To Desktops
To the Timeline
Return to the main screen
TQ was my brand for Touching Questions.
I wrote the TQ Questionnaire Automation system in 1984 to automate conversations.
More Information
Less Information
The creation of a system that interfaces both questions and answers and results in an analysis is a form of Automated Intelligence. The presently marketed segment described as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is based on the superficial results of increasing the throughput and increasing the ability of digital streams to emulate (immitate) analog images, sounds and text.

The universe is analog, and we humans understand the world around us through our sense organs, eyes that collomate (focus light) image forms, ears that use resonance and air pressure into auditory sensation, noses and tongues that sense the chemistry of molecules and skin sensors that report events on our bodies. These incoming signals are preprocessed through brain centers that provide characteristic conscious impressions of integrated data. There is an an understanding among related intracommunication processes. For instance, listening and speech have many co-dependant foci involving preprocessing of motor output of respiration, larynx and tongue with the higher levels of understanding and then consciousness. The organization of the TQ logic is at a specific level of analog characterization. A spectrum of complexity is fundamentally analog. The most basic state of a factual answer is "Yes" or "No": the essential dipolar state (On/Off, approaching/receding, up/down, etc.) There is a range of conditional modifiers of that polarity, from a human perspective, "Maybe" and "Do not know" are most common. Any condition within that polar model can be expressed as a range (expressed by numerical degree) between "yes" and "no", such as "A lot, Sort of, Not much" or "All the time, sometimes and Never".
FOCUS is the key to efficiently deliberate to a conclusion.

Review a comparison of Automated Intelligence to the Artificial Intelligence of 2026.
More Information
Less Information
Much has been said about using massive databases and the processing used to emulate human thought... our common reality. No person can know everything, and we in the US have evolved a system of trust, in which trusted expertise is available. We therefore, have experienced a right to be ignorant, and a confirmation about the qualification and validation of experienced, valid opinion. Wisdom is not the same as cleverness. The result of clever application requires objective human judgement, which has not been identified as an algorithm. In our common reality of experience, there are humans who do seem able to recall facts drawn from brief experiences of memory. The photographic mind is similar to how digital data can be stored and recalled. Human thought appears (to the users of human brains) to develop by layers on foundations of factual relationships. Concepts are more complex than the association of adjoining words. Human thought and the soul are inherently analog, like the rest of the universe. Nevertheless, because there is general acceptance about superficial emulation of our analog world with digital processes, that correlation could be sold once the cloistered imagery and sound was perceptually identical to the actual reality of sight and sound.

For the accomplishment of a task of wisdom, the discipline of education is necessary. We humans can focus our thoughts, thus developing experience with purpose. The Questionnaire Automation system is most useful for the accomplishment of tasks, providing a framework for concept development. FOCUS is the key to efficiently deliberate to a conclusion. There is no philosophical basis for relative importance in today's AI that can emulate wisdom. Although Artificial Intelligence appears to be and is informational, it is, indeed, artificial intelligence, an emulation of real intelligence, our personal reality.

In 2025, the United States began experiencing the real disasters of emulating wisdom and competency.
More Information
Less Information
A criminal gang of insurrections illegally validated authorities of power (appointed by other authorities of power) without obeying the Constitutional and legal requirements of law that are explicit about Congressional validation of each candidate.
Historically, the confirmation process resulted in governmental agents who were competent authorities of disciplined facts with appropriate validation (validated by expertise, experience, education, endorsements by their peers and fulfillment of security requirements).
The emulation presented by those authorized actors were obviously "cosplay"; they had bizarre ideas about how a person would appear in those important roles. The results were incompentence and self-serving actions that resulted in tremendous losses of life, economic assets and international good will. The appointments were criminal, not political, and criminal methods were/are required to correct those misplaced authorities and their misleaders.
More text end

More text end


Touching Questions was also the name of my sole proprietorship in Laguna Beach, California beginning in 1979.
During the early 80s, hardware for personal computers continued to evolve. Personal Computers were recognized as "smart terminals" for the existing corporate mainframes. They were also smart terminals for the quickly growing networked minicomputers, as well as adjunct computing on networks. During this period, there was a lag in the "pointing" devices, pioneered by Apple Macintosh as a "Mouse". Touchscreens, now considered standard for cell phones, had been used for terminals in industrial settings, and began to be available in microcomputers (PCs) as an accessory over monitors. For PCs, the mouse became preferred because a mouse could be used more easily because it was next to the keyboard. There were several practical disadvantages to touch as a "pointing device": screens got smudged, touch over screens were expensive and involved rows of lights before touching-pads were developed, and the touchpads on keyboards quickly emulated a mouse. Printing, barcdes and scanning also developed during this time. As a developer of scientific systems, I encountered time-consuming and expensive hardware in order to serve the relatively small market for expensive installations. Experience with being an indpendent provider of complete systems made me realize many unexpected, time-consuming disadvantages. That period of rapid changes were an entire story.

Ironically, the period of "personal" computing has now evolved to a business climate that resembles the dominance of monopolistic companies of the 60s, like IBM. The internet has become the equivalent of the old business architecture of IBM. The internet of the worldwide web has been stunted and restricted by those who gained dominance in the early 2000s. That history foretells the inevitable evolutionary competition and change for the future.
More text end


TQ was developed to do psychiatric interviews with touch-sensitive screens. Psychiatrists were able to create interviews which could assess the urgency of a patient's needs. A patient could answer questions by touching their answers.
More Information
Less Information
The legal and cultural changes in medical practice have changed since my medical education and practice in the 1970s. There are implied obligations and responsibilities in the physician-patient contract. The NIH SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant did not include any potential reference to giving advice, and only addressed the issue as the automated leaving of a message.
The already-installed system at food companies for sensory testing was free of those restraints, because the data analysis generated with TQ became the responsibility of my clients. Data on opinions of food sample was interpreted by statisticians and food quality assurance professionals. By the time that the granting process was near completion, the character of my business efforts had entirely changed. I became swamped by the Business Planning DOS shrinkwrapped product immediately upon public sales and generation of the capital (but no time) that I had hoped to fund medical applications. More text end

Food companies used TQ to collect opinions and analyze data about foods. Food testers used touch screens to give their opinions. A facility could have dozens of terminals collecting information at the same time. After the testing was complete, results were immediately available.

Testing Laboratory
Test Kitchen
In 1988, part of the TQ system was adapted for a mass market. Business Planning was chosen as the topic for development. The DOS version of "Success Inc, the Powerful Business Plan Writer" was released in 1989 through a publishing arrangement with Virgin Interactive Entertainment.

In 1991, the windows version was released and "Success Inc" was published and distributed by Dynamic Pathways Company. Through the 90s, it was available, along with other Dynamic Pathways' TQ-based products, on store shelves all over the world. The Russian version of Success was part of the "parastroika" that swept communism away with free enterprise. The TQ System helped to bring peace and prosperity to customers everywhere.
More Information
Less Information
My company, Dynamic Pathways, brought two planeloads of Russian businessmen to our Newport Beach offices and to seminars on Free Enterprise at the Long Beach Convention center. I produced a cyrillic Russian version of the business planner, and learned a lot about the effect of a generation of propaganda regarding Western business. It is a chapter in my life that has been instructive, but rather disappointing. Some day, I would like to write a book about how the essence of free enterprise is very difficult for some cultures to comprehend. I have to believe that the reality of market driven competition has had some lasting influence. Russians were very convinced that people couldn't be trusted and they were consumed by the belief that pricing and value were determined by authorities. Competition was hard to trust and believe that both producers and consumers could mutually benefit. In fact, the confusion between Free Enterprise and Capitalism has hindered markets in the West now. It is obvious that Russias brief experience with democracy was quickly corrupted when he selected his oligarchs to receive the natural resources, and business assets that had been nationalized by the Communist Stalin a century earlier. The people believed that Western businessmen were gangsters, so they fulfilled the expectations of the anti-western propagandists.
More text end
Question DefinitionSchedule QuestionsPresentAnalysis

The secret of Questionnaire Automation is based on a philosophy that matches digital capabilities to the analog processes of human thought.

  • First, a Presentation (or questionnaire) is created. 
    It may be very simple, or use many branches to cover many possible interactions.
    It may include a series of simple presentation screens, or it may include topics that have interactions.

  • Then, it is "Scheduled" for presentation. This can be on a stand-alone computer, a networked computer, or through the internet.  The keyboard, touch screen, mouse, bar codes or even pencil and paper can be used to answer the questions.

  • Presentation can be on the internet, an intranet, or on an independent workstation.  Answers can be stored at the web site, at the workstation or on a floppy disk.  When the presentation is created or when the respondent is presented the information, there is no need for any kind of familiarity or computer expertise.

  • A TQ Analysis system uses reports, statistics, and graphics to characterize the results of one or many people's answers.  Many TQ system presenters may only want to use the system to organize and display the information.  Others may want complete analyses to determine the significance of the grouped answers.

Best of all, the entire system, whether it was for one person or if a presentation was for a million people, was designed to require no service. It was entirely written by one person over 15 years. No troublesome tools were used as a foundation of the mass produced presentation engine. All versions are 100% compatible, so data collected from a desktop Windows computer or on the internet could be printed, grouped or compared... even if a survey was collected in 1986, or a business plan was created in 1992, or an entertainment site was created in 2023!

©1984-2020 William P Fritz, All Rights Reserved