption of the standard.

The specification, when implemented correctly as certified for compliance by the standards body/designated other parties, is expected to vouch for the provision of their need for integrity of emails.

10. Who will be the Technical author who will develop the initial draft and amend it?

Myself, Sumathy Ramesh, lzerobzero, Sydney, will be the Technical author who will develop the initial draft and amend it.

11.What organisations should be on the Steering Group?

Technical representatives from industry who are vendors of largescale email provisioning such as Outlook or Gmail should be on the steering committee to derive immediate benefit to many entities and promote easier adoption by smaller providers.

Sincerely,

Sumathy

lzerobzero, 28 MAR 2023

Strong Governance (Grand Correction, article 2 of n)

REPRODUCED FROM MY NOTES FROM 2021- contents are just as relevant today.

Strong Governance is an apolitical ideology that can go under the banner of <whatever>ism

I have always believed in strong governments. And I am afraid we, as humans are stretching our governance structures beyond comprehension by refusing to accept the framework and associated checks and balances we, as humans established after world war II are no longer adequate to drive or deliver their original intent. Though technically, I could argue, it probably was not adequate even in the early fifties, its irrelevant for my purposes in 2021.

The issue is the same irrespective of the political ideology or the governance structure derived from such an ideology, irrespective of whether its current practices still reflect the original ideology, because:

- all governance frameworks are defined by roles and associated responsibilities and accountabilities 

- the governance framework stipulates how each role would be fulfilled/how the human for the given role is selected/elected/assigned/assumed

- never there was a need to define any human faculty corresponding to a human as different from the human

Today's technology has the potential to render fundamental human faculties belonging to a given human overridden in a way that its near impossible to ascribe responsibility or accountability for any role with out allowing the benefit reasonable doubt, on occasions of failure/insufficiency. No political system is immune to it.

Thanks to COVID, I am beginning to understand, while strong governments are probably thought of as an inconvenience for one or more individuals or entities, the interference from inadequately informed attempts of such individuals or entities in preventing strong governments from becoming totalitarian governments are inadvertently accelerating such a transition, allowing/tolerating vulnerabilities in the tools/communication infrastructure unwittingly diminishing the political structures paramount in the strengthening of governance. The tools, infrastructure and associated outfits require an immediate dispassionate review and immediate correction to protect humans prior to driving accountabilities to enable correction to be applied acknowledging the wrongs of the past, and forge a future for all humans. The time is right as the globe is looking for a restart after COVID.

The first pass of such a review is to determine extent of human harm already inflicted and potential for human harm.

Sumathy Ramesh

5 August 2021

நாகலிங்கம் (article 1 of 12)

Understanding is a human attribute; you've learnt when your understanding is complete. You can write to impart your learning, however, human capacity to learn from written communication is, almost always, what the reader understands as written down not necessarily in full sync with what the writer intended, unless their domain experiences are comparable.

You can't quantify understanding accurately.

As component of my master's program in Applied Sciences while at tech(synonymous with PSG Tech, is there another?), I was assigned as an understudy to a PhD student researching phase transitions in cholesteric liquid crystals. The joy of experimental research as I played with material deducing its hitherto unknown characteristics defying direct visibility, watching fluid when its chirality pulls the spillage over the edge back into the test tube, loosing sense of time as my note book filled up slowly and steadily with more data points- oh, I was like a child on "the shore gathering and scattering pebbles" for a few weeks. And then came my first assignment, to write an essay on my understanding thus far. As you can imagine I gave my all and wrote this beautiful assignment pouring my brain out on four ruled foolscap pages. My supervisor marked and returned it with a grin. I flipped through, revelling in inaudible frequencies as I read through his comments on the margin on my way to the last page; my eyes lit up at the sight of 100 and instantly frowned at the writing next to the 100, not visible at first glance. It read:

100 x amount assimilated / amount presented

My face fell, primarily because I didn't know what assimilated meant; when my supervisor explained, I spurted out a, but-I-understand-everything to his amused, ok-then-its-a-hundred-percent. I was still nebulous on whether to feel good or if I should go back and check my own understanding, but I was at tech, your academic burden didn't burn beyond the gates - definitely not after you crossed pazhamudir-cholai for an iced lime juice pressed through the blender laden with sugar. Later when I joined RRI, an institute that didn't bother with degrees, I realised my supervisor had prepared me well on the intent of research as understanding, that attempts to quantify such understanding is subjective with little use to the outcome of the research. It has stayed with me for life.

You can't quantify understanding accurately because its subjective; even if you somehow manage to quantify one's understanding with assumptions and stipulation of context, its difficult to maintain currency of the scores.

In the series of twelve articles titled நாகலிங்கம், I intend to demonstrate why its difficult to build autonomous writing algorithms that can impart relevant insights on what they learnt for human consumption.

#நாகலிங்கம் is a living species, that grows into a large tree bearing beautiful blooms almost all year around in Tamil Nadu. Its flowers are a lesson on pollination even for the unwashed. My interest in நாகலிங்கம் for the purposes of this article has nothing to do with its botanical sophistication, except it held my interest for a fair while every time my father passed on the flower from the priest to me at the Saneeswarar Sannaidi in Thiru Avinankudi temple in my home town Palani as I was growing up.

I didn't, but had I been asked about my understanding of நாகலிங்கம் as I was growing up every Saturday chances are the breath of my understanding would have started at a decent level in describing its colour, shape, number of petals, size, struggled a bit in describing its scent, probably calling it nagalinga-vasanai succumbing to its uniqueness, and plateaued at mono-cot or dicot as I would have asked my mother for additional information feeling proud at the use of a botanical term not knowing what it meant let alone why it is so or how it came about to be so.

If you ask me now, even with a million things on my mind wanting to find an opportunity for air, the fact that my beloved father, who is no more, introduced the flower to me will take centre stage leaving the poor flower to the post script. And then the sparks from my father's memory would trigger my interest in an objective review of the flower as a candidate to derive from my understanding of physics as dispersive as opposed to gravitating as conventionally believed. And it would get me start this coloumn.

Later,

Sumathy

20 MAR 2023

Somnath Sharma (1923-1947)

Procrastinating on completing my job application, I toyed with what would be a recognition that would be worth striving for given, I have always been overwhelmed by the joy of engaging gainfully in everything I do. When I read about the disputes between Microsoft and AWS on multi billion dollar defence contracts, I quietly wrote down in my note book that I deserve the coveted Victoria Cross, being an Australian. 

I started researching what is the highest honour receivable from the Indian Government, given the extent of their presence in India and the proliferation of continuous connectivity, at times multiple times to the same device by the multiple devices in its vicinity, and my own deep rooted lineage barely detectable by the stamp on my passport every time I travel to India, I probably deserve one of that too. I learnt it was the Param veer Chakra. 

I was humbled as continued my research and stumbled on the first person who received the Param Veer Chakra, a 24 year kid Somnath Sharma, who gave his life on the battle field for what purpose its still unclear to me, other than his own misunderstanding of the metaphorical Krishna-Arjuna samvadam in Mahabaratham.

I am ashamed that we haven't learnt anything in the past 76 years, no one has learnt anything, because, our learning technologies have been expanding the theatres of war to our homes that probably governments should consider issuing Victoria Crosses and Param Veer Chakrams along with the birth certificates. 

Sincerely,

Sumathy 

Sydney |11 MAR 2023

ZERO HARM article 1 of 4

REPRODUCED FROM MY BOOKLET ZEROHARM - ARTICLE 1 of n

 CONTEXT (to Approaches to developing solutions delivering zeroharm)

"தினற் பொருட்டால் கொல்லா உலகெனின் யாரும்

விலை பொருட்டால் ஊன் தருவார் இல்" 

A kural (form of poetry), written by Valluvar, a poet from Tamil Nadu, reproduced from Theivathin kural vol 3, a compilation of communications from Chandrasekara Saraswathi of Kanchi, where he illustrates how economic drivers perpetuate cruelty and violence well after the consumers have committed to never inflict injury to lives. 

Context

Humans are an intelligent species - they are more intelligent than other species because they have the ability to objectively assess their actions in the light of their own capacity in realising their intent. Their intelligence renders them vulnerable to exploitation by other humans, either intensionally or inadvertently resulting in harm, at times irreversibly so.

Humans have evolved through their own experiences and through the communication of experiences of other humans. The evolution is, thus measurable by assessing their intelligence through an assessment of their objectivity in assessing their own actions in the light of their own capacity in realising their intent. The corollary to this logic is that, as human intelligence evolves, so does the potential for human exploitation and the potential for holding the exploiters accountable for the harm inflicted on the vulnerable. 

Having thought about it long and hard, to me there is only one acceptable path to allow human evolution, the path that can assure:

mantra 01: ZERO HARM FOR EVERY HUMAN

Everything else will lead to destruction of the human species through the nodes of exploitation and devolution, in a matter of time at varying parts of the world. 

Let me explain. Let me explain, without much ado, in terms of my original insights from sixty years of living as a human on this planet. The intention is to show how our distinctions unite us when we analyse them objectively to provide a framework for reflection and potentially trigger a review of existing notions to unite us further. There is no pretention of authority nor ambiguity of purpose. Just statements of insights as my analysis concludes. 

There are two types of matter on this planet: inanimate (eg. space, air,soil, gold, water) or living species(eg. gumtree, koala, deep-sea-sulphur-based plants, humans). I use the term offshoots to refer to living species that come into existence from seeds, stems or roots of other living species and offsprings to refer to living species that come in to existence from eggs or the wombs of other living species. The extent of description required to explain the physics of all living species is more or less the same- i.e., the physics of a gum tree is not too different to that of a koala, or the deep-sea-sulphur based plants or humans. The environment for a given inanimate object or a living species is defined by all other inanimate objects and living species, including humans, in the rest of the planet. 

Fundamentally, inanimate objects are distinguished from living species by their inability to produce offshoots or offsprings to transfer their learnings. Humans are distinguished from all other living species by their ability transfer their learnings to their offsprings as well as other humans who are not their offsprings, irrespective of their gender, race, religion, or nationality- inherent attributes over which humans have no choice at the time of their birth. 

Intelligence, capacity to learn or exhibit adaptive behaviour is not limited to humans. All species have the capacity to pass on their learnings to their offshoots or offsprings as evidenced by the evolution of the species adapting to the environment in which they live. All species other than humans, at best, learn and adapt the faculties they are born with to achieve their intent, exhibiting varying degrees of intelligence depending on the capacity of the faculties to facilitate learning and adaption. While your gold fish can't learn to fetch you the ball that fell into the fish tank, your pup can and perhaps learn to fetch the gold fish for itself too. Technically, if intelligence is the ability to learn and apply the learning to achieve intent, your pup is more equipped with inherent intelligence than your gold-fish. The pup by the same line of argument is more evolved than the gold-fish. That is not to say that the pup has no more right to live or relish its environment than the gold-fish or the pup is a better species than the gold-fish. It, or its ancestors have seen more of what the planet had on the offer, have learnt and adapted and passed on to their offspring, one generation at the time paying the price through their resilience and evolved more than the gold-fish. The gold-fish can't hold it against the pup - nor should the pup delude itself that its intelligence is all its own making. 

Infact, intelligence as the capacity to learn or exhibit adaptive behaviour is not limited to living species. Inanimate objects exhibit intelligence at subatomic magnitudes with macroscopic manifestations. Macroscopic conglomeration of subatomic matter are not intelligent. 

Humans are more intelligent than anything else on the planet. In so much as adapting their faculties through their learnings from direct stimuli and reflected or reverberated stimuli from prior learnings after birth, they are equivalent to other living specious. Where they distinguish themselves is in their ability to reflect on their action, objectively assess the outcome in the light of their own capacity, identify the gap, apply the necessary correction either by evolving their faculties through necessary learnings or designing tools to augment their faculties. As they evolve over the generations, so do their tools. The proximity of the tool, an introduced inanimate object in an instant creates an imbalance in the environment creating vulnerabilities in the inanimate objects and other living species, including other humans. At least for a period such vulnerabilities enable exploitation, either intensionally or inadvertently. The vulnerabilities and exploitation propagate unhindered until, the human employing the introduced tool exercise their intelligence to reflect on their actions, objectively assess the deviation from intent and currency of the tool in serving the intent in the current environment. The human evolution continues as they scale that much more on the intelligence scale.

Since the stone age, there has been no shortage of exhibition of human's capacity to learn, adapt, act, reflect, assess, learn, design, act, exploit, reflect, assess, learn, correct, adapt, exploit, reflect, exploit some more, forget to reflect, get some one else to assess, get someone else to learn, get some one else to design, get some one else to reflect  get some one else to act, get some one else to exploit, refuse to reflect, become vulnerable, forget to learn, forget they have the ability to learn, not act, get acted upon, get exploited, devolve, and eventually get destroyed. Or similar steps to destruction in some other sequence. 

While the evolution of humans since the stone age gradually rendered inanimate objects and living species including humans vulnerable for exploitation, probably the advent of explosives intended to advance human interaction by clearing clear inanimate terrain, radio communication intended to advance human intelligence by facilitating transfer of learnings to all humans, globalisation intended to advance human evolution by enabling access to human advancement to all parts of the planet and many such measures have proliferated the planet with tools in unmanageable, incomprehensible quantities and complexities, that our current vulnerabilities unless checked comprehensively, would lead to devolution of the very humans stripping their distinction as the most intelligent living species.

The only way out I see is to exercise individual intelligence by : 

1. reflecting on every need of my family, my home, my town, my country, my planet 

2. recognising, no matter who I am, what is good enough for my family is what is good enough for my home; what is good enough for my home is what is good enough for my town; what is good enough for my town is what is good enough for my country; what is good enough for my country is what is good enough for my planet - the rest of the planets can do what they want until, the synodic month approaches the sidereal month by at least one full stellar day which is, by the way 23h 56 m 4.09s, particularly because I think mars once was an earth's moon that flew away to keep Venus at arms length, but then I am getting ahead of myself, is a discussion for my booklet on Omniverse.

3. acting at all times, every time to assure ZERO HARM through every solution, because that is what is good enough for me all the way to every one in my planet.

Later,

Sumathy

2 MAR 2023

Product Owner | lzerobzero

ZERO HARM -article 2 of 4

REPRODUCED FROM MY BOOKLET ZEROHARM - ARTICLE 2 of n

Approaches to developing solutions                

Not all problems are the same, even if handled by the same person, in the same organisation, in the same locale, on the same product or service, dealing with the same customer. The reason is that in 2021, we have landed in a place where each of us use at least one tool or device whose change we have no control over. In most organisations, there are multiple dependencies on systems from multiple vendors and their suppliers in turn may each have multiple dependencies on systems from multiple vendors. Which means, its impracticable to develop generic solutions to assure ZERO HARM. It is however possible to organise oneself or one's organisation to develop solutions to assure zero harm. I call it cPoise leadership©; a style where the leader has sufficient visibility to cavities in the whole organisation to effortlessly flow and fill until someone else can take the space. Its a different kind of leadership to Jack Welch's empowerment that ruled the nineties where mega corporations extended their footprints all over the globe; its ineffective beyond a critical mass as the practicalities isolate the leader from the empowered capsules leaving organisational decisions out of touch with the realities on the ground. 

cPoise-leadership©

Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille was a French physicist and physiologist, who in 1838, derived the pressure drop in laminar flow of an incompressible fluid through a long pipe where the cross section of the pipe is insignificant compared to the length of the pipe. The unit of dynamic viscosity, viz., the inherent drag resisting flow is rightly identified after her as Poise. The viscosity of water at 20 degree centigrade is 1 centi poise or cPoise.

cPoise-leadership© is based on water, the single most inanimate matter that is quintessential for all living species not unlike leadership, a quintessential organisational competency for all living organisations; hence the name. cPoise-leadership©, is my design for seamlessly integrating the intention to deliver solutions assuring elimination of harm as a mandatory personal leadership core competency for every employee - you'll never know, the girl standing next to the water cooler may run the world tomorrow- its better to prepare them from Day 1 so that you are happy to retire in a world run by the girl standing next to the water cooler.

Derivative of mantra 01 cPoise-leadership©

cPoise-leadership© is an approach to sufficient engagement, irrespective of the nature of the activity. cPoise-leadership© is not instructional and by definition, can not be templated. It has to be developed and it will mature through experience. It can not be shoe-horned into developmental time frames, because one may go through 15 years of professional life without having to face a single critical situation to anchor on and mature.If your only approach is to copy others, then you are regressing your leadership competencies to routines driving mediocracy because, no two situations are the same. 

The key elements of cPoise-leadership© includes ability to stay poised no matter what the situation through finding the courage to 

1. expend the necessary effort, with appropriate collaboration as needed to understand,

- the context

- intent of the action

- consequences of inaction

- consequences of action

- sustainability of the intent

- sustainability of the consequence as perceived

- personal or organisational capability to specify the intent

- personal or organisational capability to deliver the intent

2. organise execution efforts, with appropriate collaboration as needed for total visibility of all aspects of execution for complete alignment to delivery intent. and perception of consequences

3.regress efforts as appropriate, with appropriate collaboration, until outcome of the execution is in complete alignment with delivery intent and perceptions of consequence

4. abandon all efforts upon understanding the intent together with perceived consequences can not be delivered.

In 2021*, with the abundance of intellectual and economic clout available, there is no reason why every organisation can't lead itself by making a leader of every employee and flourish. Just a bit of caution on how you train your graduate entrants on cPoise - not unlike my three year old who ran the fifty meters prior to the finishing line at Bondi before the red-bibers so much as reached King's cross, elated that he out-ran every one else at the City to Surf in '93, they may ask for your CEO's office at the next performance appraisal!

Applying cPoise-leadership© to implementing Autonomous algorithms

Let us turn to developing autonomous algorithms. Having worked with software at its varying developmental stages through several products working for world class organisations and using several released commercial software through their varying evolutionary stages, at times from competing vendors, its my insight you can't deliver zero harm by empowering software to manage its development.

Let me explain with a simple illustration.

Nagamma's tumbler (recollection of a true event with possible deviations on minor details)

Nagamma is my maternal grand mother. She is no more, but has inspired many a thought in me as I grew up watching her run her home where practically no other member of the family came anywhere close to her controlled, even paced handling of situations, tumultuous to cacophonic nor her brevity in instilling values in us through living the values with an occasional suggestive question or two. One such question from ~ 1976. As an aside, I have taken a sportive wager that Nagamma's tumbler will, in a few years time out number all references to Schrodinger's cat given the current level of engagement in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Nagamma was taking a siesta on the cool cement floor of the living room, with her head propped up on the 3" high 4"wide door frame on the passage from leading our drawing room to the living room. The door frames in all the rooms right from the front to the back of the house were aligned maximising cross ventilation. Given the living room was in the middle of the house, every inch closer to the door frame gave the old lady the much needed respite on the summer afternoon. She had a tumbler of water at her arm's length in case of need. Five of us, my three cousins, one of my cousin's friends and myself , exhausting our energies on what we called a "vetti-nyayam"(useless adjudications) session where we immersed ourselves in loud chit chats on current affairs and sundries, made our way to kitchen for coffee, crossing the doorway on which Nagamma was resting, one at a time, stepping over the tumbler. When we settled around her with coffee in hand to continue the vetti-nyayam she gently remarked that she wondered which one of us would pick up and put the tumbler away- clearly all of us saw it as we stepped over it on our way to the kitchen where the sink was anyway. I picked it up and put it away with a sheepish smile, while my cousins and the friend assured the continuity of vetti-nyayam; not sure what Nagamma observed, but she neither praised me nor made any diminishing remark to my cousins or friend.

Let's abstract a behavioural design pattern from this example for an autonomous algorithm; let us name it observer/instigator design pattern. It has an observer (Nagamma), and five streams flowing through some routine (five kids) not expecting to find a hurdle to respond to(the tumbler on the way) before completing the routine. The response of each of the stream is visible to others as well as the observer. The observer, does not interrupt to provide observations until all five streams have completed the routine. Upon feedback, only one of the streams have to remove the hurdle; all of them need to learn to remove hurdle if found the next time.

*the booklet was written in 2021, however, the discussions are just as relevant today as well.

Later,

Sumathy

3 MAR 2023

lzerobzero, Sydney

Mother of all phase transitions

I am ready to lead the mother of all phase transitions: to a world of truth and ahimsa.

I am a Tamil bramin woman by birth. I have grownup with the notion of cycles/phases of decline of darma (regulation). The cycle starts of with sathya yugam, where the effectiveness of the regulations are adequate to support the implementation of truth and justice in all walks of life for all people. It ends in kali yugam were the irrelevance of outdated regulations and sporadic adherence to its intent all but destroys any semblance of assurance of life- a natural phenomenon because, the evolution and growth of the people anchored on the assurance of sathya yugam would far exceed the thinking that would have preceded the formation of the regulations. The transition is through couple of others exemplified by the epics Ramayanam and mahabaratham respectively, topics of discussion for another day. Knowing where the human evolution with all its warts and goods has landed us in 2023, I think kali yugam has long attained steady state.

I am a physicist by training. I studied phase transitions for my purposeful post grad research at RRI for three years(1982-85), the purpose being to enhance the resilience of the nematic phase in and around reasonable ambient temperatures and ambient pressure such that the transition to the liquid phase is swift. I have watched at least a thousand instances of the phase transition of varying material, from varying slides with varying surface conditions. My take home from my efforts (apart form a whale of time and irreplaceable friendships) are that no matter what the material or surface condition, the actual transition is always through the formation of local eddies breaking up by the momentum generated within each cell defined by the eddie with no path for dissipation.

I am a product development professional by remunerated experience. I started my career as a software configuration manager evolving to a process engineer amongst other things, in the defence industry isolating software components submitted for release fail to integrate at the rudimentary, compilation level. I progressed my career in Medtech for ~ two decades observing cavitations, mostly unintended, seeding potential breakdown at unforseeable times not unlike the eddies that would result in breakdown of any semblance of structure in nematics. I also have internalised to pick when its impossible to identify and annihilate a given cavitation.

I am a human. I love humans, like my personal deity Siva is defined to, like I was taught in my primary school Jesus did, like I have been loved by any number of humans, some family, some like family, some friends from my social sphere, some friends from my professional sphere.

I am ready. Armed with my approaches to physics based on dispersion, conscience and product design, to draft specification for a skeleton universal regulation I call, in memory of my dear cousin who lost her life to what was diagnosed as stroke, Sudarma. here is the preamble:

1. The preamble should recognise the sovereignty of the constituting nation as it does the sovereignty of all other nations in the world.

2. The preamble should resolve to secure life, liberty and security of every person in the constituting nation at any point in time irrespective of the nationality of the person.

3. The preamble should clarify as minimum life as a person's conscience expressed unhindered through their voluntary and involuntary organs- specific structures in a person's body that perform specified functions.

4. The preamble should clarify as minimum liberty as a person's ability to live unhindered expressing his conscience through one or more vouluntary or involuntary organs.

5. The preamble should clarify as a minimum security as the existence of a mechanism a person can count on to live liberally.

6. The preamble should require every person in the constituting nation at any point in time to recognise their life, liberty and security is in no way more important to the life liberty and security of every other person

more later,

Sumathy

Human potentially is almost unlimited

Some observations this week defied Physics in shaping my response, and I know there is no way I can apply my knowledge of physics, chemistry, mathematics, material or computer science explain them. In other words, there is manifestation of a phenomenon in the physically tangible world, perceptible by humans that doesn't fit any objective analysis. You can call it divine if you like, but make sure, you don't ascribe everything else that you don't have time to think through as divine. (for example, my experiences bringing my mother back home is (REF 1) not one such inexplicable experiences, I can easily explain every one of them, including the Wdou components.

I have nailed practically every observation in my 62 years of life as a derivative of/derivable from Physics as I understand -that the Omniverse (REF 2) is inherently dispersive with no place for gravity. There have been many a, what- to my annoyance, would go under the name of, divine experience in mylife. I could explain (REF 3) all my observations or learnings on/from this planet to the efforts of inanimate (eg. space, air, soil, gold, water) or living species(eg. gumtree, koala, deep-sea-sulphur- based plants, humans); I could explain bakthi/devotion within the realms of physics, and concluded that personal deity is a personal medium of expression of bakthi/devotion. As adversity of disproportionate magnitude reasonably handleable by humans knocked me down, I could resort to various layers of manifestaion of physics, and find myself again stronger with more clarity than conceivable by myself previously, let alone accomplish through hard work/delivery through truth (REF 4, 5). Its like some one voiced once when I picked myself up from a near impossible situation, "its your diligence, there is no God".

CONCLUSION:

My conclusion is that human potential is unlimited, if you are willing to work hard, its almost divine.

COROLLARY:

Human potential is almost unlimited - if you have the gethu (REF 6) to hold your deities accountable.

Let me explain why the corollary is important:

When all my efforts to secure the life for humans looked all but blown when I took stock of the extent of continued reinforcement and commitment to defence spending world over and my recollection of, I think, episode seventeen of the documentary series on world war II, where bulldozers clear soldiers from the battle fields with bodies of young men and women from many a country and many an ethnicity and background, tumbling over each other in unison with their differences forgotten, their lives shortened either by the war machines or the conditions in the theatre or the cleanup operations in the aftermath of what they called victory, because, bulldozers can't pick the live soldiers lying in waiting to return home to their family and friends from those who gave their life fighting.

All my efforts to make many a decision maker around the world aware that when you turn your reliance on software based technology for autonomous decision making with consequences to human life, its the end of humanity; when you adopt not too dissimilar technological solutions for the purposes of delivering products, infrastructure, information, service and support to the defence industry, health industry and professional research industry, you send humanity into a path towards irreversible calamity or what I call irreversibly devolve the human species, looked to be slipping beyond my reach.

It was a working day, so I was pensively logging on to divert my attention momentarily, and a penny dropped on why we have landed where we have despite our vast experience, intellect, human power and economic clout. I wanted to quickly jot it down; not having the time to go downstairs and pick up my current note book, I decided to find some space in the margin of any one of the pages of in one of many previous note books strewn over my desk to think about later. A technique I have adopted for my social enterprise to validate that my new ideas do not contradict any of my previous thinking is to pick a page in random from old books and vet my new thought with what's in there; so it would give me a quick validation also, given the weight of the issue that was rendering me pensive. That morning, I also chided my secondary deity Vishnu saying his teachings in Bagavath Geetha works at most to the point where the human imbibes the essence of every yoga(paths of proficiency, such as dispassionate engagement in the adopted role, renunciation of wealth to asceticism, governance, recognition of all pervading divinity, recognition of all consuming divinity and so on) and integrating them into a coherent whole and adpating it for their current situation as a human, that the bits in Bagavath Geetha where he promises that he would protect the gentle ones amongst us from those who attempt to destroy our gentle attitude and practices, he is completely in capable of in 2022.

There were three books on my desk, I consciously left one of them as I recognised it as the one I'd opened for a personal purpose and RANDOMLY picked one from the other two and RANDOMLY opened a page to jot down my following insight to think through:

? the reason most businesses, big or small, fail is because of the expectation of employees to prove themselves on expected performance for the business goals while with a fixed-eye on the stretch goal for personal performance; unless you are a grad student or intern, you would fail the expectation of the business as well as personal goals. - solution perhaps is to reorganise such that one could grow achieving the business goals without having a stretch personal performance goal, a protection for employees as long as the business stands, you stand with it and vice versa.

The entries on the open page were from 20 February through to 26 February were on: failure of news as a mechanism intended to inform, software platforms that excel in mediocracy, notes for symposium on Truthful and accurate, log of cyber interference, address of the location of the rehersal for kannagi enbathen peyare, an lzerobzero initiative in collaboration with Samskriti School of dance, notes to explore options to circumnavigate potential conflict of interests in my day job. The page also included, clearly RANDOMLY for I had no intension of going back to that page any more than any other page, a) 2 x bookmark I made as a prop for my first symposium Self-respect and Respect for others with my poem, Let Me be and b) an invitation for the show kannagi enbathen peyare with the superceded date of 30 OCT 2021.

Running my new insight quickly over all of what presented themselves into one action showed me a fresh approach to reverse devolution of humanity:

A new lzerobzero initiative, WDuh. and its socialisation as an entry on my coloumns in my linkedin thread, waking up to my weekends. (Ref 7)

more later,

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Founder | lzerobzero | Sydney | Sunday 18 DEC 2022

REFERENCE:

References to material I wrote with links are provided below; I resorted to self publication upon several unsuccessful attempts to seek collaboration interests:

1. Sumathy Ramesh, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sumathy-ramesh-a8894610_activity-7009675924753301504-4CM4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

2. Sumathy Ramesh, Omniverse, a self-publication of lzerobzero, ISBN 978-06451052-5-4

3. Sumathy Ramesh, zeroharm, a self-publication of lzerobzero upon unsuccessful attempts to seek collaboration interests, ISBN 978-06451052-2-3

4. Sumathy Ramesh, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6949952371317702659?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

5. Sumathy Ramesh, https://www.thaureyam.com/cle

6. Sumathy Ramesh, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sumathy-ramesh-a8894610_bfbbfybfqbgfbfqbft-activity-6976675114767572992-Ye_V?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

7. Sumathy Ramesh, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sumathy-ramesh-a8894610_activity-7009675924753301504-4CM4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

ETHICAL SOURCING OF DATA - we can do more; and we should.

* On Reasonable expectation

AN APPEAL FOR SELF REGULATION OF MEDTECH AND PHARMA TO REASSURE ~4 MILLION AUSTRALIANS THAT THE INDUSTRY STANDS BY THE VICTIMS OF MEDIBANK DATA BREECH AND TO PREVENT BREECHES OF HEALTH RECORDS OF OTHER INSURERS IN SIMILAR BREECHES

One of Australia's significant health insurer has confirmed that ~4 million Australians - that is one in five Australians have been rendered vulnerable because of a data breech. 

As an ordinary Australian, not well versed in the consequences of cyber security breeches when it comes to access to my health records, I do not know how to respond to it. 

However, I do understand the following, with the DISCLAIMER that I HAVE BEEN UNAWARE OF ANY SUCH USE IN MY EXPERINCE WITH THE INDUSTRY:

1. The health records of insurance companies can be construed as potential data source for research or market intelligence in the therapeutic product and solution development, all the way from clinical trial design to, evidence gathering, (including but not limited to real world evidence using personal data, such as mobile phones), product performance, to product category update; there may be other uses.

2. If there is no one buy the data the criminals have no incentive to steal health records.

HENCE THE CALL TO THE INDUSTRY:

- to commit to NEVER SOLICT INTELLIGENCE ON AUSTRALIAN HEALTH RECORDS for their purposes

- to commit to actively engage in the review and vetting of the source of the clinical data including scrutiny of the recruitment process 

- to commit to executing swift corrective and preventative action if shown that unauthorised use of unconsented data has contributed one or more aspects of the product they have placed for human use, irrespective of the stated intended purpose in all transparency (transparency to prevent further breeches in health data) 

As an industry that has benefitted from the allied health insurance industry, that is probbaly the least one could do- particularly because, cyberspace/infrastructure is not the primary core competency of the health insurance industry, neither it is of the therapeutic product manufacturing/distribution industry.

If you are some one that is motivated by your familiarity with a victim, be inspired, as I am one of the 4 million.

As for the regulations, I am sure regulators would work to lift the reasonable expectation* of use of public health data for product realisation - at the very least assurance that for all therapeutic products or solutions made available to the Australian public that unauthorised use of unconsented data has not contributed to one or more aspects of the product they have approved for human use, irrespective of the stated intended purpose in all transparency, in this case to reward ethically sourced evidence.

Suma/Sumathy

Sydney,

26 OCT 2022

2 OCT 2022

2 OCTOBER is a memorable day in my life for more reasons than I can count. Its has been especially so since 2009, my last day at ResMed Ltd, a MedTech manufacturer from Sydney after ten years of learning- the real kind- from colleagues in an exceptionally open environment developing products to exceptional standards. I have been taking stock on the capability maturity of the world I operate in on every 2 OCTOBER, baselined on my understanding of Mahatma Gandhi's vision its operations steepled in truth and ahimsa.

Results from my stock take for 2022:

• there is no shortage of humans capable of operating driving truth and ahimsa in every walk of their lives world over

• the root-cause of almost all the woes that I have analysed debilitating humans is the incapacity of humans to isolate actual risk from the cumulative effects of the multitude of mitigations that are put in place as mitigation for multitude of other unrelated risks.

• humanity is fast loosing the ability to recover and rebuild as available resources are depleted mitigating risks

• humans as a species capable of living to their fullest potential, have a better chance of survival and realising their full potential if we spend the resources expended on risk mitigation on getting the specification right in the first place, and building to specification prior to release

• in ISO 14971 parley, the risk from the risk-framework that has been shaping product development - and for that matter business operations, for the past couple of decades has well and truly exceeded any potential benefit it could have brought to humans, whether you are a manufacturer or user.

To truthful and accurate understanding of what constitutes ahimsa(no-harm) I pay my tributes to Sri Mahatma Gandhi.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney, 2 OCT 2022

THE FIRST SIX DAYS - an approach to creationism anchored on Physics redefining both Physics and Creationism

THE FIRST SIX DAYS - an approach to creationism anchored on Physics redefining both Physics and Creationism ( citation: Sumathy Ramesh, lzerobzero, MON 25 JUL 2022, LinkedIn article, LinkedIn)

I typically don't believe in divine-design 'cos it stunts my own creativity as I navigate all that is hurled at me and still find it in myself to live true to myself, choosing relentless hard-work anchored on truth and zero-harm to fellow humans instead.

Our family was knocked to paralysis when we learnt that one of my brother in laws, on a visit to Washington to attend the wedding of a dear friend landed up in critical care. We picked ourselves, shelved the family holiday we had planned, and found our way to Washington from Chennai, Sydney, San Diego, Detroit, Portland, San Fran, Boston, Pittsburg and Dallas, all the places and more, my brother-in law would have traversed to be with any one of us had we been isolated, putting Santa Claus ton shame. None of us live in Washington.

Confused, not knowing what is happening, what we would do, how we would manage to keep our own health in shape given the extraordinary circumstances the geo-techno-political spheres have constricted us in 2022, we were queuing up at the reception of the Adventist Hospital at Shady Grove, MD. My eyes chanced on a poster on First six days with a promise of rest for himself on Sunday. Coming with a ISO13485 soaked brain grooved on MIL-standards for draining the excess, that's all I needed to draw myself a generic map/process to deliver too ourselves the outcome of bringing our brother home.

All of what Physicists try to explain, as beautifully proposed by George Gamov in his First Three Minutes, comes from First Three minutes; all of what Physicists tried to decipher from their equivalent of observation/equations/recording-macros/traces/bread-crumbs/learn/deep-learn, depending on which generation of analysis you want to associate yourself with, stops short at around 100 milli seconds. A topic of my research in FY20-FY22, culminating in my booklet, Omniverse.

It almost seems like divine design that as I am contemplating FY23 activities under what I have been calling Applied Grand Unification, that I should encounter the most difficult moment in outlives. My consolation is none of it are contradictory notions, first 100 milliseconds precedes first three minutes that precede first six days.

Sharing the skeleton for my next book, First Six Days, an approach to creationism anchored on Physics redefining both Physics and Creationism with applicability to finding personal leadership to navigate any critical problem you may encounter in chunks of six days:

Day 1 Chaos(sp?) SR:1:1:1

• take stock

• don't know what is happening

• don't know the star of health

• don't know the exit criteria

Day 2 டென்சன் SR 1:2:1

• draw the line

• back on feet (aka, independence)

• reach of breath

• non issue

Day 3 tech/டெக்  SR 1:3:1

• Chronic Condition Management (CCM)

• intended outcome: stay on feet independently true to yourself

• notes on spec: currency of intent, unobtrusive tests, clear line on # of device - device1, device 2, device n and DEVICE Z and no more

• support: (Roles- intent, capacity, core capacity)

• ISO13485:2025-skeleton

Day 4 Governance SR1:4:1

Proposal for a Four prong governance structure:( three streams don't seem to be adequate to deliver objectivity any longer)

• Vedantham/Regulations

• Vaisyam/Commerce

• Suthram/market or consumer space

• Vijayam/Safety-net

Day 5 Communication SR1:5:1

• content (ORIGINAL)

• reference(someone else's original content- affiliation, currency)

• medium(device/infrastructure: scope, limitations, integrity of intent, content, and currency)

• validatability(validation of integrity of intent, content, and currency; impact of proliferation, assesability(sp), correctability )

Day 6 Validation SR1:6:1

upon my experience over the past three weeks, I grudgingly concede the first-round to divinity :)! but, that's the limit of HE/SHE - now I have to do the hardworking to iterate through another six day before we can get my brother-in-law home- back to chaos!!!!!

Sincerely,

Sumathy, from Washington DC on intended short-term(<28 days) stay

25 JUL 2022

Sifting through deep fake for objective evidence

"There is no substitute for face to face dialog- there is none" - President Biden in the press conference following the conclusion of the summit with President Putin in Geneva on 16 JUNE 2021 on strategic stability amongst other things.

Last April I made the decision to leave the peak-body organisation I had started falling for, following the effort it took to sifting through deep fake for objective evidence while working on digital platforms with no human contact to help us recalibrate misrepresentation. Precisely, the topic of the symposium I had planned for today as an initiative of my little business lzerobzero.

Given I didn't have any registrants its only my own thinking on the subject that is making it to its outcome. It thus, gives me great pleasure to share it on an online platform prone to atleast some of the vulnerabilities potentially enabling deep-fake to infuse through. For one thing, if any socialising platform has any hope of correcting such vulnerabiliites, it has to be a social platform intended for professionals such as Linkedin; additionally, my interest being resolution of such vulnerabilities impacting human-communication, commenting from the sideline would at best serve academic interests and is of no use to me.

Upon review of the myriad ways the adjective deep has been adopted by tech, I use the follwoing definition for the purposes of this article: deep-fake refers to the output of truthful information manipulated through one or more functionalities offered by software applications using, though not limited to, algorithms intended to mimic human faculties by producing outcomes on the basis of logics accrued through processing (people call it learning, but to me learning is a human thing) large amounts of data over a large number of iterations. The output is fake. The developement and deployment of such algorithms are intended to misrepresent truth.

In the absence of direct interaction with familiar humans its impossible to sift through deepfake to isolate truthful information. The nature of software is such if a given vulnerability can infuse deepfake into the application or its outcomes, then by definition, if it incorporates software, the solution can not be claimed to be immune to equivalent vulnerabilities. In my assessment, the effort is practically doubled if such a vulnerability is exploited and puts the affected people on a backfoot, because they will be less vigilant misthinking that the vulnerability has beed addressed, when its not. 

So my message is simple: 

- when in doubt, allow benefit of doubt to the humans involved; almost always, damage to humans can never be fully compensated; besides, going after humans will cavitate the systems deeper and explode on you, probably when you are least expecting it.

- if you have the bandwidth, verify by directly asking humans for clarification; think through for yourself to make sure it makes sense

- if you do not have the bandwidth to verify, reject the information as unresolved

- if you are in a position of power, keep your critical systems away from solutions that are vulnerable for infusion of deepfake

- if you have already committed to such systems, find the effort to review it noting monitoring is not a solution when it comes to protecting humans; monitoring is at best, an adjunct to a solution

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

18 JUNE 2021

16 JUNE 2021

I am a human. I love humans. I worship humanity expressed through humans. To me the universe consists of my family, my friends, my colleagues, my people, people on their way to becoming my family, my friends, my colleagues and my people. 

Do I care what happens to them? Yes I do, I care about what happens to each one of them. With all my physical faculties intact, its a difficult task to ensure our life, viz., the ability of a human to realise their full potential in an environment that doesn't constrict it. Given the constrictions under which I am operating today, let alone the past decade, it is even more difficult . So yes, I can't drop the ball on things that are a concern for the assurance of life of humans -even for a moment. I am tired. Not because of the load of what I do- but because the constrictions wear me out from working to my full potential imparting my insights to appropriate people with in the governance framework in my nation and equivalent frameworks in other nations where I am unaware of my own government's participation. I understand the root-cause of the issues that are playing out in today's world. I understand how they manifest as concerns that keep me awake. The enormity of the task is, at the moment, the only thing that gives me the strength to pick myself up and forge forward.

To me today has the potential to become a historic day. A day when we as humans living in 2021 understand we have no obligation to continue the rivalries between empires from eighteen hundreds for several reasons. We have the benefit of hindsight and two hundred years of history and intellectual evolution to know humans got it wrong when it came to the amount of room and resources the planet has for all of us to live and flourish. Objectively think about the physical limitation of our ability to visualise: our eyes and brain resolve the size of the sun and the moon to be about the same and their proximity to us to also be about the same. Given the sun is ~400 times further from us and the sun is ~ 60,893,759 times larger than the moon, our ability to visualise or compare is atleast 400 times incorrect in resolving something as simple as an illuminated sphere. From a human perspective, even the vast expanses of the largest room in a huge mansion is minuscule compared to the size of probably the tip of the town in which the mansion stands. And there is this vast amount of space on the planet that is uninhabited and there is vast advances in our understanding of science and technology to turn what was once declared as uninhabitable land into oasises. Besides we are culturally evolved in 2021 that our kings didn't have to rule a place wiping out the local inhabitatnts before we can enjoy its natural and cultural riches or have access to their ports. We can speak as humans, we resolve our issues as humans and walk another way just as happily if we can’t walk together; we don’t have to block each other’s ways in fear that we may not be able to walk on our chosen path. In other words, we have the hindsight of our experiences from the last millennium to reflect, learn and internalise that the era of Risk Management as a strategy for assurance of anything, may it be safety, wealth or health, is truly over. I mean, how many understand it comprehensively any way. On a lighter note, think of the hours you would save ploughing through million coloumned spreadsheets that as you spend your best talent getting the value on each cell accurate loosing sense of every other line while doing so. 

To me today has the potential to become a historic day. As the heads of states of two constitutional republics meet to discuss their differences, I wish they'll recognise they are but both humans, that they are but both vulnerable to the limitations of perceptions our species is born with. I hope amidst all the conflicts there will be time for civility, for the issues I see that would undo us as humans don't distinguish one of us from the other. For example, just as I was writing the last paragraph, infact precisely at 10:57 am AEST my mobile phone rang displaying an interstate land line number. The call failed with in 3 seconds with no response from the other end to my hello. I called back at 10:58 am and was responded with a recorded message from my service provider saying that the number I was dialing has been disconnected. And I thought we had reliable telecommunication, i.e., understanding who the caller is, receiving the communication from the caller and responding knowing the caller will receive your response, was something we had in the bag well with in the life time of Alexander Graham Bell. Looks like we have a long way to go and we can only get there together looking out for each other as human to human.

I look forward to tomorrow's paper to check on history.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

16 Jun 2021

Hot-cross-bun and Organising for zero harm - unrestrained human collaboration

In lieu of the hot-cross bun at morning-tea prior to easter, let me momentarily indulge in fond recollections of our primary school easter parade: a simple, sincere celebration of the resurrection of christ restoring faith in win for the righteous, after an unjust crucification from inaccurate pointing from a dinner party amongst trusted friends. We called it குறுத்தோலை ஞாயிறு, probably because the parade consisted of all the children walking in twos from the school to the local church and back, holding with one hand a little cross our teachers made from a blade of the coconut tree-leaf and clasping the other hand with that of your friend’s, singing ஓசன்னா பாடுவோம் , இயேசுவின் தாசரே, உன்னதத்திலே தாவீதின் மைந்தனுக்கு ஓசன்னா. (the devotes of Jesus, let us sing the exhalation, osanna(there is no ha in Tamil), to the son of David in the perfection of purity; never new todate what the exhalation, hosanna meant). The fete that followed funded by the collection in little gold-painted clay money pots which started right after the previous easter, would go on till sundown. The only bitter memory from the joyous days is the after taste of the லட்டு, a traditional sweet, that later figured out came from my teachers reusing oil from frying some meat based dish creating an immune repultion in my mouth, a bramin girl coded with genes in vegetarianism since the times the saint Kousikar roamed the Ganges planes. At that time I thought the whole school participated in the parade, but looking back the length and school strenth doesn’t add-up. May be some families held back their kids for religious, or social reasons, not surprising given it was a school whose catchment was the mainly poor neigbourhood. I am grateful to my family for allowing me to grow unrestrained relating to humans, given we were hindus and the size of our home spanned the entire breath of the school. By the way, in the In 2021, if you choose to crusify christ you may want to prepare for the contengency that he may potentially come back alive and probaly wipe you out himself. Its probbaly easier to abandon such ill conceived intents and bring him to the table for constructive collaboration. 

Back to work: 

Collaboration has been in and out of corporate vogue ever since I’ve joined the workforce. To me collaboration is a human attribute and by definition can not be simulated.

Collaboration is an act of recognition of your own strength, your own potential/unknown inadequacy, recognition of the strength of the person or persons you are collaborating with allowing for potential inadequacies in the person or persons that you are collaborating with without being prejudiced or proud with the intent to derive an outcome for the issue/activity that engages the strength of your collective strength in eliminating any inadequacy. All in one breath, at every breath, where every one of your organ and associated circulatory and nervous infrastructure along with the limbs limbs as a kind of reservoir to sink excess flow of energy communicated through various components of the blood or through the nervous system. 

Collaboration requires the kind of awareness that is hard to master even as a human, particularly in environments that inadvertently have the capacity to debilitate such awareness, at times with little chance of variation in the degree of the disability. Machines don’t stand a chance- they shouldn’t, lest they harm the very humans they intend to serve.

Happy easter,

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

1 APR 2021

Sweet vending machine

It was sometime in 1998. Like almost all original software developments that I have come across, the previous project was struggling to finish the cliched last 20% of work in the projected 80% of the time at the RAAF base. I was one of the very few employees available to participate in the preparation of a bid to build a autonomous testing software rig for the weapons store of a fighter air craft as a sub-contractor to GEC-Marconi Avionics. I was thrown into unchartered waters, though I am ever so grateful for the experince because I learnt to place software where it belongs in systems from a doyen amongst the systems engineers I have worked with, a position he holds in my heart to date. 

Preparation of bids is a very intensive process, particularly in the days where we didn't have power-point template to shoe-horn your thinking into, forgetting that probably half a million others have access to such templates too. It included hectic days pouring over documents preceding the limited face-to-face time with the potential customers to get clarity on what is required, assess your own strengths and come up with a proposal that distinguishes you from your competitors. You can crack it only if you nail what you are not building and your attitude to mitigations as opposed to getting the design right. As our our bid lead/system engineering manager pointed out during the face-to-face, the topography for the software architecture for adding a new weapon to the weapons store is practically no different to adding a new line of candy bar to a sweet vending machine - you prepare the machine by loading your <candy bar/payload> on a pre-determined rack indexed to a sequence of button presses so that at the time of use, the <candybar/payload> drops in response to the correct sequence of button presses; the consequences are ofcourse vastly different. Likewise a light-hearted trigger to think through the consequences of mitigations from the same meeting: apparently, prior to developing the swing-wing technology as a design for fighter/attackers, one of the biggest issues faced by the designers was how to stop the wings from tearing while flying at higher speeds; an engineer proposed perforating the line along potential tear on the basis of his experiences with toilet papers- that when you rip, they tear everywhere else but along the line of perforation included with the intent of enhancing user experince/promoting ease of use: if the only strogest element in the product is the user interface, you can't prevent failures elsewhere. 

I forget the rest of the details from the day long meeting with the GMAv engineers, but I'll never get tired of recalling his allusions to the sweet vending machine and the swing-wing technology.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

29 JUNE 2021

I am sorry, since when did personal interests of public figures crept into to the landing pages of our broadsheets? I though that was low even for tabloids who knew to pick their celebraties from the entertainment industry!

Sumathy, Sydney

19 JUNE 2021

sifting through deep-fake for objective evidence

reproduced from my article in linkedin as published on my page on 18 JUNE 2021:

"There is no substitute for face to face dialogue- there is none"

President Biden in the press conference following the conclusion of the summit with President Putin in Geneva on 16 JUNE 2021 on strategic stability amongst other things.

Last April I made the decision to leave the peak-body organisation I had started falling for, following the effort it took to sifting through deep fake for objective evidence while working on digital platforms with no human contact to help us recalibrate misrepresentation. Precisely, the topic of the symposium I had planned for today as an initiative of my little business lzerobzero.

Given I didn't have any registrants its only my own thinking on the subject that is making it to its outcome. It thus, gives me great pleasure to share it on an online platform prone to atleast some of the vulnerabilities potentially enabling deep-fake to infuse through. For one thing, if any socialising platform has any hope of correcting such vulnerabiliites, it has to be a social platform intended for professionals such as Linkedin; additionally, my interest being resolution of such vulnerabilities impacting human-communication, commenting from the sideline would at best serve academic interests and is of no use to me.

Upon review of the myriad ways the adjective deep has been adopted by tech, I use the follwoing definition for the purposes of this article: deep-fake refers to the output of truthful information manipulated through one or more functionalities offered by software applications using, though not limited to, algorithms intended to mimic human faculties by producing outcomes on the basis of logics accrued through processing (people call it learning, but to me learning is a human thing) large amounts of data over a large number of iterations. The output is fake. The developement and deployment of such algorithms are intended to misrepresent truth.

In the absence of direct interaction with familiar humans its impossible to sift through deepfake to isolate truthful information. The nature of software is such if a given vulnerability can infuse deepfake into the application or its outcomes, then by definition, the solution, if it incorporates software, can not be claimed to be immune to equivalent vulnerabilities. In my assessment, the effort is practically doubled if such a vulnerability is exploited and puts the affected people on a backfoot, because they will be less vigilant misthinking that the vulnerability has beed addressed, when its not. 

So my message is simple: 

- when in doubt, allow benefit of doubt to the humans involved; almost always, damage to humans can never be fully compensated; besides, going after humans will cavitate the systems deeper and explode on you, probably when you are least expecting it.

- if you have the bandwidth, verify by directly asking humans for clarification; think through for yourself to make sure it makes sense

- if you do not have the bandwidth to verify, reject the information as unresolved

- if you are in a position of power, keep your critical systems away from solutions that are vulnerable for infusion of deepfake

- if you have already committed to such systems, find the effort to review it noting monitoring is not a solution when it comes to protecting humans; monitoring is at best, an adjunct to a solution

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

18 JUNE 2021

Graduate positions and student internships

Like my friend once said upon taking a graduate under his wings, “I didn’t realise how green you are when you are fresh out of the University”. And like my daughter said in a different context watching my grand niece throw a tantrum after being away from my niece for all of two and a half hours, “but the little idiots don’t know it” (Disambiguation: idiot a term of endearment in our household to steer a situation away upon spotting its going no where, as opposed to a measure of intellect or lack of it.)

If you think about it, its elementary. 

Universities are like your nets. It would stretch your limbs without burning you out; it would give you a chance to try that stroke you had been meditating on ever since you saw your Tendulkar’s of the world lifted the stadium to its feet, after prepping your bowler and taking your time to get in to position; your best shots exceeding your own expectations of your capacity probably came out the net, because you were yourself playing your shot with no qualms about the crowd, or reporters or anything else- straight from your heart; you were happy when you fail, because it gives you a chance to understand the failure mode and have an opportunity to access expertise to correct, learn and grow. You come out fresh, relaxed and on top of the world, provided you understood the intent of nets and not stressed yourself out- not unlike the wisdom University is about learning and exam is something that come at the end of it helps get the most out of the University. Like at nets, where your coaches help get the best out of you, the academic staff help learn the most while at University; particularly, if your coach is a veteran player with many a  match under his belt. 

The match arena is very different. You have to wait your turn to pick up the bat. Having picked up the bat, you have to face one ball at a time. You may have to dead bat for the rest of the innings, depending on the state of play, not adding one run to your personal tally. No two balls are the same- there are so many variables giving as many opportunities for you to shine if right and reasons to blame if you fail. The stroke you so wanted to play you may never get a chance to. For that matter, your whole team may not even get to see the light of the day if clouds are mustered to rain as you parade into the grounds. You have to build your career one match at a time with pretty much no relevance to what you did or didn’t do at the nets. And so on… At the end of the game your spectators may hate you for no fault of yours; or praise you, more often than not for no merit of yours.

In my experience it takes about two years to learn one role in a commercial work environment adequately with sufficient respect for every other interfacing role and, most importantly, to develop an understanding of the consequences of what you do with in your role. Its a rule of thumb you can apply to any role, given the necessary qualification to get the role would have normalised the differential in learning ability. 

As we rebuild in the post-covid, covid-digitised environment, Universities could help businesses, perhaps, by structuring their offerings to do away with integrated internships from their curriculum and finding alternate remuneration opportunities within the University for summer that would develop the student holistically. It would enable businesses to bolster their graduate programs adequately instead of spreading their dollars thin across short-term internships, a potential liability that may feed undetected cavitations.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

30 MAR 2021

Leveraging Partnerships

I am not some one whom you would call a hoarder of objects; I tend to process whatever I want to absorb out of an object as soon as practicable at which point the object looses its intent for retention and hence my engagement. Noel Ford’s cartoon below is probably one of the few exceptions: 

• its message is profound and timeless

• its adaptable to any critical endeavour requiring creativity

• its extendable to developing situations

• its efficient in its ability to trigger change

• its fun to stay on your wall and does not offend

• ticks every other ility

After years of hybernation, I am pulling it out to adorn my wall- hopefully for one last time to share with my fellow humans and entities engaged in Artificial Intelligence research/development/deployment/maintennace leveraging partnerships with core industries such as finance, defence, health and education: “Look, this isn’t going to work - have you got any better ideas?”

Organising for zero-harm: recognising the tipping point

reproduced from my article published on my Linkedin page on 10 MAR 2021

I have always lived knowing the world is a good place. 

Prior to boarding the plane back to the US after an enjoyable family holiday with us back in early nineties, my niece’s husband observed ”these people think the world is a good place; its not”. There had been plenty of opportunities for me to evaluate his observation even before I got to coloumn eight on a weekly basis, let alone hurdles in my own life. Every time I came out knowing the world is a good place. Its just that very many of us don’t think it is because very many of us think the world, in order for themselves to be a good place need to necessarily be not so for others- an incorrect perception that requires correction at very many levels. 

To implement systemic corrections require appropriate tools for analysis, tools for communication, tools for assurance of application of correction and tools for detecting other tools that may negate the efforts of correction. Its my assessment that such tools need to necessarily be to support individual efforts enabling individuals to collaborate transparently. In other words, tools for corrections can not be autonomous. I have several data points to illustrate why but, to me, when autonomous tools have the ability to allow a human in a node in an organisation to tell another human “her laughter irritates me, take it out” and the subordinate to complete what was asked of him/her, such tools have hit the tipping point.

But then individual organisations don’t have to wait until they get to the tipping point- there are very many practicable measures that can be implemented through a simple review of their tools to keep the work place safe for its employees and customers alike; a couple of example review considerations:

1. Is the tool being used as intended?

- what is the stated intent of the tool

- who is using it

- in the absence of the tool, is the person using the tool capable of performing the intended task If no, there is potential for misuse and needs review for risk of harm

2. Does the person using the tool understand the intent of the tool or how the tool is being used to achieve the stated outcome, 

- what is the part they are playing in achieving the outcome 

- what is the part played by the tool in achieving the outcome

- what is the part played by yourself in achieving the outcome

- how to detect when the outcome is incorrect/compromised 

- what are the work arounds

- what are the conditions under which such work arounds can be applied by the person using the tool

- what are the criteria prior to seeking explicit approvals prior to applying the work arounds

- how to document the work around

- how to communicate to the tool vendor

- how to manage tool updates: assess applicability of automatic updates of platform/tool, assess impact of automatic updates of platform/tool

- how to isolate the parts played by the tool in compromising/enhancing outcome from the part played by the person

- has the tool tipped from being an assistant to the person to being assisted by the person; in which case, where does the liability of compromised outcome lie?

and so on…

To keeping the world in a good place…

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

10 MAR 2021

Organising for zero-harm: relevant experience

reproduced from my article published on my Linkedin page on 9 MAR 2021

I owe zero-harm to many things; principle amongst those is what a friend of mine told me long back: never be in a hurry to implement the wrong thing. The corollary I derived is right thing does not harm any humans.

Over the years, I have come to the understanding, that there are more reasons than working to a time-budget that leads to the implementation of the wrong solution. 

In my experience almost always any harm I have observed has come about becasue of inadvertant oversights embedded in the processes or inadvertant oversights during execution. The problem is, such harms have a way of picking up debries and growing uncontrollably to unacceptable proportions if unchecked. Its never too late  to correct, once you know harm has occured.

You need an agile organisation structure, meaning, have people with adequate critical experience in roles sufficiently empowered to make crips decisions and champion corrections. Such strengths should be in-built and groomed as its hard to verify expertise on relevant critical experience, by definition, critical to a given situation and not worn as a stripe for the easter parade. 

Its never too late to correct, once you know harm has occured.

SIncerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

9 MAR 2021

Referral to run an enterprise Vs referral to run a social enterprise

Reproduced from my article on my Linkedin page on 8 MARCH 2021

Enterprises are typically businesses that earn their revenue through one or more streams of offerings across one or more customer segments and may have an expanding vision to fulfil all of its mission. The intent is probably the same world over, enable the business to earn a revenue by trading equivalent product or service with its customers. The extent of equivalence is unquantifiable and at best can be bench marked against similar businesses. 

Businesses are regulated in practically every sovereign country. Given bussinesses grow beyond the capacity of a individual human-customer to assess the fairness of the equivalence in terms of trade, regulations step in to constrain businesses so that the demonstration of equivalence is not stretched to the determent of the customer or other equivalent business. Bussiness success, therefore, is dependent on the ability of its management to optimise the parameters of equivalence as much as practicable. Well regulated industries thus thrive in a sustainable market environment depending on how well aligned is their organisational structure to the regulated environment. Roles with in the structure are definable, and skill sets are transferrable between bussinesses. Professional referrals can therefore be sufficiently provided by one or two people who can vouch for one’s competency in the given skill.

Social enterprises are typically businesses that strive to address an unfulfilled need or unresolved issue in the wider society through one or more streams of offerings across one or more customer segments. They may choose to earn a revenue through one or more of their offerings with the intent of sustaining their enterprise, though the success of the enterprise is measured in its fulfillment of their mission unrelated to the size of the revenue. Social enterprise, to me, is not a charity nor is it driven on a not for profit manthra. Social enterprises are regulated as bussinesses in terms of their offerings; additionally they bear the burden of self regulation based on the aspect of the society potentially influenced by their efforts- in a sense it requires a certain purity of intent and transparency in operation that is perhaps not required of normal enterprises. I though about this long and hard with hardly any sound social enterprise available today as an example to learn from. 

Having founded a social enterprise, completing the scope of its offerings, and deciding to run it as a sole-trader, now I need to validate my own capacity to run it from all cross sections of typical bussinesses. 

So I turn to my ex-colleagues for referrals.

Though I have related to them through a myriad of roles, at a transactional level of abstraction, I engaged with them either as peer in a collaboration to achieve the intended outcome or as a subordinate contributing with in the scope of my role to support my supervisor collaborate in their role to achieve the intended outcome.  Its a fine line, though the distinction is important in ensuring I play my full scope without undermining that of others. I have strived to tread the line at 0.25 pt dotted, allowing seamless flow of information across with out loosing sight of the boundary.

So I turn to my ex-colleagues for referral:

• primarily to objectively validate I have understood my own strengths in collaborating with people from a variety of backgrounds fulfilling specific roles with in the scope of the interface;

• to use as a reference in case of need for aspects of my engagement in my endeavour to develop my business as a social enterprise.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

8 MAR 2021

At 5’2”  with a shoe, I am too small to fail, particularly in 2021

Reproduced from my article on my Linkedin page on 7 MARCH 2021

I didn’t intend to work today; but then this is not the first Sunday that I woke up thinking so. In all probabilities it may not be the last either - not until I can drop the reins that is thrust in my hands into the capable hands of others.

I can’t fail in my mission fo one simple reason: I have perfected a personal trait*** viz., ability to isolate humans from issues and call-out and correct defects or notions on the merit of evidence or relevance, irrespective of the size or legacy of the proponent of the defect or notion. I consciously validated my ability to do so in everything I did at every living moment in the past ten years or so.

As a trivial example, its far from blasphemy, when I respectfully seat Hanuman** in my kolam/sketch as I regrouped this morning, deviating from the original depiction in Ramayanam** where he had to wind his tail to form a seat for himself and communicate his message while he was denied a seat in the mighty courts of Ravana. Its neccessary to keep our icons with current practices lest the solutions we derive are inadvertently rendered outdated, the practice in this case in 2021, negotiations are won on the merit of the message not on intimidation of the messenger.

And my message is the issues in 2021 are so complex due to intricate inter-dependencies to be traced to any individual human. The solution thus is to allow adequate benefit of doubt to every human and find ways to assist every one of them  in all sincerity and fairness by a) strengthening public institutions b) correcting their existing tools and c) commencing design on tools that are coded on zero-harm for the future.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

7 MAR 2021

***Over the years several arguments have been made against my stand by family, friends, and those who could become one or the other. The arguments ranged from that I-am-an-idealist to she’ll-sign-off-on-anything, that I-am-a-**tch to she-is-naive, ‘does-nothing to over-working,  inexperienced to over-qualified, clueless-about-money to why-can’t-every-project-run-like-hers, no-one-cares-about-you to every-one-is-scared-of you, and so on. I have taken each of the feedback onboard and subjected myself to objective introspection ever so many times. 

** Hanuman is a character from Ramayanam, an epic of Biblical proportions. Its shaped the lives of billions overs the years as its hero Rama, exemplifies a human whose virtues rendered him indistinguishable from divinity as described in the scriptures. Rama’s core competencies of righteousness are an inspiration to aspiring leaders. I myself have been personally benefitted from several aspects of the epic in building fairness,  humility and resilience reflecting on characters in Ramayanam.

Published on 2 MAR 2021: Review Vs Audit

Review and Audit are two distinct arms of a quality assurance paradigm. You plough through documents under both banners - the commonality ends there.

Both are expensive propositions - only the expenditure is orders of magnitude higher if you chose the audit only path as opposed to augmenting audit with extensive review during design and development.

Review is a design assurance activity; to be a good reviewer, you need a half-full mind set with the intent of enabling the owner of the artefacts to fill the cup. Where as, audit is a compliance assurance activity; to be a good auditor you need a half-empty mind set with the intent of enforcing the owner to return to review and through review enable the owner of the artefacts to fill the cup. Every spin through the cycle to return to review is increasingly more expensive.

The plastic moulding industry is probably the most advanced in its understanding of the importance of review. Any one who has played a role designing and developing a piece of plastic to fit would have an appreciation of eliminating every possible defect prior to cutting the first tool for cutting the first piece.

Software industry - at least IBM, understood the importance of review in the nineties; the training I received during my employment with GEC Marconi on the Fagan Defect-Free Process from the legendary Michael Fagan himself ranks amongst my most cherished learning experiences. It has shaped my view of product development and attitude to technical feedback from the review of artefacts even before I joined medtech. No offence intended, its also the only certificate I kept out of the I-loose-count on the certificates I would have received on professional training. I pulled it out from my files today to frame and hang on my wall, as I move into the second day of the execution phase of my little business. 

Review regulates one aspect of one artefact at a time to assure the final product or service is an integral whole, assuring the professional integrity- a term I learnt(forget from which journal) refers to the integrity of the product or service and has nothing to do with the individuals in an organisation, that the product or service meets its intent.

To reviews …

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

Published on 15 FEB 2021: The world is unprepared for <​whatever>tech in 2021

The world is unprepared for tech, with whatever adjective its floating around us wanting to pervade our lives and livelihoods at every possible opportunity. Every one of us and every entity is unprepared to receive tech - including the present day tech-tycoons.

The reasons as I see are very simple, probably the reason why all of us and all entities have missed it. To me tech is a culmination of the three human pursuits:

• intellectual pursuit in understanding the fundamental physics of materials and environment

• creative pursuit in expressing an aspect of that understanding into addressing an unmet need of fellow humans

• pursuit of engineering rigours in translating that expression into a product perceivable and hence usable by humans without contradicting the physics that resulted in their form and function

Tech is not synonymous with software, yet, significant proportion of all activities relating to tech are becoming reliant on software interfaces- activities such as conceiving, investing, designing, reviewing, developing, manufacturing, distributing, procuring, paying, receiving, using, experiencing, tweeting, omitting, correcting, failing, reporting, analysing, devaluing, selling and every other activity inbetween are all communicated to us through a software interface set to our preferred colour scheme and font in a window rounded to our taste keeping us as far away from understanding and appreciating the expertise and nuances required of each of the activity, let alone the hard work of the individuals performing those activities. 

And suddenly, before we know it, all stake-holders would have irrecoverably lost touch with the consequences of our activities and wallow our way down to some subspecies of humans painting visions for our future in the clouds with glaucomaed eyes. 

There is no denying that we have all woefully fallen for the lure and promises of the tech. To me it also promotes continuous-mediocracy sinking us ever slowly in to a mythical tar-pit of ease-of-use and efficiency.

It needs investment, serious capital to define, develop, establish and excel the regulatory paradigm in every industry-including the software industry, touched by software to pull us out of the tar-pit.

It needs the kind of investment regulations deserve to prepare us for where we have landed in 2021. We need it now.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

Published on 9 FEB 2021: Reasonable - the most powerful term of all

Regulation is about defining acceptable limits for reasonable expectations.

Irrespective of whether you are consumer of consumer product or service, or an entity purchasing a product or service, and irrespective of whether the supplier of the product or service is charging you or offering it as a free or charitable service, the term “reasonable” is the most powerful term in all aspects of a transaction. It has the power to tip judgements on precedence, trigger amendments to established age old practices and forge new depths for quality of the service or product.   Regulations are about defining acceptable limits for reasonable expectations with the foresight of what could be technologically possible by abstracting products or services to the parameters of the transaction including, but not limited to intended purpose, stated use, expected life and expected performance or its deterioration. 

Regulations thus, to me are a mark of an advanced civilisation, and appreciation of regulations is mark of the maturity of the consumer as well as the entity either as a supplier or a consumer of the product or service from other entities - no matter what the object of the transaction is.

Like a friend (who had just moved to Sydney from Adelaide looking for greener pastures for his business on strategy consultations) told me back in nineties : “to have no boundaries is not freedom, its lost”

To advancing humanity through reasonable regulations!

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

lzerobzero

Published on 25 JAN 2021: Regulating Tech

It was during my early years as a software team leader, the MedTech the manufacturer I worked for earmarked a cutting edge function for what was known in those days as data-management products in the pipeline: remote modification of parameters of a medical device intended to deliver stated therapeutic benefits. Our software engineering manager scoped the product vision and wrote to all the software team leaders and probably other relevant engineers for thoughts and concerns and coalted the collective thinking of several years of medtech design and delivery experince into a document for fesibility review by all those who contributed and probbaly others for critical review. The resulting specification for a possible solution, primamrily excluded the product features that SHOULD NOT BE incorporated becasue of potential for risk of human harm of a medium-to-low safety risk therapeutic device along with a suite of possible constraining requirements for the design. As a young medtech professional on her first software project, when some of my thoughts made it to the spec I did gloat for several moments before quickly discharging my neural energies lest they hardened my creative core; the significant amongst those is the concept of tight and exclusive association of the data with the patient and complete dissociation of the patient from the data during transit through the systems. Subsequently as a systems engineer, again for the data management product, I have had my moments of intelectual-arrogance while noting the standards for addressing safety concerns established as norms within my organisation far surpassed any regulatory requirements I incorporated into my specifications for similar concerns. Its not until I worked as a regulatory affairs manager that I developed full appreciation of regulatory requirements and the complexities of designing to global requirements and how the regulations enable the manufacturer to play the space safely and economically. For example in those days Japan was the only country that had a regulatory requirement for the product weight to be included in labelling, a requirement that made no sense to me, but compliance probably meant the systems of sale that were in place in Japan were ahead of other nations, a nitigrity a manufacturere with probably a single digit percentage sale in Japan didn’t have to expend the effort to learn. And its when I started working for a sponsor the critical role the regulations play in ensuring the devices designed in multitudes of cultures and manufactured by multitudes of globally dispersed factories, deliver to the intent became aparent; with that my commitment to the efforts of those who strive to uphold and strenthen such regulations.

So when I am challenged with quips of reg being a self serving industry and concepts such as regulatory intelligence as possible mechanisms to reduce them to algorithmic insights, I smile.

Regulating tech in 2021 is difficult. It probably was difficult even in 1983 when TGA was mostly transient global amnesia, a syndrome occurring in the middle-aged or older patient, mani­fested by the sudden transient loss of ability to lay down new memories with associated mild to moderate retrograde amnesia without other neurological signs. [REF: Logan, William and Sherman, David G in on Current concepts of cebrovascular disease- stroke Originally published1 Nov 1983https://doi.org/10.1161/01.STR.14.6.1005Stroke. 1983;14:1005–100 ] The past thirty seven years has slowly and steadily infiltrated software, an intangible presence impercievable by humans anywhere in the world to practically evrything that can be ascribed the prefix tech.

I am sorry my friend, you’ll have to look elsewhere if you are shopping for examples of self-serving industries. Who knows may be there is even an online store that already offers it - or online service providers who can whip one up in a time frame from when you start typing your search criteria to the time you hit search! Good Luck!

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

email: sumathyramesh@lzerobzero.com.au