RE: [humanmarkup-comment] [humanmarkup TC] Assorted meeting notes-from Rob

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

The example for signal was something 
like breaking an electrical field to make a Morse code.  This 
gets tendentious quickly.  For example, there is a person 
on the other side of the cube drumming their fingers on the 
desk.  Is this signal?  In the sense that it is "drawing 
attention" yes; in the sense that it conveys information, 
explicitly, no.  One can interpret it, eg, significator of 
boredom or nervousness, but unless it is organized into 
some kind of regular beat with duration, one might not interpret 
it as Morse.   Signal requires more properties to be 
interpretable, that is, to make an optimum choice, we 
need more than just signal.  It is a dark and stormy night and 
we are driving across the Ponchatrain at high speed. 
Up ahead, we see someone waving excitedly.  We have 
to choose:

1.  Stop.  There is an emergency.
2.  Drive on.  This is a nut or a robber.

Only as we are plummeting into the swamp do we 
understand they were signaling an emergency based 
on the bridge being down.  It is a bit late.  
Pattern recognition and the optimum choice are 
not simple problems.

A piece of jewelry is initially exactly just an interruption. 
It attracts attention.  It may have symbols on it and these 
may be readily interpretable.  Otherwise, it is decoration. 

Training is everything.  Knowing the difference between a sign 
and a signal is a training issue (apriori experience).  A 
sign should be obvious to someone trained to recognize it. 
The only really compelling property of a signal is that 
it "attracts attention" and can be made to carry information, 
but in and of itself, is just a media-type noise when 
first noticed that has to be correlated to be interpreted.

Yes, an artifact can be a compressed means, but I would 
argue it is a sign or probably a symbol if it contains a 
lot of information.  Without an interpretant context, one 
can't say.  For example, the notion that an address is 
symbolic is interesting only if within a culture or 
learning set, an address has acquired a meaning, 
eg, prestige address, slum, business area, gangland, 
whatever.  It is not an artifact per se unless we 
dumb down artifact to mean "thing".   Otherwise, 
the first primary association of address is to 
a geoLocation.  Other relationships depend on the 
system. 

I'm not sure we can make that schema handle the notion 
of "broadcasting value".   I can see an implementation 
of an object-oriented communication that does that.

We may find that the abstractions of signal, sign and 
symbol are inappropriate and turn to simply, messages, 
but then again, we may find that messages are aggregates 
of the above.

Nothing is locked in as far as I am concerned.  I tossed 
that schema out as a strawman originally to get people 
to discuss the concepts in terms of their requirements. 
So far so good.   But I will be very surprised if what 
gets out as a good final draft is that one.   It is based 
on research into the abstractions of semiotics and some 
familiarity with police records management systems that 
are used for administrative reporting, not simulation systems 
based on communications among objects via messages.  It is 
exactly this issue of tool appropriateness, that the schema 
may be used for lots of different applications, that will 
bedevil us.

But that's the fun too.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Nixon [mailto:rnixon@qdyn.com]

Thanks Len,

Regarding:   3.  An artifact may be a sign or a symbol.  It is
not a signal except insofar as it is an interruption
in an observer's view....

I would argue that MANY, if not most Artifacts can be considered to be a
"compressed" signal form, especially if it is within the prior experience of
the perceiver.   I don't think that an "interruption" in an observer's view
actually will cover it.  In fact, I'm not sure I know what "an interruption
in an observer's view" really means...   The pattern of photons reflected off
the object, the tactile feel of the object, the smell of an object, even a
written or audio description of the object all act as signals which are then
decoded and processed via the pattern recognition structures of the brain (
or A.I. algorithms).  They are not just static tags.   Nothing is static.

Perhaps I'm being too literal here.  Or I am missing the point.   But I would
also point out that there are developers who have already expanded on the
concept of an Artifact as noun "only"...   and many are going that direction
in the VR realm (which we must be able to support).  i.e. The "Artifacts" in
"The Sims" ( i.e. Refrigerator, Paper, Sofa, Shower, etc.  ) do act as
signals to the environment ( specifically the virtual humans ).  These
artifacts "broadcast" their "benefits" to the "Sims" in the environment and
the virtual humans respond.

Again, I am trying to make sure that we don't lock ourselves into an
interpretation of a concept that may actually be evolving.