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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 7 January 2004, vol. 19:17
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
7 January 2004 Stanford Vol. 19, No. 17
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Cordura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 7 JANUARY 2004 TO 16 JANUARY 2004
WEDNESDAY, 7 JANUARY 2004
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
Mark D'Esposito
University of California, Berkeley
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"The AMD Opteron Microcomputer
A Compatible Bridge Between 32- and 64-bit Computing"
Kevin McGrath
AMD
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 8 JANUARY 2004
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
Reuters lounge, Cordura Hall
Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director, Creative Commons
http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/reuters/cgi-bin/calendar/index.cgi
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Information Dynamics in the Networked World"
Bernardo Huberman
Hewlett Packard Laboratories,
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 9 JANUARY 2004
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
"Web Bloopers: Avoiding Common Design Mistakes"
Jeff Johnson
UI Wizards
http://www.uiwizards.com/
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
"Language as a System of Intentional Inexistents'"
Georges Rey
University of Maryland, visiting Stanford in Winter Quarter
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
4:15pm CS545: Database Seminar
Gates B12
"Enterprise Information Integration - XML to the Rescue!"
Mike Carey
BEA Systems
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/
Abstract below
7:00pm Long Now Foundation Talk
Fort Mason Conference Center, San Francisco
"There's Plenty of Room at the Top --
Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing"
George Dyson
http://www.longnow.org/
Abstract below
MONDAY, 12 JANUARY 2004
5:15pm Archaeology Research Workshop
Bldg. 60:61H
"The Sapient Paradox: cognitive archaeology from institutional
facts to material realities"
Colin Renfrew
Cambridge University
http://archaeology.stanford.edu/workshop.html
TUESDAY, 13 JANUARY 2004
12 noon Linguistics Department Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"How rhoticity became /r/-sandhi"
Jennifer Hay
University of Canterbury
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
(note unusual date and time)
Abstract below
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:380F (math corner)
"Monodic temporal resolution"
Boris Konev
Steklov Institute of Mathematics at St.Petersburg and
The University of Liverpool
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
4:15pm EE392: Sensor Networks Seminar
TCSEQ 103
"Wireless Integrated MicroSystems (WIMS):
Coming Revolution in the Gathering of Information"
Kensal Wise
University of Michigan
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee392s/
4:15pm SNRC Industry Seminar
Gates B03
"Pervasive Indeterminate Measurement Systems"
Jay Warrior
Agilent
http://snrc.stanford.edu/events/industry-seminar/
Abstract below
7:00pm Emerging Technology Group
Cubberley Community Center, H-1, 4000 Middlefield, Palo Alto
"The Always-On Internet Changes Hyperlinking"
Scott Rafer
Feedster
http://www.sdforum.org/
(there is a fee for non-SDForum members, see web page)
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 14 JANUARY 2004
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"BiReality: Mutually-Immersive Mobile Telepresence"
Norm Jouppi
HP Labs
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 15 JANUARY 2004
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Packard 202
Title to be announced
Tim Roughgarden
UC Berkeley
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
Reuters lounge, Cordura Hall
Douglas Kalish
Consultant and Educator, Palo Alto
http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/reuters/cgi-bin/calendar/index.cgi
3:30pm Carlos McClatchy Memorial Colloquium
Learning Theater, Wallenberg Hall (Bldg. 160)
"Smart Mobs; The Virtual Community; & Tools for Thought"
Howard Rheingold
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/communication/
Abstract below
4:00pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
"Methods for the online measurement of emotion experience
and 'affective dynamics'"
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Cognitive Issues in the Design of Interactive Workspaces"
Terry Winograd
Computer Science Department
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
FRIDAY, 16 JANUARY 2004
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
"The Open Mind Initiative: Large-scale knowledge acquisition
from non-experts via the web"
David Stork
Ricoh and Open Mind Initiative.
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
4:15pm CS545: Database Seminar
Gates B12
Title to be announced
Johannes Gehrke
Cornell University
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/johannes/
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/
SATURDAY, 17 JANUARY 2004
all day Symposium in honor of Solomon Feferman
Cordura 100
http://www.stanford.edu/~sommer/Feferman04.html
SUNDAY, 18 JANUARY 2004
all day Symposium in honor of Solomon Feferman
Cordura 100
http://www.stanford.edu/~sommer/Feferman04.html
____________
Stanford Blood Center status: Critical Shortage of O+ and O-. Shortage
of B-. For an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call
650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time.
____________
ANNOUNCEMENT
The Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford University is
accepting applications for 2004-05 (September-June). The application
deadline is March 1, 2004. Twelve Fellowships will be awarded on May
17, 2004.
The Program: Digital Vision Fellows design and build ICT-based
solutions for the developing world. DV Fellows draw on the resources
of Stanford University and Silicon Valley to create a sustainable
technology project that serves a humanitarian purpose in the
developing world. DV Fellows research the needs and requirements of
their project, identify the best technology implementation choices,
create proof-of-concept prototypes, and develop sustainable business
models. Financial support is available for prototype development. DV
Fellows have "Visiting Scholar" privileges at Stanford, including the
ability to audit academic courses. Fellows also participate in a
structured Digital Vision Program with weekly seminars and workshops.
DV Fellows collaborate with Stanford faculty, students, and with each
other. Additionally, the program facilitates connections between DV
Fellows and Silicon Valley leaders from corporations, venture finance
and philanthropy.
WHO SHOULD APPLY
First and foremost, Digital Vision Fellows are technologists with a
hefty dose of social entrepreneurship. Successful candidates are
professionals who wish to apply their skills to a humanitarian
project, and program managers who are engaged in ICT projects in the
developing world. For additional information please click on the
"Become a Fellow" link on our Website at
< http://reuters.stanford.edu/ >.
Please forward this message to others whom you believe may be
interested in applying.
Stuart Gannes, Director
Digital Vision Fellowship
Stanford University
____________
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT
EE392: Sensor Networks Seminar
Winter Quarter, 2003-2004
Tuesdays, 4:15-5:30
TCSEQ 103
This series is open to all interested parties. Student may elect EE
392S via Axess for 1 credit. For a detailed list of speakers and
topics, please visit the EE392S website.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee392s/
Topic to be addressed in this series include:
Silicon-based sensors, local computation, and the emerging technology
of low power, ad hoc radio networks as enablers of networked sensing
systems.
Integration issues, information theory, and networking concerns
suggesting capabilities for smart sensing network nodes and system
trade-offs.
Human factors and practical considerations for widespread, consumer
adoption of smart sensing networks. Future applications and barriers
to adoption.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 8 January 2004, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
"Information Dynamics in the Networked World"
Bernardo Huberman
Senior HP Fellow, Hewlett Packard Laboratories
http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/people/huberman/
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl
The dynamics of information within social organizations is relevant to
innovation, productivity, and the sorting out of useful ideas from the
general chatter of a community. How information spreads and is
aggregated determines the speed with which individuals and
organizations can act and plan their future activities. This talk will
describe new mechanisms for automatically identifying communities of
practice within organizations and for elucidating the spread of
information within those communities. In addition, I'll present new
results that show the efficacy of a new mechanism involving groups of
people at making predictions in the real world.
About the Speaker: Bernardo Huberman is a Senior HP Fellow and
Director of the Information Dynamics at Hewlett Packard
Laboratories. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of
Pennsylvania, and is currently a Consulting Professor in the
Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 9 January 2004, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Web Bloopers: Avoiding Common Design Mistakes"
Jeff Johnson
UI Wizards
http://www.uiwizards.com/
This talk is based on the presenter's new book: Web Bloopers: 60
Common Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (Morgan
Kaufmann). The book explains how to avoid common Web design errors,
illustrated with examples from actual websites. The talk asserts that
the Web is not commercial product quality, largely due to poor
usability. It describes a few bloopers in each category, and explains
how to avoid them. The talk is illustrated with many examples of
bloopers in commercially-available websites.
About the Speaker: Jeff Johnson is President and Principal Consultant
at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability consulting firm. He has
worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1978. After
earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities, he
worked as a user-interface designer and implementer, engineer manager,
usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West,
Hewlett-Packard Labs, and Sun Microsystems. He has published numerous
articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in Human-Computer
Interaction and the impact of technology on society. He frequently
gives talks and tutorials at conferences and companies on usability
and user-interface design. He is the author of GUI Bloopers: Don'ts
and Dos for Software Developers and Web Designers (2000), and Web
Bloopers: 60 Common Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (2003)..
____________
CS545: DATABASE SEMINAR
on Friday, 9 January 2004, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Gates B12
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/
"Enterprise Information Integration - XML to the Rescue!"
Mike Carey
BEA Systems
The database field has been struggling with the data integration
problem since the early 1980's. We've named and renamed the problem -
heterogeneous distributed databases, multi-databases, federated
databases, mediator systems, and now enterprise information
integration systems - but we haven't solved the problem. Along the
way, we've tried data model after data model - functional, relational,
object-oriented, logical, semi-structured, you name it, we've tried it
- and query language after query language to go with them - but we
still haven't solved the problem. A number of startups have died
trying, and no major software vendor has managed to hit a home run in
this area. What's going on? Is the problem too hard? Should we just
declare it impossible and give up? In this talk, I'll explain why I
believe now would be exactly the wrong time to give up. After a brief
look at history, I'll make the case that we are finally on the verge
of finding a real solution to this problem. I'll define the enterprise
information integration problem as I see it and then explain how the
XML and Web Services revolutions that are in progress - based on SOAP,
WSDL, XML Schema, XQuery, and so on - relate to the problem and its
solution. I'll describe the path that we are on at BEA to deliver a
solution, and finally I'll leave the audience with my thoughts on open
problems where the database field, especially the "modeling crowd",
can contribute.
About the Speaker: Michael Carey received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley
in 1983. From 1983-1995 he was on the Computer Sciences Department
faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he conducted
research on a variety of database system architecture and performance
issues. In 1995, Mike moved to IBM Research, where he worked on data
integration, DB2 UDB, and XML query technologies. In 2001-2002, he led
an e-commerce infrastructure team at Propel, a small internet
startup. Mike joined BEA Systems in late 2001, and since then he has
been working on the XML data handling and XQuery related aspects of
BEA's WebLogic Integration 8.1 and Liquid Data for WebLogic
products. He is a Fellow of the ACM and a member of the National
Academy of Engineering.
____________
LONG NOW FOUNDATION TALK
on Friday, 9 January 2004, 7:00pm
Fort Mason Conference Center, San Francisco
http://www.longnow.org/
"There's Plenty of Room at the Top --
Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing"
George Dyson
(The following is written by Kevin Kelly and forwarded from the CS
colloquium list)
You are invited to the third lecture in the Long Now series of
Seminars About Long-term Thinking, to take place this Friday, Jan 9th,
at Fort Mason, San Francisco. These seminars are intended to foster
multi-century perspectives, in contrast to "next-quarter" thinking
common to our times. This talk is open to the public, so feel free to
forward or post this notice.
Our speaker is George Dyson, a historian of technology whose studies
of landmark innovations ranging from 5,000-year-old kayaks to
50-year-old computing machines have led him to wonder what's next in
computers. The title of his talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Top --
Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing" refers to Richard
Feynman's seminal lecture in 1959 called "There's Plenty of Room at
the Bottom," which led the way into nanotechnology. Dyson's talk
promises to reinterpret computing as part of the long expansion of
life on earth. One of the claims Dyson will defend is this potent
insight: "As technology gets smaller, life gets bigger."
Dyson, author of DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES and PROJECT ORION, is the
rare historian willing to examine the far future. Much in the mode of
historian/futurist H.G. Wells, George Dyson employs an deep knowledge
of the history of computing in order to flip our view into where
computing can go in the future. And by future, he, like Long Now,
means hundreds of years.
I have never had a dull conversation with George Dyson, and I'm
confident the collective conversation built on his talk this Friday
will be stimulating and unconventional. I hope you can join us. The
lecture is free, although we gladly accept $10 donations at the door.
Since there is limited seating and no tickets we recommend early
arrival. The doors open at 7 pm; Dyson begins at 8.
Fort Mason's Conference Center is the location of the talk. Look for
the searchlight outside the door. It's the first room in the first
building as you drive into Fort Mason. There is a map at:
http://www.fortmason.org/directions/index.html (On this map the
Conference Center is in the upper-rightmost building, pale blue,
called "Building A.")
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 12 noon
Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
"How rhoticity became /r/-sandhi"
Jennifer Hay
University of Canterbury
Modern New Zealand English is non-rhotic. However the first
generation of New Zealand English speakers did display some rhoticity.
The availability of recorded interviews with early New Zealanders,
then, makes possible a systematic study of the relationship between
the decline of rhoticity and the emergence of linking and intrusive
/r/ in New Zealand English (NZE). This analysis of 67 speakers of
early NZE provides, for the first time, a clear picture of the
diachronic relationship between the decline of rhoticity and the
emergence of /r/-sandhi in a dialect of English. This analysis is
supplemented with an analysis of intrusive /r/ in modern New Zealand
English -- an elicitation task with 16 participants.
Taken together, the two data-sets provide strong evidence that:
(1) /r/-sandhi did not come about as a sudden reanalysis or
"rule-inversion" (contra the most common account in the literature), but
rather, it emerged steadily and gradually with the loss of
rhoticity.
(2) The contemporary /r/-sandhi system is not governed by a set of
categorical phonological rules (contra most phonological
literature on this topic), but rather is a variable, probabilistic
phenomenon, which is conditioned by a range of linguistic and
social factors.
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:380F
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
"Monodic temporal resolution"
Boris Konev
Steklov Institute of Mathematics at St.Petersburg and
The University of Liverpool
Until recently, First-Order Temporal Logic (FOTL) has been only
partially understood. While it is well known that the full logic has
no finite axiomatisation, a more detailed analysis of fragments of the
logic was not previously available. However, a breakthrough by
Hodkinson et al., identifying a finitely axiomatisable fragment,
termed the monodic fragment, has led to improved understanding of
FOTL. Yet, in order to utilize these theoretical advances, it is
important to have appropriate proof techniques for this monodic
fragment.
In this talk, we modify and extend the clausal temporal resolution
technique, originally developed for propositional temporal logics, to
enable its use in such monodic fragments. We develop a specific normal
form for monodic formulae in FOTL, and provide a complete resolution
calculus for formulae in this form. Not only is this clausal
resolution technique useful as a practical proof technique for certain
monodic classes, but the use of this approach provides us with
increased understanding of the monodic fragment. In particular, we
here show how several features of monodic FOTL can be established as
corollaries of the completeness result for the clausal temporal
resolution method. These include definitions of new decidable monodic
classes, simplification of existing monodic classes by reductions, and
completeness of clausal temporal resolution in the case of monodic
logics with expanding domains, a case with much significance in both
theory and practice.
____________
SNRC INDUSTRY SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 4:15pm
Gates B03
http://snrc.stanford.edu/events/industry-seminar/
"Pervasive Indeterminate Measurement Systems"
Jay Warrior
Agilent
In recent years there has been considerable interest in
non-traditional measurement systems. In this presentation we discuss
an architecture based on the use of consumer devices as measurement
and control platforms, and scatter-nets. Together these two rather
different measurement platforms form a distributed measurement
architecture well suited to problems involving large spatial extent,
that require a high degree of operational flexibility, and which are
amenable to statistical sampling. We shall outline the characteristics
of this architecture and the new research problems that it raises.
About the Speaker: Jay Warrior has over 15 years of experience
creating new networking technology based business opportunities for
Honeywell, Fisher Rosemount and HP/Agilent. He served on the advisory
board for Coactive Networks and is a liaison to the wireless strategy
team at Agilent Ventures. He has led multiple networking standards
setting efforts and currently chairs the IEEE 1451.1 standard. At HP
and Agilent labs, he led the team that developed "top product of the
year" winning Internet based distributed system technology that was
incorporated into two cellular infrastructure monitoring product
lines. At Fisher Rosemount, he invented and led the team developing
HART communications technology which has been adopted by over 120
other companies as the current de-facto networking standard in process
automation.
____________
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY GROUP
on Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 7:00pm (talk at 7:20pm)
Cubberley Community Center, H-1, 4000 Middlefield, Palo Alto
http://www.sdforum.org/
(there is a fee for non-SDForum members, see web page)
"The Always-On Internet Changes Hyperlinking"
Scott Rafer
CEO, Feedster
Since the Internet bubble burst in 2000, always-on consumer broadband
hit critical mass and the mobile Internet got going in earnest. As
online usage habits in South Korea have repeatedly shown,
pervasiveness of connectivity matters and matters non- linearly. The
US, while well behind the last-mile broadband deployment curve, has
hit sufficient critical mass to foster significant new innovation in
Internet applications: social network software, the social networks
themselves, and most significantly, weblogging. All these
applications, plus ones we will see within a couple years but can not
yet predict, are predicated on hyperlink schemes that are persistent,
metadata rich, and characterize geometrically denser link meshes than
anything assembled before 2002. These new Internet applications are
far more valuable (Reed.com), both in terms of economics and utility,
than the prior generation of Internet applications which were
architected when connectivity was primarily intermittent. Beyond the
applications themselves, a whole new generation of utilities,
including transaction engines, directories, and search engines, are
necessary to rationalize the web for users.
About the Speaker: Scott Rafer is president and CEO of Feedster, and
chairman of WiFinder. Feedster is the leading weblog search engine,
which is quickly growing to include news, e-commerce, and social
networks. WiFinder is the world's most comprehensive directory of
Wi-Fi Public Access, with over 11,000 public access listings in over
40 countries. WiFinder enables location owners, WISPs, and regular
people to provide, find and use Wi-Fi Public Access -- offering
information services, Wi-Fi location search engines, and carrier
marketing services to help build Wi-Fi businesses. WiFinder was
recently chosen as one of the three Google AdSense Case Studies</a>
being featured in Google's magazine, direct mail and online
advertising.
Before Feedster and WiFinder, Rafer co-founded Fresher Information, a
provider of immediate content indexing technology; and FotoNation, a
creator of connected photography solutions. Prior to his adventures
in Silicon Valley, Rafer led the Internet products group at Kodak
Hollywood, and worked in investment banking at Needham & Company.
Rafer is a graduate of the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and
Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, a double degree program
jointly offered by the Wharton School of Business and the Moore School
of Engineering.
Scott's almost daily thoughts can be found at his blog,
http://www.rafer.net/ , and his Open Spectrum reform efforts at
FCCster ( http://www.fccster.com/ ). He resides in San Francisco, CA,
having recently returned from three years in the Netherlands.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 14 January 2004, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
"BiReality: Mutually Immersive Mobile Telepresence"
Norm Jouppi
Hewlett-Packard
BiReality uses a teleoperated robotic surrogate to visit remote
locations as a substitute for physical travel. Our goal is to create
to the greatest extent practical, both for the user and the people at
the remote location, the sensory experience relevant for business
interactions of the user actually being in the remote location. Our
second-generation system provides a 360-degree surround immersive
audio and visual experience for both the user and remote participants,
and streams eight 720x480 MPEG-2 videos totaling almost 20Mb/s over
802.11a wireless networking. The system preserves gaze and eye
contact, presents local and remote participants to each other at life
size, and preserves the head height of the user at the remote
location. This talk focuses on some of the system challenges inherent
in the project, and includes a short video demonstration.
About the speaker: Norman P. Jouppi is currently a Fellow at HP Labs
in Palo Alto, California. He received his PhD in Electrical
Engineering from Stanford University and joined Digital Equipment
Corporation's Western Research Lab in 1984. From 1984 through 1996 he
was also a consulting assistant/associate professor in the department
of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was the principal
architect of four microprocessors, and also contributed to the design
of several graphics accelerators. His current research interests
include audio, video, and physical telepresence as well as computer
systems architecture.
____________
CARLOS MCCLATCHY MEMORIAL COLLOQUIUM
on Thursday, 15 January 2004, 3:30pm
Learning Theater, Wallenberg Hall (Bldg. 160)
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/communication/
"Smart Mobs; The Virtual Community; & Tools for Thought"
Howard Rheingold
Editor of:
The Whole Earth Review; The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; & HotWired
Founder of: Electric Minds & Brainstorms
"SMART MOBS:
Mobile Communication, Pervasive Computing, & Collective Action"
Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies
amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob
technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used
by some of its earliest adopters to support democracy and by others to
coordinate terrorist attacks.
The technologies that make smart mobs possible are mobile
communication devices and pervasive computing - inexpensive
microprocessors embedded in everyday objects and
environments. Already, governments have fallen, youth subcultures have
blossomed from Asia to Scandinavia, new industries have been born and
older industries have launched furious counterattacks.
Street demonstrators in the 1999 anti-WTO protests used dynamically
updated websites, cell-phones, and "swarming" tactics in the "battle
of Seattle." A million Filipinos toppled President Estrada through
public demonstrations organized through salvos of text messages.
The pieces of the puzzle are all around us now, but haven't joined
together yet. The radio chips designed to replace barcodes on
manufactured objects are part of it. Wireless Internet nodes in cafes,
hotels, and neighborhoods are part of it. Millions of people who lend
their computers to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence are
part of it. The way buyers and sellers rate each other on Internet
auction site eBay is part of it. Research by biologists, sociologists,
and economists into the nature of cooperation offer explanatory
frameworks.
The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before
possible because they carry devices that possess both communication
and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with
other information devices in the environment as well as with other
people's telephones. Dirt-cheap microprocessors embedded in everything
from box tops to shoes are beginning to permeate furniture, buildings,
neighborhoods, products with invisible intercommunicating smartifacts.
When they connect the tangible objects and places of our daily lives
with the Internet, handheld communication media could mutate into
wearable remote control devices for the physical world.
Media cartels and government agencies are seeking to reimpose the
regime of the broadcast era in which the customers of technology will
be deprived of the power to create and left only with the power to
consume. That power struggle is what the battles over file-sharing,
copy-protection, regulation of the radio spectrum are about. Are the
citizens of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website
creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they
be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the
technology and business models of entrenched interests?
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 16 January 2004, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"The Open Mind Initiative:
Large-scale knowledge acquisition from non-experts via the web"
David Stork
Ricoh Innovations and the Open Mind Initiative
The Open Mind Initiative is a web-based collaborative framework for
collecting large knowledge bases from non-expert contributors. Such
knowledge bases are vital for a wide range of 'intelligent' software
such as speech and handwriting recognizers, commonsense reasoners, and
natural language understanding systems. This talk begins by examining
several important trends that underly Open Mind:
* the rise in open source software
* the expansion of opportunities for less-skilled users to
contribute knowledge
* the increase in scientific collaboration over the internet
* the growing need for large sets of 'informal' data from
non-experts
Next we contrast the Open Mind approach with traditional data mining,
and then describe ongoing projects collecting common sense, natural
language and handwriting recognition knowledge bases. Our largest
project, Open Mind common sense, has collected over a million simple
assertions from over tens of thousands of non-expert contributors.
Important considerations are speeding the collection of data (by
interactive learning techniques and motivating contributors) and
ensuring data quality (by identifying and filtering unreliable or even
'hostile' contributions). We discuss the importance of the
human-machine interface as well as the role of game interfaces.
The talk concludes with a vision of future directions and
opportunities.
About the Speaker: David G. Stork is Chief Scientist of Ricoh
Innovations as well as Consulting Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Visiting Lecturer in Art and Art History at Stanford
University. His primary interests lie in pattern recognition, machine
learning, neural networks and novel uses of the internet; he is the
creator and leader of the Open Mind Initiative. He sits on the
editorial boards of four international journals and his five books
include HAL's Legacy: 2001's computer as dream and reality (MIT Press)
for general audiences and the second edition of Pattern Classification
with R. Duda and P. Hart (Wiley).
____________
END MATERIAL
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