Hi again Eugene,

Sorry, my last post appeared as "anonymous". I'm re-posting here...

Hi Eugene,

Thanks for your comment. "Little acts of disrespect" refers to the micro-inequities that are a result of hidden bias. However if they are recorded and viewed together, the bias is apparent. A personal dialogic agent can be set up to capture a record of these micro-inequities, and then guide users through a conversation about how they occur, and even develop indicators of how they occur that can be used to prevent them in the "moment of action".

"Meaning" is indeed a slippery concept, since as Bakhtin pointed out, it depends on context and history as much as connotation and denotation. For example, in a dysfunctional organization to treat someone "with respect" may mean putting on a facade of friendliness while plotting to sabotage their efforts. This may be moderated by the setting in which the phrase is used as well as the personal experiences of the participants with others. The personal agents in a dialogic web would guide the user to capturing his or her meanings associated with critical events or phrases, recognizing the polysemous ("many meaning'ed") nature of interaction. (I remember discussions with many people in the early '90's for whom "business process re-engineering" meant "management wants to fire us".)

For my prototype I used simple pattern-matching and boolean logic. This was sufficient to produce some significant improvements in group function, though it would have surely been better with some more sophisticated techniques. But, I was pleased with the results I got while just using CSci undergrads to do most of the programming. (Unfortunately, the last "real" coding I did was assembly language in the late 1980's. I just didn't have the time to keep up while I was doing other work.)

As far as I can tell in the future, computational "understanding" of polysemic / polysemiotic language is not possible. There are, however, many resources, such as AffectNet and WordNet that can help with the detection of patterns through data mining. Taxonomic approaches, as I believe Google and Siri use, are also very helpful for the broad strokes of capturing semantics. However the dialogic web relies on pattern matching and data mining along with user-supplied meanings which supplement the data mining. Sharing this information between personal agents can be very powerful.

I hope this clarifies things. Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks,

Ray

Dear Ray,

Very inspiring, well documented, profound and well written essay! I find interesting the idea of a dialogic web, and I think someday it will become reality in one form or another. Good luck with the contest!

Best regards,

Cristi

Dear Cristi,

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I am going to make the dialogic web a reality, I just need to find the right support to help design and build it. Way back in 1973 Mark Granovetter wrote a paper on the "strength of weak ties", illustrating how connections between minimally connected groups can lead to novel information flows. I'm hoping that this forum will lead to some connections to help with architecting and building the dialogic web. If not, I'll continue working to find some connections that can do that. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Ray

Ray,

Nice essay. I note your comment about M&M and ether above. Interestingly the later Michelson Gore Pearson experiment, larger scale with better equipment (1926 I think) firmly concluded an ether frame. That result has been as well censored and subjugated as Einstein's 1954 paper which is actually consistent with it.

We'll never really advance understanding while science remains led by myth and belief. History shows what really steers the future id scientific advancement.

I've found Millers experiments far more interesting, supporting a hypothesis I postulated applying J D Jackson extinction distances through the atmosphere; he found decreasing birefringence at lower altitudes, and the (still non-zero) M&M result at sea level.

I hope you get a chance to read mine (the previous ones prepare SR's interpretation consistently for the unification).

Best wishes. I feel your views are more forward looking than cataloguing our errors, though shouldn't we really better study and learn from the feedback?

Peter

    Ray,

    This must be a rather general vector from your doctoral thesis, steering the future with your obvious organizational skills and learning. Quite an impressive and extended development of an apparatus for collaborative steering. Most essays are heavy on what. Yours is heavy on the how, the most difficult part of this exercise. We know what needs to be done, but entrenched forces and their benificiaries -- though becoming less plentiful -- who now control, make it rather difficult to accomplish. You fill in the details quite neatly: education, internet medium, dialogic web, and a comparative endeavor that works -- Wikipedia.

    My essay is heavy on what needs to be done and the forces that need to be neutralized. My how is not so detailed -- looking beyond (the orthodox) and within the mind -- the neural universe.

    I would like to see your coment on my essay: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2008

    Jim

    Dear Ray Luechtefeld,

    Since you were developing communication hardware, you might hopefully appreciate my intention to advocate causality. May I ask you to check at topic/2021 my recent reply to Toth where I am defending my claim that ethics needs an inclusion.

    I didn't derive this from Juergen Habermaas. Instead I refer to other as I consider rational thinkers like Alfred Nobel, Claude Shannon, Karl Popper, and Galileo Galilei.

    Curious,

    Eckard

      Ray,

      What a breath of fresh air to see moral science philosophy take a front seat. Our essays are based on the same theme that you nicely summed up, "In an ideal society the self - management of individual interactions would be achieved by the citizenry through free will, rather than through the imposition of law ..."

      I agree that high level networked communication is integral to any system approaching that ideal; in addition, though, I think that the web of physical resources plays an equal part.

      I am grateful for the extended deadline that allows me to rate you with a deservedly high mark.

      Best,

      Tom

      5 days later

      Hello Ray

      I wonder if it would be possible as an experiment to implement a human version of your dialog web in some discussion space. By human I mean that volunteer moderators simulate some of the role of your dialog agents. Or is the software ready?

      We have some dialog space used for Lifeboat Foundation discussions that might work.

        Hello Ray,

        Thanks for your comments of May 29. Unfortunately, work requirements have not allowed me to reply before now. Your proposals for personal dialogic agents and dialogic web have merit. Best wishes for the finals judging and for future implementation of your proposals.

        Laurence Hitterdale

          • [deleted]

          • Post #37

          Hi James,

          It is possible, but would require a considerable effort. The question of whether the effort is worth it depends on the purpose of the experiment.

          If it is meant to be a "valid" experiment (by which I mean, one that meets acceptable standards of scientific rigor, I have already done something like what you are proposing in my dissertation (see http://phdtree.org/pdf/25409619-model-ii-behavior-and-team-performance-an-experimental-design-and-intertextual-analysis/ ). I've also done some other studies that used various versions of the prototype software - see for example a few of them at:

          Ricardo Romero, Richard Savage, Paul Figueroa & Ray Luechtefeld, "A Quantitative Study Of The Impact Of Automated Facilitation On Engineering Student Dyadic Task Completion," Presented at the 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2011 Rapid City, SD (refereed). (Available online at http://fie-conference.org/fie2011/papers/1276.pdf ).

          Paul Figueroa, Richard Savage, Ricardo Romero & Ray Luechtefeld, "A Qualitative Analysis For The Facilitation Of Innovative Problem Completion Amongst Dyads Of Engineering Students," Presented at the 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2011 Rapid City, SD (refereed). (Available online at http://fie- conference.org/fie2011/papers/1278.pdf ).

          Ray Luechtefeld, Steve E. Watkins, & Raj Kanwar Singh, "Expert System for Team Facilitation using Observational Learning," paper presented at the Frontiers In Education Conference, 10-13 October 2007 Milwaukee, Wisconsin (refereed) (Available online at http://fie- conference.org/fie2007/papers/1530.pdf ).

          These three were done with the web interventions in a discussion board. I still have to complete write-ups on studies with the prototype that uses spoken interventions and speech recognition via mobile devices, and which is capable of crowd-sourced interventions.

          That alpha prototype does not capture my latest thinking about the architecture of the "dialogic web", which is roughly similar in scope to an architecture of the "semantic web", though of course based on some completely different assumptions. While the semantic web is about working with clearly defined meanings, the dialogic web is about working with the multiplicity of meanings that compose everyday life.

          If the purpose of doing the experiment is to prompt thought and build exposure, I might be interested in doing the human run-through, though it might make more sense to just do the programming. Since most of the conversational interventions that the dialogic web will use will be crowd-sourced (like Wikipedia) a human actor run-through will not necessarily reflect the final system. My goal in participating in this essay contest was to connect with others who would be interested in furthering the development of the dialogic web, so I'd certainly like to engage in conversation about that. You can best reach me at the IEEE email address on the papers linked above if you want to talk about it.

          Does this respond adequately to your post? Let me know if I can provide more information.

          Thanks,

          Ray

          Hi James, (sorry, for some reason this was posted as "anonymous" below")

          It is possible, but would require a considerable effort. The question of whether the effort is worth it depends on the purpose of the experiment.

          If it is meant to be a "valid" experiment (by which I mean, one that meets acceptable standards of scientific rigor, I have already done something like what you are proposing in my dissertation (see http://phdtree.org/pdf/25409619-model-ii-behavior-and-team-p

          erformance-an-experimental-design-and-intertextual-analysis/

          ). I've also done some other studies that used various versions of the prototype software - see for example a few of them at:

          Ricardo Romero, Richard Savage, Paul Figueroa & Ray Luechtefeld, "A Quantitative Study Of The Impact Of Automated Facilitation On Engineering Student Dyadic Task Completion," Presented at the 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2011 Rapid City, SD (refereed). (Available online at http://fie-conference.org/fie2011/papers/1276.pdf ).

          Paul Figueroa, Richard Savage, Ricardo Romero & Ray Luechtefeld, "A Qualitative Analysis For The Facilitation Of Innovative Problem Completion Amongst Dyads Of Engineering Students," Presented at the 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2011 Rapid City, SD (refereed). (Available online at http://fie- conference.org/fie2011/papers/1278.pdf ).

          Ray Luechtefeld, Steve E. Watkins, & Raj Kanwar Singh, "Expert System for Team Facilitation using Observational Learning," paper presented at the Frontiers In Education Conference, 10-13 October 2007 Milwaukee, Wisconsin (refereed) (Available online at http://fie- conference.org/fie2007/papers/1530.pdf ).

          These three were done with the web interventions in a discussion board. I still have to complete write-ups on studies with the prototype that uses spoken interventions and speech recognition via mobile devices, and which is capable of crowd-sourced interventions.

          That alpha prototype does not capture my latest thinking about the architecture of the "dialogic web", which is roughly similar in scope to an architecture of the "semantic web", though of course based on some completely different assumptions. While the semantic web is about working with clearly defined meanings, the dialogic web is about working with the multiplicity of meanings that compose everyday life.

          If the purpose of doing the experiment is to prompt thought and build exposure, I might be interested in doing the human run-through, though it might make more sense to just do the programming. Since most of the conversational interventions that the dialogic web will use will be crowd-sourced (like Wikipedia) a human actor run-through will not necessarily reflect the final system. My goal in participating in this essay contest was to connect with others who would be interested in furthering the development of the dialogic web, so I'd certainly like to engage in conversation about that. You can best reach me at the IEEE email address on the papers linked above if you want to talk about it.

          Does this respond adequately to your post? Let me know if I can provide more information.

          Thanks,

          Ray

          Thanks Eckard, I'll check that out. We have benefited from many great thinkers, and they share many connections. For example, Popper's demarcation criterion of falsifiability is also connected to Argyris practice of "Action Science", which emphasizes the search for disconfirmation over confirmation.

          Ray

          6 days later
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