[topicmaps-comment] new discussion on situated context

[Paul Stephen Prueitt <bcngroup@erols.com>]

I look forward to a more detailed discussion regarding David's post on

"how *situated contexts* can be specified by the computer and used
to provide a context (or "scope"-like) for subjectindicators and other
representations of the characterizations of topics.";  as David put the
issue.


I prefer to have this discussion at the KMCI, in order to reflect the
Knowledge Management perspective.  However, I realize that the discussion
might be of interest to many of the workers in the topic map community
itself.  So perhaps we can cross post for a day and then decide on where to
have the discuss.

I cc also the private forum Einstein Institute because several of the
scholars in that institute are assisting in the preparation of a session on
"Ecological Knowledge Management" at the March Knowledge Technologies 2001
conference

http://www.knowledgetechnologies.net

to be held in Seattle.  The one hour and a half session will have a virtual
component that allows 20 - 30 individuals from around the world the
opportunity to try out a virtual classroom technology, developed by HP, as
part of a face to face professional conference.


Here is my specific challenge to David.

From a theoretical and experimental foundation one can make the distinction
between the computer -addressable-world and the non-computer-addressable
world.  Specifically the computer is a simple, but perhaps highly
complicated, machine that does not have a stratification property that all
natural systems have.  In this sense the computer, as a machine, is an
artificial system (Herbert Simon talks about this in his new book).

Natural systems such as living systems have a dependency on being
**situated**, where by **situated** I define to mean specifically existing
in reality in a moment of time.  Conscious experience is thus **situated**,
as is the full reality of a biological process as it exist in reality within
a period of time.

The stratification of physical reality may be by organization scales. One
example is the quantum mechanical scale - and metabological processes.
Other examples include the scale of process one might conjecture to hold the
phase coherence of lower levels of physical processes in support of
awareness (I owe Karl Pribram for my understanding of this.)

Now the new theory called stratified complexity is attempting to displace
the work from the Santa Fe Institute called Complex Adaptive Systems, so the
theory is not "reified" in any sense yet.  But if one considers the notion
of a computer by itself providing situated context, then we have a problem
between this notion and the notion of situatedness as defined in a
stratified theory.

Now, I should say that stratified theory often has to put up with specific
cases of contradiction.  Up becomes down and down becomes up often, for
example.  But we see this also with quantum logics.  One can talk about
Godel's theorem and even Cantor's notions.

I also should say that the tri-level architecture was developed in order to
create computational paths to computational emergence, within what is called
the Process Compartment Hypothesis (Prueitt, 1995).  This computational
emergence might be coupled with a type of control theory to allow an
stratified entity (a human being who is aware) to make small adjustment so
that a situated context occurs in the "artificial world" , and this
artificial situated context reflects well the direct perception of the
human.

see for details:

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/kmbook/Chapter1.htm

So I continue to be interested in David Dodd's work and look forward to the
face to face meetings in March.