Why Don't We Do It in the Road Ahead?
—Part 2, Application Integration


LaiserinLetterLetters

Laiserin's Lemma—Real Virtuality




Today's Top-Level Take-Away—Anonymous Taxonomies
> "Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."
(Anonymous)
> "There are three kinds of people in the world:
— Those who make things happen,
— Those who watch things happen,
— And those who wonder what's happening."
(Anonymous)
> "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't."
(Anonymous, courtesy of James Greenberg, CIO at Hillier)



Why Don't We Do It in the Road Ahead?
—Part 2, Application Integration

The key issues to which AEC/FM and plant/process technologists should direct this year's management attention and technology budget can be grouped into three clusters: Infrastructure Realignment; Application Integration; and Security Enhancement. We looked at Infrastructure Realignment in IssueTwentyOne, and we'll consider Security Enhancement next time. In this issue we explore Application Integration, which includes four of the Top Twelve Tech Trends for 2003:

> Building information modeling (BIM)
> Professional services automation (PSA)
> Collaboration
> Knowledge management (KM)

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LaiserinLetterLetters
An occasional sampling of reader electron-mail, or "keep those waves and particles pouring in, folks!"
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Laiserin's Lemma—Real Virtuality
(lemma: a short theorem used in proving a larger theorem)
Jaron Lanier, who is generally credited with coining the term "virtual reality" (VR) in the 1980's, has also written about Programs as Cities: "There are two complimentary approaches that can be applied to irreducible complexity. The first is improving the machine representation of such complexity to create better tools for analysis and manipulation. The second approach (visualization) is to improve the user interface so that the user can understand, remember, and manipulate complex structures more easily." (emphasis added). While historical development of computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modeling (BIM) systems focused on the "representation" branch of the problem, steady improvement in computing price/performance is edging the "visualization" or VR branch closer to the mainstream. A recent book by Jennifer Whyte, Virtual Reality and the Built Environment, blends case studies and context into a useful guide to the practical applications of real-time, interactive, spatial technologies in design, construction and management.
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