The Origin of “to” Becoming “two”

Written by Peter Li-Chang Kuo

My teacher, Ma Cheng-Jiu (1915–2018), published a book at the age of 94 titled “Notes on Fuel Cells,” leaving behind a valuable intellectual legacy for future generations.

Fig 1: Professor Ma’s book “Notes on Fuel Cells”

I still remember that in 1966, when I was 13 years old, I challenged NASA’s “PTH” project in order to improve my family’s living conditions — turning a concept into reality. Starting from nothing, I created a sample, refined it, and confirmed that it met all the most stringent requirements. Yet in the final stage, I was unexpectedly asked to submit an English “Approval Sheet.” With no other option, I went to National Cheng Kung University to seek Professor Ma’s help.

Professor Ma gave me a copy of “Introduction to Machinery.” He spoke about how James Watt improved the steam engine, triggering the Industrial Revolution. By adding a flywheel and a centrifugal governor, the engine could generate stable rotational power. Essentially, the piston moved "from point A to point B" (A to B), converting reciprocating linear motion into rotational motion to perform work — hence the unit of power is called the “watt.” Even today, we measure light bulbs in watts.

Professor Ma then asked how I had manufactured such a tiny “eyelet.” I briefly described the entire process — from mold fabrication and automatic feeding devices to installation on a punch press, followed by progressive deep-drawing. He was astonished and humbly said, “Even at 51 years old, as a university professor, I do not have such capability.”

Fig 2: The eyelet that won the PTH order

With the assistance of Professor Ma and Professor Yao Jing-Bo, I managed to produce an English “Approval Sheet” within a few days, secured the order, and retained a NYSE-listed American company in the "Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone" (KEPZ). This marked the beginning of Taiwan’s transition into an industrial society and laid the foundation for its precision industry.

The president of the American company "Avnet Taiwan Ltd." was overjoyed and nicknamed me “Dr. Blacksmith”— I was not yet 14. Later, in 1979, while dining at the Twin Towers in New York, he told me: “In fact, the U.S., Japan, and Europe could not produce ‘eyelets’ that met the requirements. Not only did you succeed, but you even produced an ‘Approval Sheet’ that none of us could manage. You truly impressed all of Avnet.” No wonder he always called me "Doc" whenever we met, not only in the KEPZ, but also from New York to Phoenix, and to the Director of the Provincial Construction Department, they all addressed me in this way.

Consequently, even under the high-pressure condition of working 20 hours a day, I still squeezed out time to attend night school and build my academic credentials — yet A-Jin used this to threaten me into "handing over financial control." However, after the bloody coup that stripped me of everything, I was able to join the American company Mattel as a "Specialist," saving the famous "Barbie doll," and was called "Gadget Master" by Ms. Ruth Handler (1916-2002).

I married a complete stranger, Ding Lin-Hong (Linda Din), on February 21, 1980, only to be driven out with a three-foot-long blade on May 4; I chose to spare the assailant, and Linda chose to wander with me. Perhaps along that long and winding road, listening to my stories from Apollo 4 to developing the "satellite receiver," she diligently read three newspapers every day, plus morning and evening meditation sessions, filling her mind with ideas.

In 1984, I broke through the three evil expatriate professional managers — abbreviated "ABP" at Mattel's Taiwan plant (MLT) — and easily improved Barbie's production process from head to leg, making it highly efficient with a scrap rate approaching zero. "Mattel's reward?" Starting in 1985, they laid off people, took the production tools I had gifted them, moved to Malaysia, and shut down MLT completely within a year, leaving 5,000 unemployed people behind.

Linda Din, who had always urged me to save Barbie, thus believed that Taiwan must become a "nation that controls upstream orders," especially after seeing the unemployed turn to driving taxis only to get robbed, which ignited her "compassion." On a certain day in 1986 after spiritual meditation, she lay on the table sketching, cutting, and pasting, soon producing a "TES Schematic Diagram," which she called "Electronics + Commerce" a new tech-economic system—a "Total Economic Solution" also known as "The eStore System," hence abbreviated "TES."

Fig 3: TES Schematic Diagram

I advised her not to meddle in others' affairs, yet she insisted I build a small simulator for her and travel everywhere with the "TES Schematic Diagram" to hold seminars. Not only did she fail to find any helpers, but the audience even laughed their teeth out. Feeling sorry for her, I finally calmed down to examine what her invented "TES" really was, and interpreted it as the "TES System Architecture Diagram."

Fig 4: TES System Architecture Diagram

The system architecture diagram features two intersecting channels for "virtual-real integration." Using Laplace's "Second Shift Theorem" and "Final Value Theorem," I calculated an astronomical figure, realizing this was a matter of national importance. So, I made recommendations to the top levels and went to the the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) to meet Chairman Chao Yao-Dong. He told me to go to ITRI to find his junior alumnus, who listened with a bewildered look in his eyes and said: "What? Contactless TranSnart Chip? It would take 50 years to develop!"

Unexpectedly, Linda Din believed that the employment self-generating ecosystem of the "Rich Taiwan Plan" could wait no longer. She initiated a "Social Responsibility Investment" (SRI) model, funding the R&D herself. By 1989, she had confirmed the direction —"RF Transmitter"— which was published in the "Economic Daily News" and "Commercial Times" (as shown in Fig 5).

Fig 5: RF Transmitter Coverage and Prototype

After years of effort, she finally produced her R&D results as a "color pamphlet"— similar to Fig 6 — and in 1997, promoted her "Ark Plan" at the Vancouver APEC to address structural social issues, earning widespread approval from representatives of various economies. Linda Din was thus invited to be a speaker at APEC 1998.

Fig 6: "Color Pamphlet" Promoting TES System

On the APEC podium, with assistance from a Malaysian official to load the slides onto the projector, Linda Din explained her invented TES as an e-commerce system. It starts with "consumers coming to the eStore for shopping" — called "Consumer to Business" (marked as 'B-C' on the diagram). Then, the communication module sends transaction information to the control center, notifying suppliers to restock via logistics — called "Business to Business" (marked as 'B-B' on the diagram). After her presentation, it led to the formulation of the "E-Commerce Constitution," met with thunderous applause, and she was hailed as the "Mother of E-Commerce."

Fig 7: Linda Din explaining "B-C, B-B" at APEC 1998 podium

President Lee Teng-Hui was unable to attend APEC in person due to obstruction by the PRC, which created numerous problems—most notably "bureaucratic laziness and cowardice." Linda Din, undaunted by raging storms and threaten, rallied the U.S. representative, the Malaysian Datuk, and representatives from Asian Financial Crisis victims— Japan and Thailand — to propose "TES" at APEC 1998. This led to the formulation of the "E-Commerce Constitution," which became a mandatory international mega-trend that all economies must follow, with policies set for implementation.

At the 1999 APEC in Christchurch, New Zealand, everyone craned their necks in anticipation to deeply understand TES's essence. But just as we were about to take the stage to explain this entirely new tech-economic system, the hotel suddenly demanded we change rooms due to protests from the PRC. The only Taiwanese official who truly cared about this major conference, SME Administration Director Li Chang-Yi, urged me to hurry to the meeting "to explain TES's content," while he first went to negotiate with the hotel.

I explained that TES runs from consumer to VAM & eStore for shopping (Consumer to Business) — abbreviated "B-C." Transaction information is then transmitted via communication modules to the control center for processing, after which suppliers are notified to restock through logistics — this segment is all "Business to Business" (B-B). Since TES is a tech-economic system for improving social problems, the hyphen (-) here emphasizes the "communication protocol" and "flow" of horizontal integration between the two endpoints, while also defining data exchange and energy allocation between the two system "modules."

In the end, after the meeting concluded, the official representative from Chinese Taipei, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs "Nicotine Addict Yang," who had just finished smoking outside and reeked of cigarettes, walked in. From Chiang Kai-Shek Airport all the way, his top concern was finding places to smoke. A reporter approached him and asked about the "B-B" we had just mentioned—was it "to" or "two"? Yang, raising his nicotine-stained fingers to his mouth and pondering, pretended to be scholarly as he replied: "Of course the two B's in B-B mean 'two'(2)!"

From then on, the absurd B2B/P2P/O2O, even B2C proliferated, with Silicon Valley's blind herd particularly enamored of "x2x." If we look back today at the mathematical genius Laplace's "t to infinity (∞)" twisted into "t2∞," he would surely leap from his grave.

And afterwards, "to" devolved into "two" (2) — a catastrophe of downgrading from "scientific dimension" to mundane commerce.

In Linda Din's invented TES, "to" is a "path operator" in systems engineering, representing the accumulation of "work," information encryption, and the diagnostic responsibility that physical energy must bear in dynamic displacement. When "to" was mistakenly implanted as the numeral "two" (2) by bureaucrats and Silicon Valley's blind herd, the system's "causal continuity" was utterly severed.

On the physical level, it stripped ion movement in transmission smart power chips "from anode to cathode" (A to C) of interface pressure path monitoring, concealing solid-state battery "swelling defects" and burying catastrophic safety hazards. On the economic level, it flattened social responsibility investment's "channel paths" into pure "point-to-point arbitrage," allowing later infringers to reap massive profits in black boxes devoid of safety diagnostics, plunging mankind into chaotic technological catastrophe.

As the elder who built the "Taiwan-Silicon Valley Bridge," I was explaining to the clueless people in Silicon Valley that the journey from A to B is a "path," a "vector," and absolutely "to," not a numerical "two" (2). Yet they claim there was "B2B" literature as far back as 1915. I can confirm that the prototype of e-commerce, "TES," was born right in front of me in 1986 by Linda Din — a lady trying to enrich Taiwan. Two years ago, I discarded 20,000 books, and in researching TES from Marconi, Planck, and Einstein all the way to Laplace, I never once encountered anything about "two."

My teacher, Professor Ma Cheng-Jiu, was right born in 1915. His scholarship was extremely rigorous; from the outset, he declared that from point A to point B is absolutely "A to B," which is how machines perform work. He also mentioned that in batteries, the chemical change is like ions "flowing from anode to cathode" — absolutely "anode to cathode" (A to C, A-C).

When this group of Silicon Valley blind fools spout nonsense about 1915 commercial literature to rebut, they not only fail to produce evidence but commit the most fundamental academic error: conflating "descriptions of commercial activities" with "control in system dynamics."

Whether it's Laplace's "Celestial Mechanics" gazing at the starry sky, or Watt in the professional domains of "Thermodynamics and Dynamics," all echo what Professor Ma emphasized: “ ‘to’ represents ‘work transfer’ and the direction of energy flow.” Once this "path" is reduced to the numerical value "two" (2), the entire system's physical meaning collapses.

TES is a complex dynamic system. The “contactless TranSmart chip card” defined by Linda Din must complete the "read-erase-write" action cycle in "0.002 seconds" for the system to flow smoothly and enter backend operations — hence Development of “Supply Chain Management Information System for Electronic Sales System,” abbreviated as "TSCM," which was included in the Ministry of Economic Affairs' State-Owned Enterprises Commission's “88-89 SBIR Achievements Compilation,” which became a significant intellectual asset.

Fig 8: TSCM included in the SBIR Achievements Compilation

When our invented TSCM (TranSmart Supply Chain Management) software system — which champions "Online-to-Offline" — gets bastardized into the marketing shorthand "O2O," it triggers the following extremely pernicious consequences:

First, the "Break Linkage" of physical security monitoring: In the TES system — as shown in Fig 5 — there is a "Power Chip Module," and from A to B, a continuous gradient must be maintained. In the logic twisted into "O2O," people only care about the two endpoints of "online orders" and "offline delivery," ignoring the security monitoring of the intermediate transmission process. This is precisely why deficiencies along the path, such as "solid-state battery swelling," are overlooked — because in the "2" (two) logic, the path does not exist; only the result does — and when the system collapses, the consequences will be apocalyptic disaster.

Second, the loss of control over "Entropy": According to the second law of thermodynamics, energy conversion inevitably involves losses; thus, the "to" symbol in the Laplace Transform or TES dynamic systems represents the functional relationship of time and space. When the world indulges in "O2O," they attempt to skip the "process" in pursuit of “ultimate efficiency.” This disregard for the path leads to the accumulation of internal thermal energy and pressure within the system — such as internal pressure in the power chip. When these pathologically blind fools ignore the work constraints along the path, the ultimate result is systemic collapse and explosion.

Third, the disappearance of responsibility traceability: The line between "B-B" in the TES diagram represents a trajectory of administrative investigation and legal accountability; but once transformed into "B2B," it becomes a "state" rather than a "behavior." Thus, cartel corruption syndicates act with impunity. When accidents occur — for example, global energy technology delays — bureaucrats can claim it is merely a "market-wide phenomenon (Two B)," rather than a "failure of a specific operational path (B to B)." This allows those infringing successors who profit from it to easily evade legal and social responsibility.

Fourth, the "Marketing" and "Mediocratization" of basic science: Planck and Einstein studied the transformation pathways between the microscopic and macroscopic — for example, "E = hν" or "E = mc²", Laplace's "t → ∞" or "s → 0," those equals signs and arrows in between represent rigorous physical constants and conditions; however, foolish bureaucrats and the Silicon Valley blind herd have transformed them into "x2x," essentially turning "science" into a "slogan." This leads modern technology R&D to care only about appearances and commercial extraction models, with no one willing to focus on the "humanistic values" of Social Responsibility Investment (SRI).

In summary, those who spout off with empty literature fundamentally don't understand what "system energy efficiency" means — they see only "buying and selling," while we believe a parched world must be infused with "living water." The "to" pathway in TES system design was downgraded to the numeral "two" (2) is far from just a phonetic joke, as seen in the cartelistic rampages over the past 20 years or more; this produces catastrophic consequences akin to "dimensional reduction strikes" in systems engineering and technological evolution — for example, dysfunctional "one-way link" replacing "closed-loop control":

The true meaning of "to": In the TES system architecture, it represents the "pathway" for computation and feedback, from C (consumers) to B (businesses) in "B to C," encompassing information flow, energy transmission, authentication mechanisms, and "real-time transaction security monitoring."

The consequences of "two" (2): Once reduced to a number, the system is misunderstood as "two juxtaposed points", causing subsequent e-commerce and tech development to focus solely on "matching," while ignoring pathway security and our emphasized "Universal Concern." This is because it prioritizes transaction volume between just the two B points, overlooking the principle of "all participants benefit" in the intermediate transmission process — for instance, Japan's representative has paid close attention to TES since APEC 1997, with Sony's "Suica" and Sumitomo's attempts to upgrade "VAM," yet Japan's economy remains stagnant.

Fig 9: TES System Where All Participants Benefit (SNA)

Devolving from "algorithm" to mere "addition" erases logical functions. In mathematics, "t to infinity" (t→∞) or "B-B" signifies causality—who initiates, who receives, who ensures path security. It also represents a dynamic limit tendency, demanding sustained kinetic energy and structural stability to benefit the world and address systemic social issues.

When mangled into "t two infinity" (t2∞) or "B2B," it loses functional directionality, becoming mere labeling. Silicon Valley's "x2x" fad shifts tech R&D from "to stable infinity" to "quick doubling—two," sparking short-sighted investment frenzies. Without path monitoring, it's force-pushed to market for mega-profits, with blurred accountability — no clear "path owner" in crises. Worst, as cartels chase "2" games — expansion, mergers, profiteering, gorging on beef till bloated — no one returns to the "to" path, confronting the originator's "tech heart, humanistic soul."

Fig 10: Promoting "Tech Heart, Humanistic Soul" in Silicon Valley

Linda Din, the mother of e-commerce and inventor of TES, developed it self-funded via SRI to solve structural social problems, and as a speaker of APEC 1998, she catalyzed the "E-Commerce Constitution." Regrettably, bureaucrats misplanted "to" as "two" (2), distorting Teacher Ma Cheng-Jiu's teachings and the rigor of Laplace and Watt. "To" denotes energy flow paths, power transmission, and causal continuity, linking computation, energy, and ethical responsibility in TES's employment ecosystem. "Two" (B2B, O2O) degenerates to static endpoints, erasing safety monitoring paths and brewing systemic risks: entropy runaway, traceability loss. This isn't terminological quibbling — it's a warning of lost scientific thinking. The most importance is, restore "to," rebuild efficient, secure, accountable systems, lest humanity plunge into catastrophe.

Peter Li-Chang Kuo, the author created Taiwan's Precision Industry in his early years. Peter was a representative of the APEC CEO Summit and an expert in the third sector. He advocated "anti-corruption (AC)/cashless/e-commerce (E-Com)/ICT/IPR/IIA-TES / Micro-Business (MB)…and etc." to win the international bills and regulations.