Sensemaking Systems - Jeff Jonas

I like the term:  "Sensemaking Systems".  I just ran across it while doing some searching to expand my understanding of the nature of my NSA master ID.

The most surprising thing is that what I discovered was written by Jeff Jonas.  My interest in Jeff Jonas goes all the way back to the time he packed up everything in his car and went to Las Vegas and created a system to uncover cheating through identifying simple connecting relationships.  Very simple at the time.  Jeff is also an Ironman triathlete and I had hoped to meet him at some race someday and usually looked at the race list or kept track of where he was racing (or stories about where he raced) from his blog.  One of the most interesting guys I never met.  The last time I had some contact with him was regarding his interest in personal privacy related to the growing ability (which he is a prime contributor to) of the information age to make connections about people.

Good Job Jeff!  You still have an amazing ability to convey complex concepts in simple terms.  That what it takes for me to understand them!

Jeff says:

"Sensemaking is about helping companies make sense of their diverse observational space, ranging from data they own and control (e.g., structured master data) to data they do not or cannot control (e.g., externally-generated and less structured social media).  Sensemaking deals with uncertainty around an unknown and every changing domain – as if operating over an arbitrary number of puzzles, each unclear, incomplete and riddled with inconsistencies.  Common Sensemaking domains include customers, watch lists, social circles and investigations.  The Sensemaking outcome: organizations make better decisions, faster."

Sensemaking seems to be related to my quest to discover the nature of my NSA master ID.  The problem domain of the NSA is to make some sense out of all the information collected about and individual when that person is a target of interest.  All the sensemaking has to be associated ultimately with a bad guy through relationships of varying quality to give some qualitative knowledge about an individual.  It would seem to have to start with either a known individual with a known NSA ID or a temporary case ID until probable known ID's are associated with it or if there are no known ID's for the target then one is created when there is certainty of identification of an individual not previously known in the system.

It all gets complicated but there is some real value in what Jeff has written.

Jeff popping up on a google search reminds me that in the past I have thought that he is someone that would understand my simple model for a new monetary system for a medium of exchange where the uniquely serialized digital unit dollar is static and the owner of the unit dollar changes.  I feel that if I expressed that concept to him he would understand it immediately.  He simplifies the complex in an elegant manner that I admire.

I will have to spend some time catching up on what Jeff has done.  He is still just "connecting the dots"  but doing it at a much bigger level than the operators of the gaming tables.  A higher level enabled by the application of the advancement of technology to do big time what he simply did in Vegas.

Jeff conveniently provided a reference to his previous blog entries at the end of the Sensemaking blog.

Looks like my reading list is set for a couple days.........

Thanks again Jeff.