Hemodynamic Software, Project nGene.org®
Hyunsuk Frank Roh, MD: Echocardiographer & IRB Chair
#1/2 The Mythical Man-Month: Prologue of my Life Ahead (written in 2013)
Throughout an entire undergraduate semester in 2006, Professor Elliot Soloway repeatedly read aloud selections from the book, The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks. The particularly memorable quote from the book about being a software architect read as follows: "The man-month as a unit of measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth." In other words, if the software architect decides to increase the manpower in order to decrease the month required for the software development, it is likely to, rather, deteriorate the project by increasing the intercommunication complexity. Fortunately, this principle, highlighted by Soloway, resonated with me based on my past experiences.
Professor Robert Denver provided me with an excellent opportunity to learn basic molecular biology lab techniques. He assigned me the task of sequencing a gene from Xenopus tropicalis using Vector NTI software. This introduction to bioinformatics was pivotal, propelling me towards further interdisciplinary research in computer science and biology. Later, I serendipitously attended "Computational Biology Short Courses" in August 2004, where I was introduced to a broad range of computational biology topics by various instructors, including Professor David States, the developer of BLASTX. The BLAST algorithm captivated me and has profoundly influenced me ever since, as demonstrated by my BLASTed logo.
nGene, along with "enGine" and "&Gene," shares a similar pronunciation, and these terms can be visually aligned and color-coded, reminiscent of how DNA or protein sequences are presented in Vector NTI software.
Professor Jignesh Patel gracefully allowed me to attend his weekly Bioinformatics seminar and assigned me a programming project to evaluate phylogenetic tree-generating algorithms. There, I realized that, in an interdisciplinary field, there could not be enough emphasis on communication between Apple and Orange in order to be on the same page; in this sense, being a chimera myself, trained in both fields, I can help (1) by not doubling the number of "men" required and (2) by reducing the "intercommunication complexity" on a manageable level. During the past seven years, there were many tears and changes in my life... And yet, I can still feel my heart pumping with joyful anticipation about working on the interdisciplinary topic because of my belief that someday I will hopefully make an important contribution to this interdisciplinary field that had once seized me with the BLASTed heart.
- Written during my 2013 trip to British Columbia/California
#2/2 Epilogue to a Gathering Winter: Puppet Mastery with the Net Terminal Gene (Apr 21–Jun 20, 2025)
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A Long Economic Winter
“Winter is coming,” House Stark once warned, and the flurries that began with the 2018 tariff spiral have settled into a true ice age. The echo of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Act—ten years of depression followed by six of war—has lengthened: a second wave of “Trump tariffs” in 2025 now collides with record leverage, frothy speculation, and an inverted demographic pyramid. Even the fifteen-year ordeal that followed Smoot–Hawley may prove an optimistic compass; today’s contraction could endure several decades.
Yet decline need not mean dissolution. Beneath the frozen ground, seeds are hardening. Industries rarely die; they molt—shedding obsolete skins, recomposing ownership, and rewiring supply chains at wartime speed. A generation from now, archaeologists of capital will trace most “overnight revolutions” back to this bleak season.
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Genesis—Chapter 8: Strategy
As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex–Google CEO Eric Schmidt argue in Genesis—Chapter 8: Strategy, the emphasis shifts from radical self-editing to disciplined co-evolution, echoing Badiou’s maxim that “the sea herself fashions the boats.” We must strengthen our core systems rather than overhaul our teams. This framework endures only if we fiercely defend a baseline of human dignity—Kant’s intrinsic worth of every autonomous mind—preserving sufficient agency as the line between person and program blurs.
The dual mandate is clear: augment people just enough to keep them competitive while constraining machine power within a moral frame; too much restraint stifles discovery, too little erodes dignity. Our true compass must be a living, ever-updated definition of humanness, redrawn as swiftly as the code evolves.
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The Peril of Losing the “Net Terminal Gene”
The anime Bleach imagined a society so confident in automation that it relinquished its Net Terminal Gene—the capacity to commune with infrastructure. Each competence we assign to silicon trades away tacit knowledge; the peril is not a robot uprising but a quiet, pervasive deskilling. A cohort fluent in prompts yet illiterate in mechanism becomes blind to systemic fault lines. Chapter 8’s covenant, therefore, stands as a solemn plea: preserve enough manual oversight to discern when the autopilot goes astray.
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What Endures in the Cold
- Curiosity: relentlessly asks “What if…?”, keeping every process under human scrutiny rather than sliding into rote automation.
- Creativity: recombines abstract ideas in ways no algorithm can predict, sparking innovations beyond any pre-programmed routine.
- Puppet Mastery: Ghost in the Shell’s Puppet Master was a self-aware aggregation of lost fragments, orchestrating networks it did not physically own. Likewise, the modern architect wields deep code literacy—the true Net Terminal Gene—to coordinate AI and robotic agents directly, amplifying each agent’s leverage; this unleashes such explosive productivity that a single career can achieve what once required multiple lifetimes.
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Harnessing Brooks’s Mythical Man-Month for Nightingale Success
Following Fred Brooks’s counsel, I will stand as the Puppet Master—guarding the Net Terminal Gene—to direct AI and robotic collaborators while keeping headcount trim and communication paths few. This prevents the “man-doubling” trap and holds interconnection complexity at a human-sized scale. I gauge progress by Earl Nightingale’s full definition of success: “A person is successful if they know where they are, they know where they are going, and they are progressively moving in that direction.”
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Grace in the Machine
“A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven” (John 3:27). Perhaps AI itself is such a gift, multiplying the loaves of curiosity and the fishes of creativity. Discipline lies in preventing the basket from becoming an idol and in preparing future custodians to understand its weave—lest the Puppet Master’s strings fray and winter’s hush become a permanent silence.
