Technology Innovation

It Is Time to Design the Very First Digital System.

John Ellingson
John Ellingson
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In today’s highly automated world, there are a multitude of examples of systems in place that have made the transition from manual to digital – all conceived of as a means to improve speed, cost or quality of an existing process. Digital Transformation has been a buzzword since the 90’s, when businesses began to take advantage of advances in computing and internet connection to increase the efficiency and capacity of manual and paper-based business processes. Since that time, most of the world routinely engages with a variety of digital systems, from the paycheck that is directly deposited into your bank account to the app you use to summon a ride.

Are these truly digital systems – or just digitized versions of human systems?

 

I’m old enough to have witnessed the birth and evolution of our digital environment. It has been a slow and incremental journey to enhance our human capabilities, beginning with the construction of analog tools that gradually transitioned to digital ones. Now, many of these tools have been combined to form what we refer to as digital systems.

Consider this: no one has taken the opportunity to design a digital system from scratch, without any preconceived notions or limitations imposed by our human thinking.

 

Imagine the possibilities! It could be a system that communicates in millions of languages, effortlessly switching between them at lightning speed. A system where every connected device could speak simultaneously, without any confusion. A system where the concept of noise versus signal does not exist, because everything is a signal. The constraints would no longer be human limitations, but the laws of physics.

While it may be difficult for humans to conceive of such a system, it’s already possible to contribute to the creation of one. Society may be on the verge of witnessing the birth of the first truly digital system, and the only limits are the human imagination.
John Ellingson

John Ellingson

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John Ellingson is the Chief Technology Officer at QWERX. John started his digital career with the Boeing Company working on the 747 aircraft in the late 1960s. He became a computer-literate attorney performing what is today known as forensic accounting. As the founding chairman of the ABA/YLD Subcommittee on Tax Treatment in Bankruptcy, John worked with the Congressional Joint Tax Committee to create the Internal Revenue Code Provision enabling the tax-free merger and acquisition of debtor corporations. This law became part of the Bankruptcy Tax Act of 1980. John had a national M&A practice in this area and obtained the first IRS Private Letter Ruling on this Code section. As a result of this practice, he observed a frequent element of white-collar crime in many bankruptcy cases, and he subsequently developed and patented a method to detect identity fraud. The product derived from that patent is still deployed at most retail banks throughout the U.S. today. This success started John on a path of protecting digital systems and identity management. He continued in this role with American Operations Corporation and ASM Research before founding infOsci LLC and later QWERX, Inc. John holds numerous method patents in digital system security. John was appointed to the United States Air Force Academy and medically separated before graduation. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin and a Juris Doctor degree from Seattle University. For 20 years John served as a liaison officer with the United States Naval Academy and the United States Military Academy. He also served on the Service Academy Selection Boards for two U.S. Senators.

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