Overview

looking forward:

what will information and communications technology be like 10 years from now?

what will the computational and social environment be like, under the impact of the information revolution?

culture, information and knowledge flow, technology

a brief look at a system that is consistent with this kind of computational and social environment

I-Help

Keywords:

localization, relativity, fragmentation, reactivity, context, emergent behaviour, robustness, adaptivity, individualization

The Information Revolutionthe information revolution is just getting underway

• coming soon:

- the billion channel universe

- radical impact of information technology on work and play

- major paradigm shifts in all areas of intellectual enquiry

- information technology pervasively part of our life

- fundamental shift in our perspectives of ourselves in relation to the world

• will lead to the fragmentation of

- culture - information and knowledge flow - technology

Fragmentation of Culturepeople need to put up barriers to stay sane

• localized perspective on cyberspace:

the electronic village

• each person’s village will be unique: relativistic, not global

• village will share many of the characteristics of a real village: neighbours, professionals, friends, community organizations, markets (for information)

• person will only know something when it comes into their village

Fragmentation of Culture

each village will overlap a wider world

• a person will also be part of many virtual communities extending beyond their village boundaries: explicit and implicit- each focussed on its own issues

- each with its own “language” and “culture”

- overlapping each other

- each person a member of many such communities

• information and knowledge will flow in and out of most such communities

the electronic village

virtual communities

Fragmentation ofInformation and Knowledge Flow

information flows at the speed of light, knowledge at the speed of human understanding

• flow between communities- identifying the information/knowledge to be spread

- supporting its spread: finding collaborators to foster understanding between communities

(diplomats, negotiation)

• flow within a community- top down from community leaders and those bringing in outside

information/knowledge (teachers, apprenticeship)

- collaboratively through internal debate

- immersing new village members in community culture

flow betweencommunities

Fragmentation of Information and Knowledge Flow

information flows at speed of light, knowledge at the speed of human understanding

• flow between communities- identifying the information/knowledge to be spread

- supporting its spread: finding collaborators to foster understanding between communities (diplomats, negotiation)

• flow within a community- top down from community leaders and those bringing in

outside information/knowledge (teachers, apprenticeship)

- collaboratively through internal debate

- immersing new village members in community culture

flow within acommunity:top-down fromelders

Fragmentation of Information and Knowledge Flow

information flows at speed of light, knowledge at the speed of human understanding

• flow between communities- identifying the information/knowledge to be spread

- supporting its spread: finding collaborators to foster understanding between communities (diplomats, negotiation)

• flow within a community- top down from community leaders and those bringing in outside

information/knowledge (teachers, apprenticeship)

- collaboratively through internal debate

- immersing new village members in community culture

flow within acommunity:collaboration

Fragmentation of Information and Knowledge Flow

information flows at speed of light, knowledge at the speed of human understanding

• flow between communities- identifying the information/knowledge to be spread

- supporting its spread: finding collaborators to foster understanding between communities (diplomats, negotiation)

• flow within a community- top down from community leaders and those bringing in outside

information/knowledge (teachers, apprenticeship)

- collaboratively through internal debate

- immersing new village members in community culture

flow within acommunity:cultural immersion

Fragmentation of Information and Knowledge Flowcultural fragmentation means information/knowledge flow

will be partitioned and fragmented

• pervasiveness of information technology means many activities will be “on-line”: new things can be understood as needed in small chunks, in the context of on-going activities: just in time action/knowledge

• human experts will often be needed, to help integrate knowledge with culture, to help translate knowledge into terms appropriate to people in other communities

• each person can be an expert or novice, depending on the situation: fragmentation of roles

Fragmentation of Technology: Software Without Boundariesthe boundaries of a software system will be indefinite

• software will be fragmented into many quasi-independent entities (agents)

• many of these software entities will come from outside a particular application “package”

• behaviour of such software systems will be emergent, like an ecosystem, fundamentally unpredictable

• distinction between procedures and data, hardware and software will blur

• software will exist simultaneously at many levels of detail

• software will be embedded in a complex social environment

Fragmentation of Technology: Software Without Boundaries

software will take on a particular coherence only relative to end use

• as defined by the communities in which it is used, and the goals of the people using it

• a system to support humans, therefore, will only be meaningfully identifiable in terms of its end goals- system that helps a learner

- system that helps somebody search the web

- system that supports a software engineer in building new embedded applications

- system that supports an accountant preparing tax returns

…….

emergent behaviourfragmented technology

complex social embeddingend use determines coherence

The I-Help System(Greer, McCalla, Vassileva, Deters, Kettel, Bull, …….)

• aimed at providing peer help and other help while learners actually solve problems, in school or the workplace: just-in-time, contextualized

• several sub-systems (and more to come)- public discussion (PDF): open peer forums (aka CPR)

- peer helper finding: IKE (office) and “1-2-1” (university courses)

- HA: helping the helper

• underlying agent architecture- MAGALE agent environment

- personal agent for every learner

- I-Help economy: ICU’s, to aid motivation, resource allocation

• various versions tested, in university and workplace

• many graduate student thesis projects exploring aspects of this architecture

I-Help

?

PDF

WEB

?

MATCHMAKER?

HA

Conclusion

• important technology issues- dealing with inconsistent and incomplete information/knowledge

- individualizing and customizing systems

- fostering and supporting collaboration

- computing under resource constraints

- tracking change

- understanding context

- making systems easy to use, especially for novices

- developing and using distributed systems

- integrating intelligent memory management techniques

- finding techniques for robust computing

- localizing failure

Conclusion• some important social issues

– geographic globalization vs social localization: which wins?– ownership: who owns a particular piece of software when it is

distributed over the entire internet?– responsibility: who takes responsibility for software failures?– integration: how will all these fragmented systems integrate with

the social systems in which they are embedded?– preventing chaos: how to localize the system errors that will be

inherent in these distributed social/technological systems?– local action with global effect: anybody can design/influence the

software/social environment by building a component and letting it loose on the world

– managing change: technology changes will stimulate change in society and vice versa, with unpredictable feedback loops

– integration of computer science with all other areas of human endeavour: business, social interaction, arts, communication, economics, engineering, …: is everything computer science?