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A post for Clinton

I find the use of big words when little ones will do quite pretentious, too, and I steer clear of them where possible. :) Unfortunately, in this instance we had little choice, because we were discussing two points of view that, for better or worse (I say worse), have been labelled with those big words by other researchers. I’m flattered that someone (other than Ben) actually took the time to read that diatribe (if "read" is too strong a word for what took place, then please replace with something more appropriate).

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Ben’s right of reply

Ben’s rebuttal in our debate on context can be found here. I’ll be following this up offline with Ben, because there are definitely fundamental divergences in our views on this matter. In fact I’ve written a small thesis in response, but I’ll spare the general public from it. The gist of my reply is this:

  1. I am aware of Paul Dourish’s work, and I absolutely reject the idea that his so called phenomenological view of context is any different to what most computer scientists understand context to be. I think he’s cleverly narrowed the definitions contained in other works to exclude the concepts of relations between objects and actions, scoping (i.e. deciding what is relevant, which is something that I’ve already agreed is problem to be solved) and dynamic context definitions.
  2. Ben’s closing statement takes our debate from being about something very specific (i.e. context) to a more general discussion about UbiComp in general. I completely agree that we need solutions that support people (in fact the opening passages of my thesis state something very similar). But this is very high-level and abstract, and eventually concrete concepts (such a context) must be identified and dealt with if we are to actually solve any problems rather than just talk about them.
  3. Ben says that context is subjective because the way the world is interpreted right now is shaped by past experience and action. But that’s just another way of saying that current context is partly constituted by past experiences (i.e. historical contexts). Many people have thought about context histories and the way it affects the current context. (Note that I did not rig the results of Google Scholar: the highest ranked result just happens to be a Pervasive 2002 paper written by some people at ITEE/DSTC.)
  4. Just because something exhibits emergence does not mean it cannot be represented. And assuming, for the sake of argument, that something can’t be represented, then how will it ever lead to the betterment of the human-computer interface (because, eventually, if you actually want to progress a concept, it needs to be represented)? James Cole whose Ph.D topic poses the question "What is Information?" can probably shed more light than I can on the fundamental importance of representation.
  5. Finally, while it is always possible to find new facts, relations and context types that may be relevant to a specific context, the general definition of context does not change, regardless of whether you look at it from an engineering stand point, a HCI standpoint or any other standpoint.
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Defining context: enough already

These days I am invariably at odds with Ben’s take on ubiquitous computing and related issues, and the trend seems likely to continue.

In On Context, Ben argues that we still don’t have a clear understanding of what context, among other terms, means. Come off it, really. We’ve known what context means for centuries, and what it means within computer science for decades (which, when one looks at it, is not substantially different from what it means in the ordinary world). John McCarthy, helped to formalize context over a decade ago – a remarkable feat, and one that would be all the more remarkable if the meaning of context was still unclear at that time. McCarthy has also looked at formalizing common sense, a term that I believe is much harder to define than context. The problem is no longer figuring out what context is or what it means, it is understanding how to monitor (sense) it, model it, derive it, and use it to do something sensible even in the face of imperfect information. These are hard problems, and it strikes me as a distinct possibility that people are still talking about what context is because they are avoiding the difficult problems involved with utilising it. Not only do we already know what context is, we know what it is useful for; all you have to do is observe the way in which a typical conversation proceeds between two people and see how they fill in the blanks in the absence of explicit information. Or, the next time you see a person standing in the middle of an intersection wearing a blue uniform and waving their hands about in various ways, observe the way in which you and other motorists respond. It is unlikely that any motorist would make a call to the nearest hospital for the mentally ill. But if you saw a similarly dressed person making those gestures in the middle of a football field, that phone call might be made. Why? Context is the element that allows us to differentiate between these two scenarios or situations. In the words of Dey:

Context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves.

So how does an application decide what is relevant, without being pre-configured with a static set of entities that the programmer/administrator/user has deemed to be relevant to the scenarios in which the application will be used? Now there’s a real research problem. I think this is the gist of what the IFTF article to which Ben refers was getting at – that context is mutable and hard to track, not that the term itself is hard to define.

The meaning of context, I think, is well understood, and the fact that there are many slightly different definitions of context floating around in computer science does not imply otherwise, just as there are many ways of describing the term "light-bulb". So I have no hesitation in adding another definition to the mix. This definition approaches context from a more functional point of view:

Context is the implicit environmental parameter that can be used to disambiguate a statement or an action.

That goes for statements made in natural languages and programming languages. For instance, in an application, we may wish to send a message to somebody. Perhaps the only formal parameter provided by the user is the contents of the message. It is then up to the application to figure out who the message is supposed to be sent to and how that message is supposed to be sent. As mentioned above, knowing what information is relevant to the decision making process, and then actually utilising this information is the tricky part.

Context has been defined to death, and just in case it wasn’t dead already, I made sure by throwing another definition at it. The last thing we need is more papers purporting to confer a better understanding of context unto the computer science community. What is needed are solutions to the problems of modelling, incomplete information, filtering, scaling and the derivation of context information from existing context information. Basically we need to figure out how to remove the current limiting factors so that it can be applied more generally and with predictable results that make sense to the user.

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Acme Blog

So, it’s finally happened: Rhys has started a blog, although, in a move likely to put a hex on the whole damn thing before it gets off the ground, it isn’t called Shoes With Zippers, as Ben has already pointed out. So, Rhys, are you going to accept the music meme baton that I passed you a while back? Likely answer: "er, no."

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Liverpool win the Champions League

Last night’s State of Origin match was a classic. Queensland won it in extra time on the Golden Point rule. Great match. I thought this morning’s Champions League final between Liverpool and AC Milan would be hard pressed to top last night in terms of excitement. Boy was I wrong, and I’m glad I made the effort to get up at 4:45am to watch it. At half time, AC Milan were absolutely cruising. They were up three nil at the break. Then the unbelievable happened. Liverpool scored three goals within the space of seven or eight minutes to level the scores. This is unheard of in Champions League history, and to have it occur against an Italian team, who are reknowned for their ability to defend the most slender of leads, is simply miraculous. It stayed that way until penalties, though Andriy Shevchenko had what looked like a certain goal saved by Jerzy Dudek in extra time. Liverpool won the penalty shoot out 3-2, with Jerzy Dudek again the hero, saving two penalties and watching one sail over the bar. Justice be done, in my opinion, because Milan didn’t deserve to progress past PSV Eindhoven at the semi-final stage. I’ll remember this final for a long time to come. "Never say die" has been given new meaning.

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Neuromancer style constructs by 2050?

An article from ABC news online reports that a BT scientist, Ian Pearson, thinks that by 2050 it will be possible for a person’s mind to be downloaded and stored by a supercomputer, rather like the constructs that William Gibson envisioned in Neuromancer and subsequent novels. The difference is that Gibson’s constructs were recorded personalities (they respond to questions, but they are not conscious), whereas Pearson is talking about downloading somebody’s mind and having that mind continue on in a conscious state. His belief that this may be possible as early as 2050 seems to be premised upon the rapid advances in computing power. However, surely our knowledge of what constitutes intelligence and consciousness is not advancing at the same rapid rate. Until we fully understand how the human brain operates, I don’t see how it is possible to download somebody’s mind and have it do anything constructive. See, this is a substantially different problem to the one of AI, because it is conceivable, even likely, that the human brain is not the only entity capable of exhibiting intelligence. It might therefore be possible to create an entity that exhibits intelligence, which bears no similarity to the human brain. To have somebody’s mind execute, for want of a better word, on a computer, entails understanding the machine it was intended to operate on: the human brain. Figuring out the human brain (i.e. the hardware) is one thing; replicating that machine in hardware or software is another thing altogether.

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The wines of France

While holidaying in France, Karen and I tried a few different wines. I’ve put together a gallery showing a sample of wines we drank. Rosé was our primary tipple, and most of the bottles cost less than €2. Even the fancier stuff from the Ackerman – Rémy Pannier cellar in Saumur only cost between €5 and €6. You can see the gallery here.