Off Course-On Target

Google Oceans: Another wish comes true!

While I  can neither take credit for nor claim any influence on Google's recent announcement, I'm pleased to say that some of the things I wished for last year in my posting "New Perspectives; Looking Down and Under" are about to come true!  In that posting, I wished that we would soon have similar capabilities as those provided by Google Earth and Google Sky, but these would vary in that they would look down and under to the earth's oceans and seas. Well, the title of this posting pretty much says it all, and you can read about it in the WebWare article "Google Diving into 3D mapping of Oceans".

Google Ocean (the name is tentative), shares similar goals, as well as the potential of increased collaboration, mass contribution, and "networking" that Google Earth and Google Sky present.  See my previous posts "New Perspectives: Looking Up" and "New Perspectives: The Third Wave" for more details and context about how powerful this can be. These views were summed up in the article:

"In addition to the 'wow factor" Google Ocean will no doubt have for amateur oceanographers, marine enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the project has the potential to promote more collaboration and advance research."

They also reflect my previous comments about how little we know about the 70% of our planet that is covered by the seas:

"'We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding of how much remains to be explored,' said Miller of Scripps. 'We know far more about the surface of Mars from a few weeks of radar surveying in orbit than we know of the bottom of the ocean after two centuries.'"

Unfortunately, Google Oceans is not yet released, and Google is not saying much officially yet.  I'll be watching for the first chance to start using this new capability, and let you know as soon as it happens.  Since I live full time at sea now, this announcement is particularly relevant and practical for me. I already use Google Earth extensively for surface information, such as exploring a port or anchorage I'm about to put into.  In addition to my charts of the area, the photos and the ability to fly over the area before I get there have made a huge difference in terms of safety and in my confidence for sailing to new places, especially at night or  in poor weather with low visibility.  But I suspect that many of you would have similar fascination with the earth's oceans and be just as anxious to learn more. Perhaps some of you will have research or other information to contribute, and we can add yet another way in which mass contribution and the power of networking helps us all get better at getting better.

This announcement about Google Oceans is yet another great example of the power of wishes and how they often do come true (you might want to read about another wish come true in my recent posting "The Future is about Winning!", which highlighted the wish that turned into Pangea Day).

Although we may want to be careful what we wish for, I could not be more serious or sincere about my wish that you'll keep believing in the power of wishing and do some of your own!  I'll continue to share some of mine. I'm also interested in knowing what are some of YOUR wishes for positive change.

The Encyclopedia of Life and Exponential Change

The day after posting my thoughts on "New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under" and Third Wave, I serendipitously came across a New York Times article called That's Life, which reviews a new project called "The Encyclopedia of Life" or EOL. This project is very similar in scope and importance to the study of the oceans, but also focuses more on life forms and the planet as a whole.

But what's particularly interesting about this project is how it's such a great example of a number of themes I've discussed here at Off Course - On Target.  For one thing, it presents more evidence of how we are "Living in a World of Exponential Change".

The opening of this article picks up right from where my previous postings left off:

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance. We are flying blind into our environmental future

Since the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus inaugurated the modern system of classification two and a half centuries ago, biologists have found and given Latinized names to about 1.8 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms — an impressive number but probably 10 percent or less of the total. Rough estimates of the number of species that remain to be discovered range from 10 million to more than 100 million.

But a new project in biology, an ambitious effort to create a vast new electronic database of known species, should make it possible to discover the remaining 90 percent of species in far less than 250 years, perhaps only one-tenth that time, a single human generation."

Sound too audacious? Impossible? Keep in mind that a related feat, that of cataloging the human genome, initially perceived as too big to solve, happened in a mere 10 years.

There's lots more to say about this fascinating project and I'll talk more about it next time.

New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under

In "New Perspectives: The Benefits of Looking up!", we looked at the value of new perspectives in general and one perspective in particular—looking up more often to learn from the stars, sky, and space. Using the new Sky feature of Google Earth as an example, we also looked at gaining yet another perspective—by flying—and how we could tie two perspectives together to do things such as looking up at the stars to help us navigate our way on land and sea. Now I'd like to continue with our exploration of the power of perspectives by looking down and under.

The Power of Inversion

One trick I've found extremely useful for helping me solve problems and finding new perspectives is to invert things. For example, I remember how amazed I was as a young boy when I discovered that a telescope becomes a microscope (or vice versa), when you simply look from the other end!  Ever since, I've tried "looking through the other end" or inverting my thinking as much as I can to learn more, gain new insights, and see things more clearly from a new perspective.

Applying this inversion technique to the Google Sky example, what I'm hoping for next from Google or other providers of similar technology is the ability to point that camera in yet another direction—down! How about a "Sea" feature that would let us point our attention and camera the other way, down to what makes up over 71% of the Earth's surface; the oceans. It seems to me that we could learn a lot and gain many new perspectives by looking at what some call "Inner Space", the world's oceans and waterways, with at least the same intensity and resources we devote to Outer Space. Here is a brief and sobering overview of how little we currently know about the watery world around us, and some equally exciting projects that are tackling this deficit and revealing just how much we can gain from looking at it.

Networking the Oceans?

Let's start by checking out the Sept. 4th, 2007 article in the New York Times called "Bringing the Ocean to the World, in High-Def", which covers the new Ocean Observatories Initiative as well as some other very exciting major projects aimed at filling in a lot of our missing knowledge about the oceans that surround us. These endeavors are important because the oceans contain the vast majority of the earth's living space.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative involves two very different approaches:

• Placing a range of sensors in the oceans to provide directly measured data.
  
• Connecting all these sensors through the Internet so that all of the information gathered is accessible to the public and the scientific communities.

The new Ocean Observatories Initiative is:

"a multifaceted effort to study the ocean—in the ocean—through a combination of Internet-linked cables, buoys atop submerged data collection devices, robots and high-definition cameras. The first equipment is expected to be in place by 2009."

From my perspective, we are in DESPERATE need of this proliferation of study and these approaches. I always thought it curious that we know so much more about "outer space", relatively speaking, than we do about the oceans around us or our "Planet Ocean" as it is sometimes referred. Think I'm being too hyperbolic (who me?!!)? Check out some of the following facts—some fun, but many that are are very serious and sobering.

Fascinating Ocean Facts

 

 

• Water is the only known substance that can exist as a gas, liquid or solid within the limited temperatures on Earth. 
• The oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and contain 97% of the Earth's water. 
• Less than 1% this is fresh water, and 2-3% is contained in glaciers and ice caps. 
• All life on earth is thought to have originated in the ocean. 
• An estimated 80% of all life on earth is found under the ocean surface. 
• Over 1 million known species of plants and animals live in the world's oceans, and scientists say there may be as many as 9 million species we haven't discovered yet ( = almost 90 % UN discovered!). 
• 96.5% of the total water on earth is in the global oceans. 
• Oceans contain 99% of the living space on the planet. 
• Less than 10% of that space has been explored by humans. 
• The average depth of the ocean is 3,795 m. The average height of the land is 840 m. 
• 90% of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans. 
• The top ten feet of the ocean holds as much heat as the entire atmosphere. 
• One study of a deep-sea community revealed 898 species from more than 100 families and a dozen phyla in an area about half the size of a tennis court. More than half of these were new to science.

 

At best, it is estimated that we have only mapped about 10% of the ocean floor in any detail. So what?  Remember the US submarine San Francisco that crashed into an underwater mountain near Guam back in January 2005? While the details are still under investigation, the biggest factor is the simple fact that we didn't know the mountain was there!   

Don't know what we don't know!

As stunning as some of these facts are in revealing how little we know about "Inner Space", recent studies are strongly suggesting that our ignorance is MUCH larger!  And this isn't just because the oceans are so obviously vast. We don't seem to do much better with waters that are very close to us land lubbers. For example, consider the recent study (Jan.2006) of the Gulf of Maine done as part of the Census of Marine Life, with the Huntsman Marine Science Center of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which found in their first count of known marine species in the Gulf of Maine region (3,317 and counting) was more than 50% larger than previous estimates!

But there's hope at hand. Going back to the New York Times article, it also points out many more and equally promising projects for the direct study and measurement "of the ocean - in the ocean." Each project is directly and very accurately measuring different sets of characteristics, such as temperature, currents, life forms, and also detailing their effects on land, current changes, role in climate change, etc. But what struck me the most was that all the individual projects are adopting a common approach of being open, interactive, and connected. As a result, these individual projects are similar to nodes on a network and benefiting from the same network effect where the whole is indeed so much greater than the sum of the parts. One of the studies, for example, involves a series of underwater cables that will crisscross the tectonic plate known as Juan de Fuca in the Pacific Northwest, which as Dr. John R. Delaney put it:

“For the first three or four years, people just laughed when I said we’re going to turn Juan de Fuca Plate into a national laboratory,” Professor Delaney said. “Now they’re not laughing.”

As an added bonus and as a Canadian, I was also tickled to learn that Canada is putting in its own cabled network for more of the Straits of Juan de Fuca off the coast of British Columbia, which is where I last lived in Canada and where the rest of my family lives.

In another post, I'll add some overview comments on the meta-trends and patterns that are emerging in both these recent marine examples as well as the likes of Google Sky, which we covered in New Perspectives: The Benefits of Looking Up.

Until then, as sailors say:

"May you have fair winds and following seas."

w
a
yne
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New Perspectives: The Benefits of Looking Up!

Alan Kay (sometimes referred to as the father of the PC, object oriented code, and much more) is credited with saying that "point of view is worth 80 IQ points". This is a catchy way of saying that consciously looking at problems and situations from multiple perspectives and constantly looking for new perspectives to solve problems is an extremely powerful technique and skill to develop.

I suspect that you have many examples in your own life, where you've come up with solutions or have been more creative in your problem solving using some version of this idea. This idea of helping others, as well as myself, to discover and utilize new perspectives is a strategy I use in most of my work, and is a primary goal for Off Course - On Target. So with this in mind, let's see if we can get a bit "smarter" by finding and using a few new perspectives.

Looking up

We humans have a natural tendency to look ahead and down much more than we look up.  It was always a successful strategy as a child playing hide and seek to climb up a tree or onto a top shelf in a closet. And anyone unfortunate enough to have spent time in a hospital bed or on a gurney knows how different the world looks from this perspective and how little attention is paid to ceilings! On the other hand I've noticed that dentists have taken notice and are putting things on the ceilings, such as paintings or televisions, for you to look at while you are reclining in the dentist's chair.

A very recent example of this new perspective of looking up is an exciting new feature in Google Earth called "Sky".  This simple,  but powerful new feature gives you the ability to choose a location on Earth and then turn the "camera" around to look up and see the sky. This amazing tool lets you see and explore stars, animations of the planets movement, zoom in on fabulous Hubble imagery and more. Here is a short video tour that shows Sky in action:

Based on my brief time with this new feature I see this as fun and functional.  How well did your school science courses help YOU understand the spatial relationships of the moon, earth, sun, and stars?  How well can you point out the different stars and constellations in the night sky to your children or others, explaining why they change depending on date and your location? Sky sure seems to help me a lot with this.

To continue with your experiential learning, something we are so fond of here at Off Course - On Target, I highly recommend that you download the newest version of Google Earth and take the Sky feature out for a spin. I think you too will find that it offers some serious fun and lots of learning as well.

And while you're up in the Sky, why not fly?

In some recent posts, I   emphasized the need to avoid what I've characterized as "flapping", that is, copying experts and models of the past, and instead have urged you to focus on the essential characteristics you are seeking to take off and fly.  So it struck me as a nice bit of serendipity to read of the recent discovery of a hidden flight simulator in Google Earth. These secret capabilities, referred to as "Easter eggs" are a favorite of some application developers.

Adding motion is a great way to gain a new perspective, so strap yourself into one of the two airplane options, an F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater, and try flying your way over your home region or anyplace else in the world you'd like to see.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A.  Here is a full list of the keyboard controls for the Google Earth flight simulator. Fasten your seatbelt low and tight and welcome aboard! 

BTW, as you are flying around see how much the realism that comes from flying over photographic images of the "real" earth and sea starts to address some of the limitations of your experiences with less accurate virtual worlds that we've also mentioned in previous discussions, such as in my posting Virtual Lift Off?

Stars to Sea

Another way to use new perspectives is to find ways to tie two or more of them together.  For example, how can the benefits of looking up at the stars, help us when we are down on earth looking out and around us?   

Well, consider sailors who venture out into the open ocean and how extremely dependent they become upon knowing their precise location.  This, of course, helps us just as much with navigation on land. Many of you have experienced the benefits (and aggravations) of onboard GPS and navigation systems installed in new cars you may own or rent.  While modern day technologies, such as GPS and electronic charting, look after navigation with unprecedented ease and extraordinary accuracy, you always want to have a backup or two or three when your life depends upon it! Therefore, the ancient method of celestial navigation is still used as a backup by most who sail the open oceans. 

As an aspiring global sailor myself, I'm busy learning as much as I can about this art and science of finding your way by the sun, moon, stars, and planets, and I'm acquiring skills with sextants and the like. You can just imagine how much Google's Sky makes me "smarter" by helping me to learn these new concepts and skills.  Besides, I just love the juxtaposition of setting my sextant, an 18th-century technology, down beside my oh-so-very 21st-century latest, greatest, high tech GPS system and digital charting screen. 

What examples do you have of using inverted thinking and new perspectives to help you learn more, and be more creative in your thinking and problem solving? Please share your examples through your comments here at Off Course - On Target or in your own postings and I'll continue to do the same.

Thanks!

w
a
yne
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