Truth Engineering, a historical view

Over the past few years, we switched to other venues with an occasional post here. It is time to get back to this mode in order to report technical findings. Earlier this year, we did a brief summary.  

While we work the logistics of our new presentation package, this post has a few pointers that relate to the theme and how it developed. This list will grow as part of a living bibligraphy that is devoted to rediscovering lost knowledge and information. 

• This blog started with a post on 24 Jul 2007 with this question: Truth, can it be engineered? In that same post, see Remarks 01/01/2011. On a review four years later, I recalled finding during a browse session on the internet that someone had use the label; so I decided to get more public with the work that I was doing. 
• David Jakstis coined the term after reading my white paper: Boeing Center for Computational Truth Maintenance. It had been submitted in 2000 as a proposal to the Chairman Innovation Inititiative of Boeing. He read the paper and said that it sounded like "truth engineering". We had discussed it under the auspices of modeling castings and forgings with MSJO assistance. David was a metals expert and dealt with specialized parts and alloys. 
• Truth engineering came out of the "knowledge era". See this article for an overview. My KBE remarks are at the bottom: What the World Lost When We Abandoned Expert System Technologies By: Larry Walker, August 2026.
• Overall scheme of things: Truth engineering is not just about computational systems, it deals with the human world as well. One truism is the notion that people are an integral part of a properly configured computer system. DARPA has not shown otherwise. 
• Mentioning them, one motivation for truth engineering came from Doyle's work at MIT with regard to truth maintenance which as the ARPA era. We will describe the connection later. For now, consider this copy at MIT: Truth Maintenance Systems for Problem Solving (PDF available - 133 pages). GenAI/LLM would have had a completely different look had the "knowledge" from the knowledge era been honed for a couple of decades. 
• Continuation of the documentation of the basics: IIUG-MSJO; ICAD-MSJO; ... 
• ...

This post will be in an edit mode for a bit. It will be referenced from the LinkedIn work on KBE & MBSE which is an ongoing effort to document pieces of "knowledge era" work. Needless to say, KBE split asunder but lives in lots of offspring, such as multi-physics. MBSE came out of the knowledge era; we were there and can describe the early modeling work. 

Remarks: Modified: 09/06/2026

09/06/2026 -- Finally wrote up a little on KBE_ICAD_MSJO which were the technical basis for truth engineering. See what Gemini says:

Status, 2026 start

This blog represents my work in Truth Engineering over the years. As such, it provides a history of the thought process over that timeframe and also a collection of material that relates to the these. 

This post brings together links to the disparate depositories that have been used over the years for this project. For each item, there is a little explanation about the contents. 

To begin, though, we have a list of articles from the past three years, mostly related to the emergence of GenAI/LLM which has been a central theme for three years now. 

Note: An example of a principal focus with respect to research and analysis: Portal to truth. And, a prime interest is "Bespoke software" and blogging about such. 

Overviews and summaries: 

• Summary of writings - updated in April of 2025, this PDF gives some overview of the Writings that I have done since retirement. To be updated in 2026. 
• Linkedin - articles and posts related to truth engineering and kbe within the modern contexts that we find ourselves adrift due to the map/territory issues of AI/ML confounding and conflating things. 
• AJSwtlk.com - this was our first start using the web for truth engineering work. The first entry in the "What's New" was in Sept of 2010. 
• Papers - this repository deals with my work at the Knowledge Systems Center of Sperry Univac. My later work was a Boeing in the area of KBE (knowledge-based) engineering where the notions for truth engineering arose due to describable events. At the same time of that KBE work, there were projects elsewhere to which I can refer, such as one that was done at Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio and has been described in a non-declassified document. As well, there links to articles at Linkedin. See above link. 
• Quora/Psychether - psychether goes with truth engineering as does knowledge-based engineering. The former is the overarching set of notions; the latter is an example and demonstration of things related to truth engineering but computerized for proper analysis and judgmental decisions. 
• ...

Blogs and associated material:

Note: These blogs are a data repository for a longitudinal of the U.S. with regard to technology, business, science, and  general knowledge-related disciplines that come into play in coping with the modern world.

• TruthEng - for truth engineering, a background does exist. Plus, there are papers on current matters and how they relate. 
• This blog - first post, 24 Jul 2007. 
• 7'oops7 - first post that we did was 31 Aug 2007. This blog was motivated by 8 July 2007, or 7/8/07, or, ... The early posts had a particular theme, but the topic got to be more general as the 787 came to fruition. 
• Fedaerated - started in Aug of 2009 for the explicit purpose to focus on the world of busyness and its gaming in areas such as financial engineering which has no science as a basis thereby somewhat is a misnomer. 
• TGSoc Tech - since May 2014, the posts are about the theme that relates content and configuration which then brings in issues of an observer's view and the judgmental differences that pertain to such. Not unlike our concerns for relativity and the age of uncertainty that comes from advancements in computational systems. 
• ...

Remarks: Modified: 01/11/2026

01/10/2026 --  Tied in TruthEng (WordPress) and Quora.