Brass Tacks #3

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Good Morning Humanity!

It's Saturday morning and nobody's listening so I can say anything I 
want to, right? NOT.

This is Brass Tacks #3 and it might be subtitled, "OOps did I say 
that?" There is a word for what we have already encountered and it is 
VISIBILITY. As Kurt noted, we are likely to draw more attention than 
almost any other single OASIS Initiative. You have no idea how much I 
would like to be wrong about that, since I am one of the people who 
will be sitting in the hot seats. However, that's as may be and there 
is no helping it.

You might think I am about to advise that we be extra careful what we 
say, but I am actually going to say something quite nearly the 
opposite, but not quite. We who represent you must exercise caution 
and restraint, but we are going to rely on you all to keep the fires 
of creativity burning by having the courage to bring up the issues 
you feel strongly ought to be addressed by our project. Note the word 
FEEL.

This is the thing: even though we are going to enable machine 
entities--Agents or Bots, whether technically AI as such or not, to 
be displayed in the digital environment according to our precepts and 
vocabulary and interact with us as human objects, what we call small 
h humans, our purpose is to bring those qualities and concerns and 
processes that are UNIQUELY Human with a Cap H to that digital 
environment, or digital information systems.

That means enabling emotional content and context to be included, as 
with music and other arts which express these complex feelings that 
make us human, and this is important because that reduction in 
misunderstanding of which we have spoken and at which we aim can only 
be accomplished by including that information in our communications, 
and including it accurately.

Oddly enough, that means that you all need to have the courage to 
accept occasional embarassment as happens when humans interact. One 
of the things we can recognize is that we fudge information, which 
begins the degradation of accuracy in communication when we learn as 
children to avoid ridicule and humiliation. Most of us just learn to 
keep our mouths shut in public gatherings, like schoolrooms and 
schoolgrounds. I know this sounds pretty tame, but stick around a 
while. You will learn otherwise.

It is perhaps the most difficult task we face, encouraging honesty in 
emotional contexts. However it won't happen overnight and we needn't 
be discouraged if it isn't even acknowledged as a goal by those who 
report about our effort. I'm not even suggesting that it ought to be 
reported because I would rather it happened by apparent accident as a 
by-product of our effort, but it is critical to our success because 
we can only be successful if we improve accuracy or fidelity in 
communications. And if we just preach that people ought to tell the 
truth, we will fail as surely as if we had never tried in the first 
place.

However, if we can face our own embarassments in public and show how 
it actually improves understanding, as it will and does, then we can 
achieve this by example. What a strange message?

Go out and have some fun. Soak it in. Store it up. Get refreshed.

Ciao,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request