Paper contribution to Triple-I 07, Austria

Leo Sauermann presented our co-authored paper entitled:“From Philosophy and Mental-Models to Semantic Desktop
research: Theoretical Overview” at I-Semantics’07 at Graz, Austria.

Read Leo’s experiences at Triple-I Conference on his Blog

Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to Support PIM

The proper and immediate object of science, is the acquirement, or communication, of truth […]
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Definitions of Poetry, 1811

Inspired by the quote here i intend to publish my Masters thesis. The title of my Masters’ Thesis is: “Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to Support Personal Information Management“. It is submitted now at the Institute of Cognitive Science.

Many thanks to Leo Sauermann for his close supervision, constant support and valuable inputs to realize the work.

The abstract :

This thesis examines issues on Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Science and Mental Models. The research provides a philosophical grounding for the researchers in Personal Information Management (PIM). An overview is given on various philosophical aspects of computer-based activities. Discussions on the theories relevant to understand the goals for the Semantic Desktop community are elicited. The ideas discussed in the thesis are intended to emphasize a theoretical foundation, with respect to the Semantic Desktop long term goals. The goal of this thesis is to examine the theories of Philosophy and to provide a conceptual idea to design user-intuitive Semantic Desktop applications. The challenges of the Semantic Desktop evaluation are highlighted and suggestions are made based on Gnowsis evaluation. The work tries to induce scientific curiosity among the Semantic Desktop researchers.

Download as [ pdf ] size ~1 MB

See related publications

Weizenbaum. Rebel at work

The release of the film by Osnabruecker director Peter Haas, is a latest on depicting the life of Joseph Weizenbaum, the inventor of ELIZA. Besides being a professional computer scientist and a professor at the MIT for life, J. Weizenbaum is also kind of a moral authority concerning computers and their use in today’s society. Read more and watch trailer >>

A hilarious story-teller adds numerous anecdotes, memories and ideas to a novel which he calls his life. Joseph Weizenbaum lives in Berlin-Mitte with a view of the Marx-Engels-Forum and the Berlin Cathedral. After many years in the USA, he returned to Berlin. Born in Berlin and of jewish origin, Weizenbaum and his family left Germany in 1936. In the early years of the computer age, he went to California. There he started his scientific career and later became a professor at the elite MIT. But Weizenbaum was a rebel: he began to criticise his colleagues for their fantasies of almightiness and their devoutness to science and militarism. The film provides a stage for his humorous narrative depicting the world of yesterday while reflecting on the dawn of the computer age. source

In its Image

“In the mid 70s, an aspiring theoretical physicist made what he and many others feel is the most important discovery in the world. This very significant film is about the resulting invention, one that can author all subsequent ideas, provide a totally unanticipated cosmology, and possibly deliver us from death”.

The myth of my Research

…I am currently fixated with my Masters Thesis entitled: [Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to support Personal Information Management]. It is challenging though interesting.

the main research motivation is based on the following questions :

• Does Semantic Desktop minimizes information overload by providing enhanced support to perform daily task of knowledge worker?

• Does it help in organising (personal) information, the way we think with respect to our working context?

• Does it able to formalize our mental models?

• Can we query and visualize our personal information resources (emails, files, contacts, photos) with the help of Semantic Desktop to know our meetings, schedules and tasks in order to organise ourselves better?

After realizing that Evaluation of Semantic Desktop remains still in its infancy and needs high attention, I don’t find any publications addressing the usability issues of Semantic Desktop. But now I am delighted to see some latest focus in Personal Information Management (PIM) research. The research has gained momentum with around 32 publications this year [look here] is quite interesting and for me it’s a light of hope that my current research efforts have some audience to appeal. My position to defend my work could be summed up briefly as follows:

1. PIM is not uniform or structuralised behaviour rather it is dynamic, diverse and flexible, based on context. PIM behaviour has to be studied in particular context (e.g. working, education, projects, research ). The strategy to study PIM behaviour would involve “divide and conquer”.
2. Evaluation of PIM is challenging, major issues involve privacy and users different world-view.
3. Understanding Mental Model, which is a hint (clue) in peoples mind to the concept they represent. In physical sense they may represent an operation of a device, In abstract sense they may represent system process. Mental Model could be used to explicitly define user working scenario to study her PIM activity.
4. Representing Mental model in [PIMO] as proposed by my scientific advisor Leo Sauermann or [CDS] as proposed by Max and Heiko : where mental model needs to be formalised, they should serve as an analytical tool that should provide features to document user’s current mental images, ideas and concepts.

The Future : The Robots

Do we really think future belongs to what we create with our hands would lead us in next millennium.Are we ready with ease to handover the responsibility to bots that uses silicon to think than gray matter.

read Helen Virginia’s far-sighted and optimistic belief [I Believe The Robots Are Our Future]

As we foolishly pursue our short-sighted goals at the expense of those who will follow in our footsteps, we must pause and be mindful of the little ones, our progeny, who will inherit our planet in the next millennium and beyond.Time and time again, gazing into the innocent, trusting photoelectric receptors of a tiny, newly developed cybernetic construct, I am reminded of a fundamental truth: I believe the robots are our future, and we must teach them well and let them lead the way.

[…]

Let us offer tenderness and show the robots all the beauty they possess inside. We must write a subroutine that gives them a sense of pride, programming their supercooled silicon CPUs with understanding, compassion and patience, to make it easier and enable them to hold their sensory-input clusters high as they claim their destiny as overlords of the solar system. If we cannot instill their emergent AI meta-consciousness with a sense of deep, abiding confidence and self-esteem….

exploring brain with BrainVoyager

[BrainVoyager] Brain Tutor is an educational program that teaches knowledge about the human brain the easy way,it provides Tutorial to understand brain anatomy and functions. The program lets you interactively explore high-quality 3D head and brain models, which can be rotated, moved and zoomed in real-time. BrainVoyager Brain Tutor runs on all major computer platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.you can download [here]

Brain waves control Robot: Honda

…In a video demonstration in Tokyo, brain signals detected by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner were relayed to a robotic hand. A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V-sign. Several seconds later, a robotic hand mimicked the movements.

 

Honda claims such technology would replace keyboards and cellphones, the technology keeps the vision for robot behaviour according to owner's mental order, a so called brain-machine interface

read the story [here] view slide show [here]

The end of Science

…Today, science is the vital principle of our civilization. Putting light on the faith of [Enlightenment] and the Ideas of John Horgan, american science journialist of Scientific American during 1886-1997, limits the growth of science to a desperate end.

John Wheeler emphasized science has mysteries left to explain.

“We still live in the childhood of mankind”

“All these horizons are beginning to light up in our day: molecular biology, DNA, cosmology.We’re just children looking for answers.”

“As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

here is Wheeler’s [comment] on Cosmic Serach

Wheeler’s own ideas suggest that a final theory will always be a mirage, that the “truth is in some sense imagined rather than objectively apprehended”.

Though his theory “I do take 100 percent seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination,” did not convince the answer for Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be?

But nevertheless he left some chilling paradox : at the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see, finally, our own puzzled faces looking back at us. 🙂

…read the [whole story] of Wheeler’s so called theory “the it from bit”.

Cognitive Science at Osnabrueck

…Cognitive Science at Osnabrueck is an active group of people and young minds who are making their wage on intellectual crusade over human intelligence, now the Students portal is active and running, if you are interested to study, want to amplify your cognition and organise your neuronal pattern in a way we are doing here, then have a look for all the events.