Category Archives: Actor

STARTING WITH PYTHON3 – The very beginning – part 4

Journal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, July 15, 2019 – May 9, 2020
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email:
gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Change: July 16, 2019 (Some re-arrangement of the content :-))

CONTEXT

This is the next step in the python3 programming project. The overall context is still the python Co-Learning project.

SUBJECT

After a first clearing of the environment for python programming we have started with the structure of the python programming language, and in this section will deal with the object type string(s).

Remark: the following information about strings you can get directly from the python manuals, which you can find associated with the entry for python 3.7.3 if you press the Windows-Button, look to the list of Apps (= programs), and identify the entry for python 3.7.3. If you open the python entry by clicking you see the sub-entry python 3.7.3 Manuals. If you click on this sub-entry the python documentation will open. In this documentation you can find nearly everything you will need. For Beginners you even find a nice tutorial.

TOPIC: VALUES (OBJECTS) AS STRINGS

PROBLEM(s)

(1) When I see a single word (a string of symbols) I do not know which type this is in python. (2) If I have a statement with many words I would like to get from this a partition into all the single words for further processing.

VISION OF A SOLUTION

There is a simple software actor which can receive as input either single words or multiple words and which can respond by giving either the type of the received word or the list of the received multiple words.

ACTOR STORY (AS)

We assume a human user as executing actor (eA) and a piece of running software as an assisting actor (aA). For these both we assume the following sequence of states:

  1. The user will start the program by calling python and the name of the program.
  2. The program offers the user two options: single word or multiple words.
  3. The user has to select one of these options.
  4. After the selection the user can enter accordingly either one  or multiple words.
  5. The program will respond either with the recognized type in python or with a list of words.
  6. Finally asks the program the user whether he/she will continue or stop.
  7. Depending from the answer of the user the program will continue or stop.

IMPLEMENTATION

Here you can download the sourcecode: stringDemo1

# File stringDemo1.py
# Author: G.Doeben-Henisch
# First date: July 15, 2019

##################
# Function definition sword()

def sword(w1):
w=str(w1)
if w.islower():
print(‘Is lower\n’)
elif w.isalpha() :
print(‘Is alpha\n’)
elif w.isdecimal():
print(‘Is decimal\n’)
elif w.isascii():
print(‘Is ascii\n’)
else : print(‘Is not lower, alpha, decimal, ascii\n’)

##########################
# Main Programm

###############
# Start main loop

loop=’Y’
while loop==’Y’:

###################
# Ask for Options

opt=input(‘Single word =1 or multiple words =2\n’)

if opt==’1′:
w1=input(‘Input a single word\n’)
sword(w1) # Call for new function defined above

elif opt==’2′:
w1=input(‘Input multiple words\n’)
w2=w1.split() # Call for built-in method of class str
print(w2)

loop=input(‘To stop enter N or Y otherwise\n’) # Check whether loop shall be repeated

DEMO

Here it is assumed that the code of the python program is stored in the folder ‘code’ in my home director.

I am starting the windows power shell (PS) by clicking on the icon. Then I enter the command ‘cd code’ to enter the folder code. Then I call the python interpreter together with the demo programm ‘stringDemo1.py’:

PS C:\Users\gerd_2\code> python stringDemo1.py
Single word =1 or multiple words =2

Then I select first option ‘Single word’ with entering 1:

1
Input a single word
Abrakadabra
Is alpha

To stop enter N

After entering 1 the program asks me to enter a single word.

I am entering the fantasy word ‘Abrakadabra’.

Then the program responds with the classification ‘Is alpha’, what is correct. If I want to stop I have to enter ‘N’ otherwise it contiues.

I want o try another word, therefore I am entering ‘Y’:

Y
Single word =1 or multiple words =2

I select again ‘1’ and the new menue appears:

1
Input a single word
29282726
Is decimal

To stop enter N

I entered a sequence of digits which has been classified as ‘decimal’.

I want to contiue with ‘Y’ and entering ‘2’:

Y
Single word =1 or multiple words =2
2
Input multiple words
Hans kommt meistens zu spät
[‘Hans’, ‘kommt’, ‘meistens’, ‘zu’, ‘spät’]
To stop enter N

I have entered a German sentence with 5 words. The response of the system is to identify every single word and generate a list of the individual words.

Thus, so far, the test works fine.

COMMENTS TO THE SOURCE CODE

Before the main program a new function ‘sword()’ has been defined:

def sword(w1):

The python keyword ‘def‘ indicates that here the definition of a function  takes place, ‘sword‘ is the name of this new function, and ‘w1‘ is the input argument for this function. ‘w1’ as such is the name of a variable pointing to some memory place and the value of this variable at this place will depend from the context.

w=str(w1)

The input variable w1 is taken by the operator str and str translates the input value into a python object of type ‘string’. Thus the further operations with the object string can assume that it is a string and therefore one can apply alle the operations to the object which can be applied to strings.

if w.islower():

One of these string-specific operations is islower(). Attached to the string object ‘w’ by a dot-operator ‘.’ the operation ‘islower() will check, whether the string object ‘w’ contains lower case symbols. If yes then the following ‘print()’ operation will send this message to the output, otherwise the program continues with the next ‘elif‘ statement.

The ‘if‘ (and following the if the ‘elif‘) keyword states a condition (whether ‘w’ is of type ‘lower case symbols’). The statement closes with the ‘:’ sign. This statement can be ‘true’ or not. If it is true then the part after the ‘:’ sign will be executed (the ‘print()’ action), if false then the next condition ‘elif … :’ will be checked.

If no condition would be true then the ‘else: …’ statement would be executed.

The main program is organized as a loop which can iterate as long as the user does not stop it. This entails that the user can enter as many words or multi-words as he/ she wants.

loop=’Y’
while loop==’Y’:

In the first line the variable ‘loop’ receives as a value the string ‘Y’ (short for ‘yes’). In the next line starts the loop with the python key-word ‘while’ forming a condition statement ‘while … :’. This is similar to the condition statements above with ‘if …. :’ and ‘elif … :’.

The condition depends on the expression ‘loop == ‘Y” which means that  as long as the variable loop is logically equal == to the value ‘Y’ the loop condition  is ‘true’ and the part after the ‘:’ sign will be executed. Thus if one wants to break this loop one has to change the value of the variable ‘loop’ before the while-statement ‘while … :’ will be checked again. This check is done in the last line of the while-execution part with the input command:

loop=input(‘To stop enter N\n’)

Before the while-condition will be checked again there is this input() operator asking the user to enter a ‘N’ if he/ she wantds to stop. If the user  enters a  ‘N’  in the input line the result of his input will be stored in the variable called ‘loop’ and therefore the variable will have the value ‘==’N” which is different from ‘==’Y”. But what would happen if the user enters something different from ‘N’ and ‘Y’, because ‘Y’ is expected for repetition?

Because the user does not know that he/she has to enter ‘Y’ to continue the program will highly probably stop even if the user does not want to stop. To avoid this unwanted case one should change the code for the while-condition as follows:

while loop!=’N’:

This states that the loop will be true as long as the value of the loop variable is different != from the value ‘N’ which will explicitly asked from the user at the end of the loop.

The main part of the while-loop distinguishes two cases: single word or multiple words. This is realized by a new input() operation:

opt=input(‘Single word =1 or multiple words =2\n’)

The user can enter a ‘1’ or a ‘2’, which will be stored in the variable ‘opt’. Then a construction with an if or an elif will test which one of these both happens. Depending from the option 1 or 2 ther program asks the user again with an input() operation for the specific input (one word or multiple words).

sword(w1)

In the case of the one word input in the variable ‘w1’ w1 contains as value a string input which will be delivered as input argument to the new function ‘sword()’ (explanation see above). In case of input 2 the

w2=w1.split()

‘split()’ operation will be applied to the object ‘w1’ by the dot operator ‘.’. This operation will take every word separated by a ‘blank’ and generates a list ‘[ … ]’ with the individual words as elements.

A next possible continuation you can find HERE.

 

PHILOSOPHY LAB

eJournal: uffmm.org

ISSN 2567-6458, July 13,  2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Changes: July 20.2019 (Rewriting the introduction)

CONTEXT

This Philosophy Lab section of the uffmm science blog is the last extension of the uffmm blog, happening July 2019. It has been provoked by the meta reflections about the AAI engineering approach.

SCOPE OF SECTION

This section deals with  the following topics:

  1. How can we talk about science including the scientist (and engineer!) as the main actors? In a certain sense one can say that science is mainly a specific way how to communicate and to verify the communication content. This presupposes that there is something called knowledge located in the heads of the actors.
  2. The presupposed knowledge usually is targeting different scopes encoded in different languages. The language enables or delimits meaning and meaning objects can either enable or  delimit a certain language. As part of the society and as exemplars of the homo sapiens species scientists participate in the main behavior tendencies to assimilate majority behavior and majority meanings. This can reduce the realm of knowledge in many ways. Biological life in general is the opposite to physical entropy by generating auotopoietically during the course of time  more and more complexity. This is due to a built-in creativity and the freedom to select. Thus life is always oscillating between conformity and experiment.
  3. The survival of modern societies depends highly on the ability   to communicate with maximal sharing of experience by exploring fast and extensively possible state spaces with their pros and cons. Knowledge must be round the clock visible to all, computablemodular, constructive, in the format of interactive games with transparent rules. Machines should be re-formatted as primarily helping humans, not otherwise around.
  4. To enable such new open and dynamic knowledge spaces one has to redefine computing machines extending the Turing machine (TM) concept to a  world machine (WM) concept which offers several new services for social groups, whole cities or countries. In the future there is no distinction between man and machine because there is a complete symbiotic unification because  the machines have become an integral part of a personality, the extension of the body in some new way; probably  far beyond the cyborg paradigm.
  5. The basic creativity and freedom of biological life has been further developed in a fundamental all embracing spirituality of life in the universe which is targeting a re-creation of the whole universe by using the universe for the universe.

 

DAAI V4 FRONTPAGE

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 12.May – 18.Jan 2020
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

HISTORY OF THIS PAGE

See end of this page.

CONTEXT

This Theory of Engineering section is part of the uffmm science blog.

HISTORY OF THE (D)AAI-TEXT

See below

ACTUAL VERSION

DISTRIBUTED ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [DAAI]. Version 15.06, From  Dec 13, 2019 until Jan 18, 2020

aaicourse-15-06-07(PDF, Chapter 8 new (but not yet completed))

aaicourse-15-06-05(PDF, Chapter 7 new)

aaicourse-15-06-04(PDF, Chapter 6 modified)

aaicourse-15-06-03(PDF, Chapter 5 modified)

aaicourse-15-06-02(PDF, Chapter 4 modified)

aaicourse-15-06-01(PDF, Chapter 1 modified)

aaicourse-15-06 (PDF, chapters 1-6)

aaicourse-15-05-2 (PDF, chapters 1-6; chapter 6 only as a first stub)

DISTRIBUTED ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [DAAI]. Version 15.05.1, Dec 2, 2019:

aaicourse-15-05-1(PDF, chapters 1-5; minor corrections)

aaicourse-15-05 (PDF, chapters 1-5 of the new version 15.05)

Changes: Extension of title, extension of preface!, extension of chapter 4, new: chapter 5 MAS, extension of bibliography and indices.

HISTORY OF UPDATES

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 17, 2019 – V.7: aaicourse-17june2019-incomplete

Change: June 19, 2019 (Update  to version 8; chapter 5 has been rewritten completely).

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 19, 2019 – V.8: aaicourse-june 19-2019-v8-incomplete

Change: June 19, 2019 (Update to version 8.1; minor corrections in chapter 5)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 19, 2019 – V.8.1: aaicourse-june19-2019-v8.1-incomplete

Change: June 23, 2019 (Update to version 9; adding chapter 6 (Dynamic AS) and chapter 7 (Example of dynamic AS with two actors)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 23, 2019 – V.9: aaicourse-June-23-2019-V9-incomplete

Change: June 25, 2019 (Update to version 9.1; minor corrections in chapters 1+2)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 25, 2019 – V.9.1aaicourse-June25-2019-V9-1-incomplete

Change: June 29, 2019 (Update to version 10; )rewriting of chapter 4 Actor Story on account of changes in the chapters 5-7)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 29, 2019 – V.10: aaicourse-June-29-2019-V10-incomplete

Change: June 30, 2019 (Update to version 11; ) completing  chapter  3 Problem Definition)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 30, 2019 – V.11: aaicourse-June30-2019-V11-incomplete

Change: June 30, 2019 (Update to version 12; ) new chapter 5 for normative actor stories (NAS) Problem Definition)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 30, 2019 – V.12: aaicourse-June30-2019-V12-incomplete

Change: June 30, 2019 (Update to version 13; ) extending chapter 9 with the section about usability testing)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: June 30, 2019 – V.13aaicourse-June30-2019-V13-incomplete

Change: July 8, 2019 (Update to version 13.1 ) some more references to chapter 4; formatting the bibliography alphabetically)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: July 8, 2019 – V.13.1: aaicourse-July8-2019-V13.1-incomplete

Change: July 15, 2019 (Update to version 13.3 ) (In chapter 9 Testing an AS extending the description of Usability Testing with more concrete details to the test procedure)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: July 15, 2019 – V.13.3: aaicourse-13-3

Change: Aug 7, 2019 (Only some minor changes in Chapt. 1 Introduction, pp.15ff, but these changes make clear, that the scope of the AAI analysis can go far beyond the normal analysis. An AAI analysis without explicit actor models (AMs) corresponds to the analysis phase of a systems engineering process (SEP), but an AAI analysis including explicit actor models will cover 50 – 90% of the (logical) design phase too. How much exactly could only be answered if  there would exist an elaborated formal SEP theory with quantifications, but there exists  no such theory. The quantification here is an estimate.)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version: Aug 7, 2019 – V.14:aaicourse-14

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version 15, Nov 9, 2019:

aaicourse-15(PDF, 1st chapter of the new version 15)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version 15.01, Nov 11, 2019:

aaicourse-15-01 (PDF, 1st chapter of the new version 15.01)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version 15.02, Nov 11, 2019:

aaicourse-15-02 (PDF, 1st chapter of the new version 15.02)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version 15.03, Nov 13, 2019:

aaicourse-15-03 (PDF, 1st chapter of the new version 15.03)

ACTOR ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. Version 15.04, Nov 19, 2019:

(update of chapter 3, new created chapter 4)

aaicourse-15-04 (PDF, chapters 1-4 of the new version 15.04)

HISTORY OF CHANGES OF THIS PAGE

Change: May 20, 2019 (Stopping Circulating Acronyms :-))

Change: May 21,  2019 (Adding the Slavery-Empowerment topic)

Change: May 26, 2019 (Improving the general introduction of this first page)

HISTORY OF AAI-TEXT

After a previous post of the new AAI approach I started the first  re-formulation of the general framework of  the AAI theory, which later has been replaced by a more advanced AAI version V2. But even this version became a change candidate and mutated to the   Actor-Cognition Interaction (ACI) paradigm, which still was not the endpoint. Then new arguments grew up to talk rather from the Augmented Collective Intelligence (ACI). Because even this view on the subject can  change again I stopped following the different aspects of the general Actor-Actor Interaction paradigm and decided to keep the general AAI paradigm as the main attractor capable of several more specialized readings.

ACI – TWO DIFFERENT READINGS

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 11.-12.May 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de
Change: May-17, 2019 (Some Corrections, ACI associations)
Change: May-20, 2019 (Reframing ACI with AAI)
CONTEXT

This text is part of the larger text dealing with the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI)  paradigm.

HCI – HMI – AAI ==> ACI ?

Who has followed the discussion in this blog remembers several different phases in the conceptual frameworks used here.

The first paradigm called Human-Computer Interface (HCI) has been only mentioned by historical reasons.  The next phase Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) was the main paradigm in the beginning of my lecturing in 2005. Later, somewhere 2011/2012, I switched to the paradigm Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) because I tried to generalize over  the different participating machines, robots, smart interfaces, humans as well as animals. This worked quite nice and some time I thought that this is now the final formula. But reality is often different compared to  our thinking. Many occasions showed up where the generalization beyond the human actor seemed to hide the real processes which are going on, especially I got the impression that very important factors rooted in the special human actor became invisible although they are playing decisive role in many  processes. Another punch against the AAI view came from application scenarios during the last year when I started to deal with whole cities as actors. At the end  I got the feeling that the more specialized expressions like   Actor-Cognition Interaction (ACI) or  Augmented Collective Intelligence (ACI) can indeed help  to stress certain  special properties  better than the more abstract AAI acronym, but using structures like ACI  within general theories and within complex computing environments it became clear that the more abstract acronym AAI is in the end more versatile and simplifies the general structures. ACI became a special sub-case

HISTORY

To understand this oscillation between AAI and  ACI one has to look back into the history of Human Computer/ Machine Interaction, but not only until the end of the World War II, but into the more extended evolutionary history of mankind on this planet.

It is a widespread opinion under the researchers that the development of tools to help mastering material processes was one of the outstanding events which changed the path of  the evolution a lot.  A next step was the development of tools to support human cognition like scripture, numbers, mathematics, books, libraries etc. In this last case of cognitive tools the material of the cognitive  tools was not the primary subject the processes but the cognitive contents, structures, even processes encoded by the material structures of the tools.

Only slowly mankind understood how the cognitive abilities and capabilities are rooted in the body, in the brain, and that the brain represents a rather complex biological machinery which enables a huge amount of cognitive functions, often interacting with each other;  these cognitive functions show in the light of observable behavior clear limits with regard to the amount of features which can be processed in some time interval, with regard to precision, with regard to working interconnections, and more. And therefore it has been understood that the different kinds of cognitive tools are very important to support human thinking and to enforce it in some ways.

Only in the 20th century mankind was able to built a cognitive tool called computer which could show   capabilities which resembled some human cognitive capabilities and which even surpassed human capabilities in some limited areas. Since then these machines have developed a lot (not by themselves but by the thinking and the engineering of humans!) and meanwhile the number and variety of capabilities where the computer seems to resemble a human person or surpasses human capabilities have extend in a way that it has become a common slang to talk about intelligent machines or smart devices.

While the original intention for the development of computers was to improve the cognitive tools with the intend  to support human beings one can  get today  the impression as if the computer has turned into a goal on its own: the intelligent and then — as supposed — the super-intelligent computer appears now as the primary goal and mankind appears as some old relic which has to be surpassed soon.

As will be shown later in this text this vision of the computer surpassing mankind has some assumptions which are

What seems possible and what seems to be a promising roadmap into the future is a continuous step-wise enhancement of the biological structure of mankind which absorbs the modern computing technology by new cognitive interfaces which in turn presuppose new types of physical interfaces.

To give a precise definition of these new upcoming structures and functions is not yet possible, but to identify the actual driving factors as well as the exciting combinations of factors seems possible.

COGNITION EMBEDDED IN MATTER
Actor-Cognition Interaction (ACI): A simple outline of the whole paradigm
Cognition within the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI)  paradigm: A simple outline of the whole paradigm

The main idea is the shift of the focus away from the physical grounding of the interaction between actors looking instead more to the cognitive contents and processes, which shall be mediated  by the physical conditions. Clearly the analysis of the physical conditions as well as the optimal design of these physical conditions is still a challenge and a task, but without a clear knowledge manifested in a clear model about the intended cognitive contents and processes one has not enough knowledge for the design of the physical layout.

SOLVING A PROBLEM

Thus the starting point of an engineering process is a group of people (the stakeholders (SH)) which identify some problem (P) in their environment and which have some minimal idea of a possible solution (S) for this problem. This can be commented by some non-functional requirements (NFRs) articulating some more general properties which shall hold through the whole solution (e.g. ‘being save’, ‘being barrier-free’, ‘being real-time’ etc.). If the description of the problem with a first intended solution including the NFRs contains at least one task (T) to be solved, minimal intended users (U) (here called executive actors (eA)), minimal intended assistive actors (aA) to assist the user in doing the task, as well as a description of the environment of the task to do, then the minimal ACI-Check can be passed and the ACI analysis process can be started.

COGNITION AND AUGMENTED COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

If we talk about cognition then we think usually about cognitive processes in an individual person.  But in the real world there is no cognition without an ongoing exchange between different individuals by communicative acts. Furthermore it has to be taken into account that the cognition of an individual person is in itself partitioned into two unequal parts: the unconscious part which covers about 99% of all the processes in the body and in the brain and about 1% which covers the conscious part. That an individual person can think somehow something this person has to trigger his own unconsciousness by stimuli to respond with some messages from his before unknown knowledge. Thus even an individual person alone has to organize a communication with his own unconsciousness to be able to have some conscious knowledge about its own unconscious knowledge. And because no individual person has at a certain point of time a clear knowledge of his unconscious knowledge  the person even does not really know what to look for — if there is no event, not perception, no question and the like which triggers the person to interact with its unconscious knowledge (and experience) to get some messages from this unconscious machinery, which — as it seems — is working all the time.

On account of this   logic of the individual internal communication with the individual cognition  an external communication with the world and the manifested cognition of other persons appears as a possible enrichment in the   interactions with the distributed knowledge in the different persons. While in the following approach it is assumed to represent the different knowledge responses in a common symbolic representation viewable (and hearable)  from all participating persons it is growing up a possible picture of something which is generally more rich, having more facets than a picture generated by an individual person alone. Furthermore can such a procedure help all participants to synchronize their different knowledge fragments in a bigger picture and use it further on as their own picture, which in turn can trigger even more aspects out of the distributed unconscious knowledge.

If one organizes this collective triggering of distributed unconscious knowledge within a communication process not only by static symbolic models but beyond this with dynamic rules for changes, which can be interactively simulated or even played with defined states of interest then the effect of expanding the explicit and shared knowledge will be boosted even more.

From this background it makes some sense to turn the wording Actor-Cognition Interaction into the wording Augmented Collective Intelligence where Intelligence is the component of dynamic cognition in a system — here a human person –, Collective means that different individual person are sharing their unconscious knowledge by communicative interactions, and Augmented can be interpreted that one enhances, extends this sharing of knowledge by using new tools of modeling, simulation and gaming, which expands and intensifies the individual learning as well as the commonly shared opinions. For nearly all problems today this appears to be  absolutely necessary.

ACI ANALYSIS PROCESS

Here it will be assumed that there exists a group of ACI experts which can supervise  other actors (stakeholders, domain experts, …) in a process to analyze the problem P with the explicit goal of finding a satisfying solution (S+).

For the whole ACI analysis process an appropriate ACI software should be available to support the ACI experts as well as all the other domain experts.

In this ACI analysis process one can distinguish two main phases: (1) Construct an actor story (AS) which describes all intended states and intended changes within the actor story. (2) Make several tests of the actor story to exploit their explanatory power.

ACTOR STORY (AS)

The actor story describes all possible states (S) of the tasks (T) to be realized to reach intended goal states (S+). A mapping from one state to a follow-up state will be described by a change rule (X). Thus having start state (S0) and appropriate change rules one can construct the follow-up states from the actual state (S*)  with the aid of the change rules. Formally this computation of the follow-up state (S’) will be computed by a simulator function (σ), written as: σ: S* x X  —> S.

SEVERAL TESTS

With the aid of an explicit actor story (AS) one can define the non-functional requirements (NFRs) in a way that it will become decidable whether  a NFR is valid with regard to an actor story or not. In this case this test of being valid can be done as an automated verification process (AVP). Part of this test paradigm is the so-called oracle function (OF) where one can pose a question to the system and the system will answer the question with regard to all theoretically possible states without the necessity to run a (passive) simulation.

If the size of the group is large and it is important that all members of the group have a sufficient similar knowledge about the problem(s) in question (as it is the usual case in a city with different kinds of citizens) then is can be very helpful to enable interactive simulations or even games, which allow a more direct experience of the possible states and changes. Furthermore, because the participants can act according to their individual reflections and goals the process becomes highly uncertain and nearly unpredictable. Especially for these highly unpredictable processes can interactive simulations (and games) help to improve a common understanding of the involved factors and their effects. The difference between a normal interactive simulation and a game is given in the fact that a game has explicit win-states whereas the interactive simulations doesn’t. Explicit win-states can improve learning a lot.

The other interesting question is whether an actor story AS with a certain idea for an assistive actor (aA) is usable for the executive actors. This requires explicit measurements of the usability which in turn requires a clear norm of reference with which the behavior of an executive actor (eA) during a process can be compared. Usually is the actor Story as such the norm of reference with which the observable behavior of the executing actors will be compared. Thus for the measurement one needs real executive actors which represent the intended executive actors and one needs a physical realization of the intended assistive actors called mock-up. A mock-up is not yet  the final implementation of the intended assistive actor but a physical entity which can show all important physical properties of the intended assistive actor in a way which allows a real test run. While in the past it has been assumed to be sufficient to test a test person only once it is here assumed that a test person has to be tested at least three times. This follows from the assumption that every executive (biological) actor is inherently a learning system. This implies that the test person will behave differently in different tests. The degree of changes can be a hint of the easiness and the learnability of the assistive actor.

COLLECTIVE MEMORY

If an appropriate ACI software is available then one can consider an actor story as a simple theory (ST) embracing a model (M) and a collection of rules (R) — ST(x) iff x = <M,R> –which can be used as a kind of a     building block which in turn can be combined with other such building blocks resulting in a complex network of simple theories. If these simple theories are stored in a  public available data base (like a library of theories) then one can built up in time a large knowledge base on their own.

 

 

AAI-THEORY V2 – BLUEPRINT: Bottom-up

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 27.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last change: 28.February 2019 (Several corrections)

CONTEXT

An overview to the enhanced AAI theory version 2 you can find here. In this post we talk about the special topic how to proceed in a bottom-up approach.

BOTTOM-UP: THE GENERAL BLUEPRINT
Outine of the process how to generate an AS
Figure 1: Outline of the process how to generate an AS with a bottom-up approach

As the introductory figure shows it is assumed here that there is a collection of citizens and experts which offer their individual knowledge, experiences, and skills to ‘put them on the table’ challenged by a given problem P.

This knowledge is in the beginning not structured. The first step in the direction of an actor story (AS) is to analyze the different contributions in a way which shows distinguishable elements with properties and relations. Such a set of first ‘objects’ and ‘relations’ characterizes a set of facts which define a ‘situation’ or a ‘state’ as a collection of ‘facts’. Such a situation/ state can also be understood as a first simple ‘model‘ as response to a given problem. A model is as such ‘static‘; it describes what ‘is’ at a certain point of ‘time’.

In a next step the group has to identify possible ‘changes‘ which can be associated with at least one fact. There can be many possible changes which eventually  need different durations to come into effect. These effects can happen  as ‘exclusive alternatives’ or in ‘parallel’. Apply the possible changes to a  situation  generates   ‘successors’ to the actual situation. A sequence of situations generated by applied changes is  usually called a ‘simulation‘.

If one allows the interaction between real actors with a simulation by associating  a real actor to one of the actors ‘inside the simulation’ one is turning the simulation into an ‘interactive simulation‘ which represents basically a ‘computer game‘ (short: ‘egame‘).

One can use interactive simulations e.g. to (i) learn about the dynamics of a model, to (ii) test the assumptions of a model, to (iii) test the knowledge and skills of the real actors.

Making new experiences with a  simulation allows a continuous improvement of the model and its change rules.

Additionally one can include more citizens and experts into this process and one can use available knowledge from databases and libraries.

EPISTEMOLOGY OF CONCEPTS
Epistemology of concepts used in an AAI Analysis rprocess
Fig.2: Epistemology of concepts used in an AAI Analysis process

As outlined in the preceding section about the blueprint of a bottom-up process there will be a heavy   usage of concepts to describe state of affairs.

The literature about this topic in philosophy as well as many scientific disciplines is overwhelmingly and therefore this small text here can only be a ‘pointer’ into a complex topic. Nevertheless I will use exactly this pointer to explore this topic further.

While the literature is mainly dealing with  more or less specific partial models, I am trying here to point out a very general framework which fits to a more genera philosophical — especially epistemological — view as well as gives respect to many results of scientific disciplines.

The main dimensions here are (i) the outside external empirical world, which connects via sensors to the (ii) internal body, especially the brain,  which works largely ‘unconscious‘, and then (iii) the ‘conscious‘ part of he brain.

The most important relationship between the ‘conscious’ and the ‘unconscious’ part of the brain is the ability of the unconscious brain to transform automatically incoming concrete sens-experiences into more   ‘abstract’ structures, which have at least three sub-dimensions: (i) different concrete material, (ii) a sub-set of extracted common properties, (iii) different sets of occurring contexts associated with the different subsets. This enables the brain to extract only a ‘few’ abstract structures (= abstract concepts)  to deal with ‘many’  concrete events. Thus the abstract concept ‘chair’ can cover many different concrete chairs which have only a few properties in common. Additionally the chairs can occur in different ‘contexts’ associating them with different ‘relations’ which can  specify  possible different ‘usages’   of  the concept ‘chair’.

Thus, if the actor perceives something which ‘matches’ some ‘known’ concept then the actor is  not only conscious about the empirical concrete phenomenon but also simultaneously about the abstract concept which will automatically be activated. ‘Immediately’ the actor ‘knows’ that this empirical something is e.g. a ‘chair’. Concrete: this concrete something is matching an abstract concept ‘chair’ which can as such cover many other concrete things too which can be as concrete somethings partially different from another concrete something.

From this follows an interesting side effect: while an actor can easily decide, whether a concrete something is there  (“it is the case, that” = “it is true”) or not (“it is not the case, that” = “it isnot true” = “it is false”), an actor can not directly decide whether an abstract concept like ‘chair’ as such is ‘true’ in the sense, that the concept ‘as a whole’ corresponds to concrete empirical occurrences. This depends from the fact that an abstract concept like ‘chair’ can match with a  nearly infinite set of possible concrete somethings which are called ‘possible instances’ of the abstract concept. But a human actor can directly   ‘check’ only a ‘few’ concrete somethings. Therefore the usage of abstract concepts like ‘chair’, ‘house’, ‘bottle’ etc. implies  inherently an ‘open set’ of ‘possible’ concrete  exemplars and therefor is the usage of such concepts necessarily a ‘hypothetical’ usage.  Because we can ‘in principle’ check the real extensions of these abstract concepts   in everyday life as long there is the ‘freedom’ to do  such checks,  we are losing the ‘truth’ of our concepts and thereby the basis for a  realistic cooperation, if this ‘freedom of checking’ is not possible.

If some incoming perception is ‘not yet known’,  because nothing given in the unconsciousness does ‘match’,  it is in a basic sens ‘new’ and the brain will automatically generate a ‘new concept’.

THE DIMENSION OF MEANING

In Figure 2 one can find two other components: the ‘meaning relation’ which maps concepts into ‘language expression’.

Language expressions inside the brain correspond to a diversity of visual, auditory, tactile or other empirical event sequences, which are in use for communicative acts.

These language expressions are usually not ‘isolated structures’ but are embedded in relations which map the expression structures to conceptual structures including  the different substantiations of the abstract concepts and the associated contexts. By these relations the expressions are attached to the conceptual structures which are called the ‘meaning‘ of the expressions and vice versa the expressions are called the ‘language articulation’ of the meaning structures.

As far as conceptual structures are related via meaning relations to language expressions then  a perception can automatically cause the ‘activation’ of the associated language expressions, which in turn can be uttered in some way. But conceptual structures   can exist  (especially with children) without an available  meaning relation.

When language expressions are used within a communicative act then  their usage can activate in all participants of the communication the ‘learned’ concepts as their intended meanings. Heaving the meaning activated in someones ‘consciousness’ this is a real phenomenon for that actor. But from the occurrence of  concepts alone does not automatically follow, that a  concept is ‘backed up’ by some ‘real matter’ in the external world. Someone can utter that it is raining, in the hearer of this utterance the intended concepts can become activated, but in the outside external world no rain is happening. In this case one has to state that the utterance of the language expressions “Look, its raining” has no counterpart in the real world, therefore we call the utterance in this case ‘false‘ or  ‘not true‘.

THE DIMENSION OF TIME
The dimension of time based on past experience and combinatoric thinking
Fig.3: The dimension of time based on past experience and combinatoric thinking

The preceding figure 2 of the conceptual space is not yet complete. There is another important dimension based on the ability of the unconscious brain to ‘store’ certain structures in a ‘timely order’ which enables an actor — under certain conditions ! — to decide whether a certain structure X occurred in the consciousness ‘before’ or ‘after’ or ‘at the same time’ as another structure Y.

Evidently the unconscious brain is able do exactly this:  (i) it can arrange the different structures under certain conditions in a ‘timely order’;  (ii)  it can detect ‘differences‘ between timely succeeding structures;  the brain (iii) can conceptualize these changes as ‘change concepts‘ (‘rules of change’), and it can  can classify different kinds of change like ‘deterministic’, ‘non-deterministic’ with different kinds of probabilities, as well as ‘arbitrary’ as in the case of ‘free learning systems‘. Free learning systems are able to behave in a ‘deterministic-like manner’, but they can also change their patterns on account of internal learning and decision processes in nearly any direction.

Based on memories of conceptual structures and derived change concepts (rules of change) the unconscious brain is able to generate different kinds of ‘possible configurations’, whose quality is  depending from the degree of dependencies within the  ‘generating  criteria’: (i) no special restrictions; (ii) empirical restrictions; (iii) empirical restrictions for ‘upcoming states’ (if all drinkable water would be consumed, then one cannot plan any further with drinkable water).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AAI THEORY V2 –A Philosophical Framework

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 22.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last change: 23.February 2019 (continued the text)

Last change: 24.February 2019 (extended the text)

CONTEXT

In the overview of the AAI paradigm version 2 you can find this section  dealing with the philosophical perspective of the AAI paradigm. Enjoy reading (or not, then send a comment :-)).

THE DAILY LIFE PERSPECTIVE

The perspective of Philosophy is rooted in the everyday life perspective. With our body we occur in a space with other bodies and objects; different features, properties  are associated with the objects, different kinds of relations an changes from one state to another.

From the empirical sciences we have learned to see more details of the everyday life with regard to detailed structures of matter and biological life, with regard to the long history of the actual world, with regard to many interesting dynamics within the objects, within biological systems, as part of earth, the solar system and much more.

A certain aspect of the empirical view of the world is the fact, that some biological systems called ‘homo sapiens’, which emerged only some 300.000 years ago in Africa, show a special property usually called ‘consciousness’ combined with the ability to ‘communicate by symbolic languages’.

General setting of the homo sapiens species (simplified)
Figure 1: General setting of the homo sapiens species (simplified)

As we know today the consciousness is associated with the brain, which in turn is embedded in the body, which  is further embedded in an environment.

Thus those ‘things’ about which we are ‘conscious’ are not ‘directly’ the objects and events of the surrounding real world but the ‘constructions of the brain’ based on actual external and internal sensor inputs as well as already collected ‘knowledge’. To qualify the ‘conscious things’ as ‘different’ from the assumed ‘real things’ ‘outside there’ it is common to speak of these brain-generated virtual things either as ‘qualia’ or — more often — as ‘phenomena’ which are  different to the assumed possible real things somewhere ‘out there’.

PHILOSOPHY AS FIRST PERSON VIEW

‘Philosophy’ has many facets.  One enters the scene if we are taking the insight into the general virtual character of our primary knowledge to be the primary and irreducible perspective of knowledge.  Every other more special kind of knowledge is necessarily a subspace of this primary phenomenological knowledge.

There is already from the beginning a fundamental distinction possible in the realm of conscious phenomena (PH): there are phenomena which can be ‘generated’ by the consciousness ‘itself’  — mostly called ‘by will’ — and those which are occurring and disappearing without a direct influence of the consciousness, which are in a certain basic sense ‘given’ and ‘independent’,  which are appearing  and disappearing according to ‘their own’. It is common to call these independent phenomena ’empirical phenomena’ which represent a true subset of all phenomena: PH_emp  PH. Attention: These empirical phenomena’ are still ‘phenomena’, virtual entities generated by the brain inside the brain, not directly controllable ‘by will’.

There is a further basic distinction which differentiates the empirical phenomena into those PH_emp_bdy which are controlled by some processes in the body (being tired, being hungry, having pain, …) and those PH_emp_ext which are controlled by objects and events in the environment beyond the body (light, sounds, temperature, surfaces of objects, …). Both subsets of empirical phenomena are different: PH_emp_bdy PH_emp_ext = 0. Because phenomena usually are occurring  associated with typical other phenomena there are ‘clusters’/ ‘pattern’ of phenomena which ‘represent’ possible events or states.

Modern empirical science has ‘refined’ the concept of an empirical phenomenon by introducing  ‘standard objects’ which can be used to ‘compare’ some empirical phenomenon with such an empirical standard object. Thus even when the perception of two different observers possibly differs somehow with regard to a certain empirical phenomenon, the additional comparison with an ’empirical standard object’ which is the ‘same’ for both observers, enhances the quality, improves the precision of the perception of the empirical phenomena.

From these considerations we can derive the following informal definitions:

  1. Something is ‘empirical‘ if it is the ‘real counterpart’ of a phenomenon which can be observed by other persons in my environment too.
  2. Something is ‘standardized empirical‘ if it is empirical and can additionally be associated with a before introduced empirical standard object.
  3. Something is ‘weak empirical‘ if it is the ‘real counterpart’ of a phenomenon which can potentially be observed by other persons in my body as causally correlated with the phenomenon.
  4. Something is ‘cognitive‘ if it is the counterpart of a phenomenon which is not empirical in one of the meanings (1) – (3).

It is a common task within philosophy to analyze the space of the phenomena with regard to its structure as well as to its dynamics.  Until today there exists not yet a complete accepted theory for this subject. This indicates that this seems to be some ‘hard’ task to do.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BRAINS

As one can see in figure 1 a brain in a body is completely disconnected from the brain in another body. There is a real, deep ‘gap’ which has to be overcome if the two brains want to ‘coordinate’ their ‘planned actions’.

Luckily the emergence of homo sapiens with the new extended property of ‘consciousness’ was accompanied by another exciting property, the ability to ‘talk’. This ability enabled the creation of symbolic languages which can help two disconnected brains to have some exchange.

But ‘language’ does not consist of sounds or a ‘sequence of sounds’ only; the special power of a language is the further property that sequences of sounds can be associated with ‘something else’ which serves as the ‘meaning’ of these sounds. Thus we can use sounds to ‘talk about’ other things like objects, events, properties etc.

The single brain ‘knows’ about the relationship between some sounds and ‘something else’ because the brain is able to ‘generate relations’ between brain-structures for sounds and brain-structures for something else. These relations are some real connections in the brain. Therefore sounds can be related to ‘something  else’ or certain objects, and events, objects etc.  can become related to certain sounds. But these ‘meaning relations’ can only ‘bridge the gap’ to another brain if both brains are using the same ‘mapping’, the same ‘encoding’. This is only possible if the two brains with their bodies share a real world situation RW_S where the perceptions of the both brains are associated with the same parts of the real world between both bodies. If this is the case the perceptions P(RW_S) can become somehow ‘synchronized’ by the shared part of the real world which in turn is transformed in the brain structures P(RW_S) —> B_S which represent in the brain the stimulating aspects of the real world.  These brain structures B_S can then be associated with some sound structures B_A written as a relation  MEANING(B_S, B_A). Such a relation  realizes an encoding which can be used for communication. Communication is using sound sequences exchanged between brains via the body and the air of an environment as ‘expressions’ which can be recognized as part of a learned encoding which enables the receiving brain to identify a possible meaning candidate.

DIFFERENT MODES TO EXPRESS MEANING

Following the evolution of communication one can distinguish four important modes of expressing meaning, which will be used in this AAI paradigm.

VISUAL ENCODING

A direct way to express the internal meaning structures of a brain is to use a ‘visual code’ which represents by some kinds of drawing the visual shapes of objects in the space, some attributes of  shapes, which are common for all people who can ‘see’. Thus a picture and then a sequence of pictures like a comic or a story board can communicate simple ideas of situations, participating objects, persons and animals, showing changes in the arrangement of the shapes in the space.

Pictorial expressions representing aspects of the visual and the auditory sens modes
Figure 2: Pictorial expressions representing aspects of the visual and the auditory sens modes

Even with a simple visual code one can generate many sequences of situations which all together can ‘tell a story’. The basic elements are a presupposed ‘space’ with possible ‘objects’ in this space with different positions, sizes, relations and properties. One can even enhance these visual shapes with written expressions of  a spoken language. The sequence of the pictures represents additionally some ‘timely order’. ‘Changes’ can be encoded by ‘differences’ between consecutive pictures.

FROM SPOKEN TO WRITTEN LANGUAGE EXPRESSIONS

Later in the evolution of language, much later, the homo sapiens has learned to translate the spoken language L_s in a written format L_w using signs for parts of words or even whole words.  The possible meaning of these written expressions were no longer directly ‘visible’. The meaning was now only available for those people who had learned how these written expressions are associated with intended meanings encoded in the head of all language participants. Thus only hearing or reading a language expression would tell the reader either ‘nothing’ or some ‘possible meanings’ or a ‘definite meaning’.

A written textual version in parallel to a pictorial version
Figure 3: A written textual version in parallel to a pictorial version

If one has only the written expressions then one has to ‘know’ with which ‘meaning in the brain’ the expressions have to be associated. And what is very special with the written expressions compared to the pictorial expressions is the fact that the elements of the pictorial expressions are always very ‘concrete’ visual objects while the written expressions are ‘general’ expressions allowing many different concrete interpretations. Thus the expression ‘person’ can be used to be associated with many thousands different concrete objects; the same holds for the expression ‘road’, ‘moving’, ‘before’ and so on. Thus the written expressions are like ‘manufacturing instructions’ to search for possible meanings and configure these meanings to a ‘reasonable’ complex matter. And because written expressions are in general rather ‘abstract’/ ‘general’ which allow numerous possible concrete realizations they are very ‘economic’ because they use minimal expressions to built many complex meanings. Nevertheless the daily experience with spoken and written expressions shows that they are continuously candidates for false interpretations.

FORMAL MATHEMATICAL WRITTEN EXPRESSIONS

Besides the written expressions of everyday languages one can observe later in the history of written languages the steady development of a specialized version called ‘formal languages’ L_f with many different domains of application. Here I am  focusing   on the formal written languages which are used in mathematics as well as some pictorial elements to ‘visualize’  the intended ‘meaning’ of these formal mathematical expressions.

Properties of an acyclic directed graph with nodes (vertices) and edges (directed edges = arrows)
Fig. 4: Properties of an acyclic directed graph with nodes (vertices) and edges (directed edges = arrows)

One prominent concept in mathematics is the concept of a ‘graph’. In  the basic version there are only some ‘nodes’ (also called vertices) and some ‘edges’ connecting the nodes.  Formally one can represent these edges as ‘pairs of nodes’. If N represents the set of nodes then N x N represents the set of all pairs of these nodes.

In a more specialized version the edges are ‘directed’ (like a ‘one way road’) and also can be ‘looped back’ to a node   occurring ‘earlier’ in the graph. If such back-looping arrows occur a graph is called a ‘cyclic graph’.

Directed cyclic graph extended to represent 'states of affairs'
Fig.5: Directed cyclic graph extended to represent ‘states of affairs’

If one wants to use such a graph to describe some ‘states of affairs’ with their possible ‘changes’ one can ‘interpret’ a ‘node’ as  a state of affairs and an arrow as a change which turns one state of affairs S in a new one S’ which is minimally different to the old one.

As a state of affairs I  understand here a ‘situation’ embedded in some ‘context’ presupposing some common ‘space’. The possible ‘changes’ represented by arrows presuppose some dimension of ‘time’. Thus if a node n’  is following a node n indicated by an arrow then the state of affairs represented by the node n’ is to interpret as following the state of affairs represented in the node n with regard to the presupposed time T ‘later’, or n < n’ with ‘<‘ as a symbol for a timely ordering relation.

Example of a state of affairs with a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid with a black and a white token
Fig.6: Example of a state of affairs with a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid with a black and a white token

The space can be any kind of a space. If one assumes as an example a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid –as shown in figure 6 — with two tokens at certain positions one can introduce a language to describe the ‘facts’ which constitute the state of affairs. In this example one needs ‘names for objects’, ‘properties of objects’ as well as ‘relations between objects’. A possible finite set of facts for situation 1 could be the following:

  1. TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1)
  2. TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(T2,2,1)
  3. NEIGHBOR(T1,T2)
  4. CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)

‘T1’, ‘T2’, as well as ‘C1’ are names of objects, ‘TOKEN’, ‘BACK’ etc. are names of properties, and ‘NEIGHBOR’ is a relation between objects. This results in the equation:

S1 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(T2,2,1), NEIGHBOR(T1,T2), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)}

These facts describe the situation S1. If it is important to describe possible objects ‘external to the situation’ as important factors which can cause some changes then one can describe these objects as a set of facts  in a separated ‘context’. In this example this could be two players which can move the black and white tokens and thereby causing a change of the situation. What is the situation and what belongs to a context is somewhat arbitrary. If one describes the agriculture of some region one usually would not count the planets and the atmosphere as part of this region but one knows that e.g. the sun can severely influence the situation   in combination with the atmosphere.

Change of a state of affairs given as a state which will be enhanced by a new object
Fig.7: Change of a state of affairs given as a state which will be enhanced by a new object

Let us stay with a state of affairs with only a situation without a context. The state of affairs is     a ‘state’. In the example shown in figure 6 I assume a ‘change’ caused by the insertion of a new black token at position (2,2). Written in the language of facts L_fact we get:

  1. TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)

Thus the new state S2 is generated out of the old state S1 by unifying S1 with the set of new facts: S2 = S1 {TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)}. All the other facts of S1 are still ‘valid’. In a more general manner one can introduce a change-expression with the following format:

<S1, S2, add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)})>

This can be read as follows: The follow-up state S2 is generated out of the state S1 by adding to the state S1 the set of facts { … }.

This layout of a change expression can also be used if some facts have to be modified or removed from a state. If for instance  by some reason the white token should be removed from the situation one could write:

<S1, S2, subtract(S1,{TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)})>

Another notation for this is S2 = S1 – {TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)}.

The resulting state S2 would then look like:

S2 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)}

And a combination of subtraction of facts and addition of facts would read as follows:

<S1, S2, subtract(S1,{TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)}, add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)})>

This would result in the final state S2:

S2 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1),TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)}

These simple examples demonstrate another fact: while facts about objects and their properties are independent from each other do relational facts depend from the state of their object facts. The relation of neighborhood e.g. depends from the participating neighbors. If — as in the example above — the object token T2 disappears then the relation ‘NEIGHBOR(T1,T2)’ no longer holds. This points to a hierarchy of dependencies with the ‘basic facts’ at the ‘root’ of a situation and all the other facts ‘above’ basic facts or ‘higher’ depending from the basic facts. Thus ‘higher order’ facts should be added only for the actual state and have to be ‘re-computed’ for every follow-up state anew.

If one would specify a context for state S1 saying that there are two players and one allows for each player actions like ‘move’, ‘insert’ or ‘delete’ then one could make the change from state S1 to state S2 more precise. Assuming the following facts for the context:

  1. PLAYER(PB1), PLAYER(PW1), HAS-THE-TURN(PB1)

In that case one could enhance the change statement in the following way:

<S1, S2, PB1,insert(TOKEN(T3,2,2)),add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)})>

This would read as follows: given state S1 the player PB1 inserts a  black token at position (2,2); this yields a new state S2.

With or without a specified context but with regard to a set of possible change statements it can be — which is the usual case — that there is more than one option what can be changed. Some of the main types of changes are the following ones:

  1. RANDOM
  2. NOT RANDOM, which can be specified as follows:
    1. With PROBABILITIES (classical, quantum probability, …)
    2. DETERMINISTIC

Furthermore, if the causing object is an actor which can adapt structurally or even learn locally then this actor can appear in some time period like a deterministic system, in different collected time periods as an ‘oscillating system’ with different behavior, or even as a random system with changing probabilities. This make the forecast of systems with adaptive and/ or learning systems rather difficult.

Another aspect results from the fact that there can be states either with one actor which can cause more than one action in parallel or a state with multiple actors which can act simultaneously. In both cases the resulting total change has eventually to be ‘filtered’ through some additional rules telling what  is ‘possible’ in a state and what not. Thus if in the example of figure 6 both player want to insert a token at position (2,2) simultaneously then either  the rules of the game would forbid such a simultaneous action or — like in a computer game — simultaneous actions are allowed but the ‘geometry of a 2-dimensional space’ would not allow that two different tokens are at the same position.

Another aspect of change is the dimension of time. If the time dimension is not explicitly specified then a change from some state S_i to a state S_j does only mark the follow up state S_j as later. There is no specific ‘metric’ of time. If instead a certain ‘clock’ is specified then all changes have to be aligned with this ‘overall clock’. Then one can specify at what ‘point of time t’ the change will begin and at what point of time t*’ the change will be ended. If there is more than one change specified then these different changes can have different timings.

THIRD PERSON VIEW

Up until now the point of view describing a state and the possible changes of states is done in the so-called 3rd-person view: what can a person perceive if it is part of a situation and is looking into the situation.  It is explicitly assumed that such a person can perceive only the ‘surface’ of objects, including all kinds of actors. Thus if a driver of a car stears his car in a certain direction than the ‘observing person’ can see what happens, but can not ‘look into’ the driver ‘why’ he is steering in this way or ‘what he is planning next’.

A 3rd-person view is assumed to be the ‘normal mode of observation’ and it is the normal mode of empirical science.

Nevertheless there are situations where one wants to ‘understand’ a bit more ‘what is going on in a system’. Thus a biologist can be  interested to understand what mechanisms ‘inside a plant’ are responsible for the growth of a plant or for some kinds of plant-disfunctions. There are similar cases for to understand the behavior of animals and men. For instance it is an interesting question what kinds of ‘processes’ are in an animal available to ‘navigate’ in the environment across distances. Even if the biologist can look ‘into the body’, even ‘into the brain’, the cells as such do not tell a sufficient story. One has to understand the ‘functions’ which are enabled by the billions of cells, these functions are complex relations associated with certain ‘structures’ and certain ‘signals’. For this it is necessary to construct an explicit formal (mathematical) model/ theory representing all the necessary signals and relations which can be used to ‘explain’ the obsrvable behavior and which ‘explains’ the behavior of the billions of cells enabling such a behavior.

In a simpler, ‘relaxed’ kind of modeling  one would not take into account the properties and behavior of the ‘real cells’ but one would limit the scope to build a formal model which suffices to explain the oservable behavior.

This kind of approach to set up models of possible ‘internal’ (as such hidden) processes of an actor can extend the 3rd-person view substantially. These models are called in this text ‘actor models (AM)’.

HIDDEN WORLD PROCESSES

In this text all reported 3rd-person observations are called ‘actor story’, independent whether they are done in a pictorial or a textual mode.

As has been pointed out such actor stories are somewhat ‘limited’ in what they can describe.

It is possible to extend such an actor story (AS)  by several actor models (AM).

An actor story defines the situations in which an actor can occur. This  includes all kinds of stimuli which can trigger the possible senses of the actor as well as all kinds of actions an actor can apply to a situation.

The actor model of such an actor has to enable the actor to handle all these assumed stimuli as well as all these actions in the expected way.

While the actor story can be checked whether it is describing a process in an empirical ‘sound’ way,  the actor models are either ‘purely theoretical’ but ‘behavioral sound’ or they are also empirically sound with regard to the body of a biological or a technological system.

A serious challenge is the occurrence of adaptiv or/ and locally learning systems. While the actor story is a finite  description of possible states and changes, adaptiv or/ and locally learning systeme can change their behavior while ‘living’ in the actor story. These changes in the behavior can not completely be ‘foreseen’!

COGNITIVE EXPERT PROCESSES

According to the preceding considerations a homo sapiens as a biological system has besides many properties at least a consciousness and the ability to talk and by this to communicate with symbolic languages.

Looking to basic modes of an actor story (AS) one can infer some basic concepts inherently present in the communication.

Without having an explicit model of the internal processes in a homo sapiens system one can infer some basic properties from the communicative acts:

  1. Speaker and hearer presuppose a space within which objects with properties can occur.
  2. Changes can happen which presuppose some timely ordering.
  3. There is a disctinction between concrete things and abstract concepts which correspond to many concrete things.
  4. There is an implicit hierarchy of concepts starting with concrete objects at the ‘root level’ given as occurence in a concrete situation. Other concepts of ‘higher levels’ refer to concepts of lower levels.
  5. There are different kinds of relations between objects on different conceptual levels.
  6. The usage of language expressions presupposes structures which can be associated with the expressions as their ‘meanings’. The mapping between expressions and their meaning has to be learned by each actor separately, but in cooperation with all the other actors, with which the actor wants to share his meanings.
  7. It is assume that all the processes which enable the generation of concepts, concept hierarchies, relations, meaning relations etc. are unconscious! In the consciousness one can  use parts of the unconscious structures and processes under strictly limited conditions.
  8. To ‘learn’ dedicated matters and to be ‘critical’ about the quality of what one is learnig requires some disciplin, some learning methods, and a ‘learning-friendly’ environment. There is no guaranteed method of success.
  9. There are lots of unconscious processes which can influence understanding, learning, planning, decisions etc. and which until today are not yet sufficiently cleared up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTOR-ACTOR INTERACTION ANALYSIS – A rough Outline of the Blueprint

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 13.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last corrections: 14.February 2019 (add some more keywords; added  emphasizes for central words)

Change: 5.May 2019 (adding the the aspect of simulation and gaming; extending the view of the driving actors)

CONTEXT

An overview to the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about the blueprint  of the whole  AAI analysis process. Here I leave out the topic of actor models (AM); the aspect of  simulation and gaming is mentioned only shortly. For these topics see other posts.

THE AAI ANALYSIS BLUEPRINT

Blueprint of the whole AAI analysis process including the epistemological assumptions. Not shown here is the whole topic of actor models (AM) and as well simulation.
Blueprint of the whole AAI analysis process including the epistemological assumptions. Not shown here is the whole topic of actor models (AM) and as well simulation.

The Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) analysis is understood here as part of an  embracing  systems engineering process (SEP), which starts with the statement of a problem (P) which includes a vision (V) of an improved alternative situation. It has then to be analyzed how such a new improved situation S+ looks like; how one can realize certain tasks (T)  in an improved way.

DRIVING ACTORS

The driving actors for such an AAI analysis are at least one  stakeholder (STH) which communicates a problem P and an envisioned solution (ES) to an  expert (EXPaai) with a sufficient AAI experience. This expert will take   the lead in the process of transforming the problem and the envisioned  solution into a working solution (WS).

In the classical industrial case the stakeholder can be a group of managers from some company and the expert is also represented by a whole team of experts from different disciplines, including the AAI perspective as leading perspective.

In another case which  I will call here the  communal case — e.g. a whole city —      the stakeholder as well as the experts are members of the communal entity.   As   in the before mentioned cases there is some commonly accepted problem P combined  with a first envisioned solution ES, which shall be analyzed: what is needed to make it working? Can it work at all? What are costs? And many other questions can arise. The challenge to include all relevant experience and knowledge from all participants is at the center of the communication and to transform this available knowledge into some working solution which satisfies all stated requirements for all participants is a central  condition for the success of the project.

EPISTEMOLOGY

It has to be taken into account that the driving actors are able to do this job because they  have in their bodies brains (BRs) which in turn include  some consciousness (CNS). The processes and states beyond the consciousness are here called ‘unconscious‘ and the set of all these unconscious processes is called ‘the Unconsciousness’ (UCNS).

For more details to the cognitive processes see the post to the philosophical framework as well as the post bottom-up process. Both posts shall be integrated into one coherent view in the future.

SEMIOTIC SUBSYSTEM

An important set of substructures of the unconsciousness are those which enable symbolic language systems with so-called expressions (L) on one side and so-called non-expressions (~L) on the other. Embedded in a meaning relation (MNR) does the set of non-expressions ~L  function as the meaning (MEAN) of the expressions L, written as a mapping MNR: L <—> ~L. Depending from the involved sensors the expressions L can occur either as acoustic events L_spk, or as visual patterns written L_txt or visual patterns as pictures L_pict or even in other formats, which will not discussed here. The non-expressions can occur in every format which the brain can handle.

While written (symbolic) expressions L are only associated with the intended meaning through encoded mappings in the brain,  the spoken expressions L_spk as well as the pictorial ones L_pict can show some similarities with the intended meaning. Within acoustic  expressions one can ‘imitate‘ some sounds which are part of a meaning; even more can the pictorial expressions ‘imitate‘ the visual experience of the intended meaning to a high degree, but clearly not every kind of meaning.

DEFINING THE MAIN POINT OF REFERENCE

Because the space of possible problems and visions it nearly infinite large one has to define for a certain process the problem of the actual process together with the vision of a ‘better state of the affairs’. This is realized by a description of he problem in a problem document D_p as well as in a vision statement D_v. Because usually a vision is not without a given context one has to add all the constraints (C) which have to be taken into account for the possible solution.  Examples of constraints are ‘non-functional requirements’ (NFRs) like “safety” or “real time” or “without barriers” (for handicapped people). Part of the non-functional requirements are also definitions of win-lose states as part of a game.

AAI ANALYSIS – BASIC PROCEDURE

If the AAI check has been successful and there is at least one task T to be done in an assumed environment ENV and there are at least one executing actor A_exec in this task as well as an assisting actor A_ass then the AAI analysis can start.

ACTOR STORY (AS)

The main task is to elaborate a complete description of a process which includes a start state S* and a goal state S+, where  the participating executive actors A_exec can reach the goal state S+ by doing some actions. While the imagined process p_v  is a virtual (= cognitive/ mental) model of an intended real process p_e, this intended virtual model p_e can only be communicated by a symbolic expressions L embedded in a meaning relation. Thus the elaboration/ construction of the intended process will be realized by using appropriate expressions L embedded in a meaning relation. This can be understood as a basic mapping of sensor based perceptions of the supposed real world into some abstract virtual structures automatically (unconsciously) computed by the brain. A special kind of this mapping is the case of measurement.

In this text especially three types of symbolic expressions L will be used: (i) pictorial expressions L_pict, (ii) textual expressions of a natural language L_txt, and (iii) textual expressions of a mathematical language L_math. The meaning part of these symbolic expressions as well as the expressions itself will be called here an actor story (AS) with the different modes  pictorial AS (PAS), textual AS (TAS), as well as mathematical AS (MAS).

The basic elements of an  actor story (AS) are states which represent sets of facts. A fact is an expression of some defined language L which can be decided as being true in a real situation or not (the past and the future are special cases for such truth clarifications). Facts can be identified as actors which can act by their own. The transformation from one state to a follow up state has to be described with sets of change rules. The combination of states and change rules defines mathematically a directed graph (G).

Based on such a graph it is possible to derive an automaton (A) which can be used as a simulator. A simulator allows simulations. A concrete simulation takes a start state S0 as the actual state S* and computes with the aid of the change rules one follow up state S1. This follow up state becomes then the new actual state S*. Thus the simulation constitutes a continuous process which generally can be infinite. To make the simulation finite one has to define some stop criteria (C*). A simulation can be passive without any interruption or interactive. The interactive mode allows different external actors to select certain real values for the available variables of the actual state.

If in the problem definition certain win-lose states have been defined then one can turn an interactive simulation into a game where the external actors can try to manipulate the process in a way as to reach one of the defined win-states. As soon as someone (which can be a team) has reached a win-state the responsible actor (or team) has won. Such games can be repeated to allow accumulation of wins (or loses).

Gaming allows a far better experience of the advantages or disadvantages of some actor story as a rather lose simulation. Therefore the probability to detect aspects of an actor story with their given constraints is by gaming quite high and increases the probability to improve the whole concept.

Based on an actor story with a simulator it is possible to increase the cognitive power of exploring the future even more.  There exists the possibility to define an oracle algorithm as well as different kinds of intelligent algorithms to support the human actor further. This has to be described in other posts.

TAR AND AAR

If the actor story is completed (in a certain version v_i) then one can extract from the story the input-output profiles of every participating actor. This list represents the task-induced actor requirements (TAR).  If one is looking for concrete real persons for doing the job of an executing actor the TAR can be used as a benchmark for assessing candidates for this job. The profiles of the real persons are called here actor-actor induced requirements (AAR), that is the real profile compared with the ideal profile of the TAR. If the ‘distance’ between AAR and TAR is below some threshold then the candidate has either to be rejected or one can offer some training to improve his AAR; the other option is to  change the conditions of the TAR in a way that the TAR is more closer to the AARs.

The TAR is valid for the executive actors as well as for the assisting actors A_ass.

CONSTRAINTS CHECK

If the actor story has in some version V_i a certain completion one has to check whether the different constraints which accompany the vision document are satisfied through the story: AS_vi |- C.

Such an evaluation is only possible if the constraints can be interpreted with regard to the actor story AS in version vi in a way, that the constraints can be decided.

For many constraints it can happen that the constraints can not or not completely be decided on the level of the actor story but only in a later phase of the systems engineering process, when the actor story will be implemented in software and hardware.

MEASURING OF USABILITY

Using the actor story as a benchmark one can test the quality of the usability of the whole process by doing usability tests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AAI THEORY V2 – MEASURING USABILITY

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 6.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

An overview of the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about the tenth chapter dealing with Measuring Usability

MEASURING  USABILITY

As has been delineated in the post “Usability and Usefulness”   statements  about the quality of the usability of some assisting actor are based on some  kinds of measurement: mapping some target (here the interactions of an executive actor with some assistive actor) into some predefined norm (e.g. ‘number of errors’, ‘time needed for completion’, …).   These remarks are here embedded in a larger perspective following   Dumas and  Fox (2008).

Overview of Usability Testing following the article of Dumas & Fox (2008), with some new AAI specific terminology
Overview of Usability Testing following the article of Dumas & Fox (2008), with some new AAI specific terminology

From the three main types of usability testing with regard to the position in the life-cycle of a system we focus here primarily on the usability testing as part of the analysis phase where the developers want to get direct feedback for the concepts embedded in an actor story. Depending from this feedback the actor story and its related models can become modified and this can result in a modified exploratory mock-up  for a new test. The challenge is not to be ‘complete’ in finding ‘disturbing’ factors during an interaction but to increase the probability to detect possible disturbing factors by facing the symbolically represented concepts of the actor story with a sample of real world actors. Experiments  point to the number of 5-10 test persons which seem to be sufficient to detect the most severe disturbing factors of the concepts.

Usability testing procedure according to Lauesen (2005), adapted to the AAI paradigm
Usability testing procedure according to Lauesen (2005), adapted to the AAI paradigm

A good description of usability testing can be found in the book Lauesen (2005), especially chapters 1 +13.  According to this one can infer the following basic schema for a usability test:

  1. One needs 5 – 10 test persons whose input-output profile (AAR) comes close to the profile (TAR) required by the actor story.
  2. One needs a  mock-up of the assistive actor; this mock-up  should  correspond ‘sufficiently well’ with the input-output profile (TAR) required by the  actor story. In the simplest case one has a ‘paper model’, whose sheets can be changed on demand.
  3. One needs a facilitator who is receiving the test person, introduces the test person into the task (orally and/ or by a short document (less than a page)), then accompanies the test without interacting further with the test person until the end of the test.  The end is either reached by completing the task or by reaching the end of a predefined duration time.
  4. After the test person has finished the test   a debriefing happens by interrogating the test person about his/ her subjective feelings about the test. Because interviews are always very fuzzy and not very reliable one should keep this interrogation simple, short, and associated with concrete points. One strategy could be to ask the test person first about the general feeling: Was it ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘OK’, ‘undefined’, ‘not OK’, ‘bad’, ‘very bad’ (+3 … 0 … -3). If the stated feeling is announced then one can ask back which kinds of circumstances caused these feelings.
  5. During the test at least two observers are observing the behavior of the test person. The observer are using as their ‘norm’ the actor story which tells what ‘should happen in the ideal case’. If a test person is deviating from the actor story this will be noted as a ‘deviation of kind X’, and this counts as an error. Because an actor story in the mathematical format represents a graph it is simple to quantify the behavior of the test person with regard to how many nodes of a solution path have been positively passed. This gives a count for the percentage of how much has been done. Thus the observer can deliver data about at least the ‘percentage of task completion’, ‘the number (and kind) of errors by deviations’, and ‘the processing time’. The advantage of having the actor story as a  norm is that all observers will use the same ‘observation categories’.
  6. From the debriefing one gets data about the ‘good/ bad’ feelings on a scale, and some hints what could have caused the reported feelings.

STANDARDS – CIF (Common Industry Format)

There are many standards around describing different aspects of usability testing. Although standards can help in practice  from the point of research standards are not only good, they can hinder creative alternative approaches. Nevertheless I myself are looking to standards to check for some possible ‘references’.  One standard I am using very often is the  “Common Industry Format (CIF)”  for usability reporting. It is  an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 25062:2006) since  2006. CIF describes a method for reporting the findings of usability tests that collect quantitative measurements of user performance. CIF does not describe how to carry out a usability test, but it does require that the test include measurements of the application’s effectiveness and efficiency as well as a measure of the users’ satisfaction. These are the three elements that define the concept of usability.

Applied to the AAI paradigm these terms are fitting well.

Effectiveness in CIF  is targeting  the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve their goal. Because the actor story in AAI his represented as a graph where the individual paths represents a way to approach a defined goal one can measure directly the accuracy by comparing the ‘observed path’ in a test and the ‘intended ideal path’ in the actor story. In the same way one can compute the completeness by comparing the observed path and the intended ideal path of the actor story.

Efficiency in CIF covers the resources expended to achieve the goals. A simple and direct measure is the measuring of the time needed.

Users’ satisfaction in CIF means ‘freedom from discomfort’ and ‘positive attitudes towards the use of the product‘. These are ‘subjective feelings’ which cannot directly be observed. Only ‘indirect’ measures are possible based on interrogations (or interactions with certain tasks) which inherently are fuzzy and not very reliable.  One possibility how to interrogate is mentioned above.

Because the term usability in CIF is defined by the before mentioned terms of effectiveness, efficiency as well as  users’ satisfaction, which in turn can be measured in many different ways the meaning of ‘usability’ is still a bit vague.

DYNAMIC ACTORS – CHANGING CONTEXTS

With regard to the AAI paradigm one has further to mention that the possibility of adaptive, learning systems embedded in dynamic, changing  environments requires for a new type of usability testing. Because learning actors change by every exercise one should run a test several times to observe how the dynamic learning rates of an actor are developing in time. In such a dynamic framework  a system would only be  ‘badly usable‘ when the learning curves of the actors can not approach a certain threshold after a defined ‘typical learning time’. And,  moreover, there could be additional effects occurring only in a long-term usage and observation, which can not be measured in a single test.

REFERENCES

  • ISO/IEC 25062:2006(E)
  • Joseph S. Dumas and Jean E. Fox. Usability testing: Current practice
    and future directions. chapter 57, pp.1129 – 1149,  in J.A. Jacko and A. Sears, editors, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications. 2nd edition, 2008
  • S. Lauesen. User Interface Design. A software Engineering Perspective.
    Pearson – Addison Wesley, London et al., 2005

AAI THEORY V2 – USABILITY AND USEFULNESS

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 4.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

REMARK (5.May 2019)

This text  has to be reviewed again on account of the new aspect of gaming as  discussed in the post Engineering and Society.

CONTEXT

An overview of the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about the sixth chapter dealing with usability and usefulness.

USABILITY AND USEFULNESS

In the AAI paradigm the concept of usability is seen as a sub-topic of the more broader concept of usefulness. Furthermore Usefulness  as well as usability are understood as measurements comparing some target with some presupposed norm.

Example: If someone wants to buy a product A whose prize fits well with the available budget and this product A shows only  an average usability then the product is probably ‘more useful’ for the buyer than another product B which does not fit with the budget although it  has a better usability. A conflict can  arise if the weaker value of the usability of product A causes during the usage of product A ‘bad effects’ onto the user of product A which in turn produce additional negative costs which enhance the original ‘nice price’ to a degree where the product A becomes finally  ‘more costly’ than product B.

Therefore  the concept usefulness will be  defined independently from the concept usability and depends completely  from the person or company who is searching for the solution of a problem. The concept of usability depends directly on the real structure of an  actor, a biological one or a non-biological one. Thus independent of the definition of the actual usefulness the given structure of an actor implies certain capabilities with regard to input, output as well as to  internal   processing. Therefore if an X seems to be highly useful for someone and to get X  needs a certain actor story to become realized with certain actors then it can matter whether this process includes a ‘good usability’ for the participating actors or not.

In the AAI paradigm both concepts usefulness as well as usability will be analyzed to provide a  chance to check the contributions of both concepts  in some predefined duration of usage. This allows the analysis of the sustainability of the wanted usefulness restricted to  usability as a parameter. There can be even more parameters   included in the evaluation of the actor story  to enhance the scope of   sustainability. Depending from the definition of the concept of resilience one can interpret the concept of sustainability used in this AAI paradigm as compatible with the resilience concept too.

MEASUREMENT

To speak about ‘usefulness’, ‘usability’, ‘sustainability’ (or ‘resilience’) requires some kind of a scale of values with an   ordering relation R allowing to state about  some values x,y   whether R(x,y) or R(y,x) or EQUAL(x,y). The values used in the scale have to be generated by some defined process P which is understood as a measurement process M which basically compares some target X with some predefined norm N and gives as a result a pair (v,N) telling a number v associated with the applied norm N. Written: M : X x N —> V x N.

A measurement procedure M must be transparent and repeatable in the sense that the repeated application of the measurement procedure M will generate the same results than before. Associated with the measurement procedure there can exist many additional parameters like ‘location’, ‘time’, ‘temperature’, ‘humidity’,  ‘used technologies’, etc.

Because there exist targets X which are not static it can be a problem when and how often one has to measure these targets to get some reliable value. And this problem becomes even worse if the target includes adaptive systems which are changing constantly like in the case of  biological systems.

All biological systems have some degree of learnability. Thus if a human actor is acting as part of an actor story  the human actor will learn every time he is working through the process. Thus making errors during his first run of the process does not imply that he will repeat these errors the next time. Usually one can observe a learning curve associated with n-many runs which show — mostly — a decrease in errors, a decrease in processing time, and — in general — a change of all parameters, which can be measured. Thus a certain actor story can receive a good usability value after a defined number of usages.  But there are other possible subjective parameters like satisfaction, being excited, being interested and the like which can change in the opposite direction, because to become well adapted to  the process can be boring which in turn can lead to less concentrations with many different negative consequences.

 

 

 

 

AAI THEORY V2 –GENERATING AN AS

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 1.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

— Outdated —

CONTEXT

An overview to the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about  the special topic how to generate an actor story.

GENERATING AN AS

Outine of the process how to generate an AS
Outline of the process how to generate an AS

Until now it has been described which final format an actor story (AS) should have. Three different modes (textual, pictorial, mathematical) have been distinguished. The epistemology of these expressions has been outlined to shed some light on the underlying cognitive processes enabling such a story.

Now I describe a possible process  which has the capacity to generate an AS.

As the introductory figure shows  it is assumed here that there is a collection of citizens and experts which offer their individual knowledge, experiences, and skills to ‘put them on the table’ challenged by a given problem P.

This knowledge is in the beginning not structured. The first step in the direction of an AS is to analyze the different contributions in a way which shows distinguishable elements with properties and relations. Such a set of first ‘objects’ and ‘relations’ characterizes a set of facts which define a ‘situation’ or a ‘state’ as a collection of ‘facts’. Such a situation/ state can also be understood as a first simple ‘model‘ as response to a given problem. A model is as such ‘static‘; it describes what ‘is’ at a certain point of ‘time’.

In a next step the group has to identify possible ‘changes‘ which can be associated with t least one fact. There can be many possible changes which can need different durations  to come into effect. Furthermore they can be ‘alternatively’ or in ‘parallel’. Combining a situation (model) with possible changes allows the application of the actual situation which generates a  — or many — ‘successors’ to the actual situation. A process starts which we call usually ‘simulation‘.

If one allows the interaction between real actors with the simulation by mapping a real actor to one of the actors ‘inside the simulation’ one is turning the simulation into an ‘interactive simulation‘ which represents basically a ‘computer game‘ (short: ‘egame‘).

One can use interactive simulations e.g. to (i) learn about the dynamics of a model, to (ii) test the assumptions of a model, to (iii) test the knowledge and skills of the real actors.

Making new experiences with a (interactive) simulation allows a continuous improvement of the model and its change rules.

Additionally one can include more citizens and experts into this  process, using available knowledge from databases and libraries etc.

 

 

 

AAI THEORY V2 – Actor Story (AS)

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 28.Januar 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

— Outdated —

CONTEXT

An overview to the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about  the generation of the actor story (AS).

ACTOR STORY

To get from the problem P to an improved configuration S measured by some expectation  E needs a process characterized by a set of necessary states Q which are connected by necessary changes X. Such a process can be described with the aid of  an actor story AS.

  1. The target of an actor story (AS) is a full specification of all identified necessary tasks T which lead from a start state q* to a goal state q+, including all possible and necessary changes X between the different states M.
  2. A state is here considered as a finite set of facts (F) which are structured as an expression from some language L distinguishing names of objects (like  ‘D1’, ‘Un1’, …) as well as properties of objects (like ‘being open’, ‘being green’, …) or relations between objects (like ‘the user stands before the door’). There can also e a ‘negation’ like ‘the door is not open’. Thus a collection of facts like ‘There is a door D1’ and ‘The door D1 is open’ can represent a state.
  3. Changes from one state q to another successor state q’ are described by the object whose action deletes previous facts or creates new facts.
  4. In this approach at least three different modes of an actor story will be distinguished:
    1. A textual mode generating a Textual Actor Story (TAS): In a textual mode a text in some everyday language (e.g. in English) describes the states and changes in plain English. Because in the case of a written text the meaning of the symbols is hidden in the heads of the writers it can be of help to parallelize the written text with the pictorial mode.
    2. A pictorial mode generating a Pictorial Actor Story (PAS). In a pictorial mode the drawings represent the main objects with their properties and relations in an explicit visual way (like a Comic Strip). The drawings can be enhanced by fragments of texts.
    3. A mathematical mode generating a Mathematical Actor Story (MAS): this can be done either (i) by  a pictorial graph with nodes and edges as arrows associated with formal expressions or (ii)  by a complete formal structure without any pictorial elements.
    4. For every mode it has to be shown how an AAI expert can generate an actor story out of the virtual cognitive world of his brain and how it is possible to decide the empirical soundness of the actor story.

 

AAI THEORY V2 – DEFINING THE CONTEXT

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 24.Januar 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

An overview to the enhanced AAI theory  version 2 you can find here.  In this post we talk about the second chapter where you have to define the context of the problem, which should be analyzed.

DEFINING THE CONTEXT OF PROBLEM P

  1. A defined problem P identifies at least one property associated with  a configuration which has a lower level x than a value y inferred by an accepted standard E.
  2. The property P is always part of some environment ENV which interacts with the problem P.
  3. To approach an improved configuration S measured by  some standard E starting with a  problem P one  needs a process characterized by a set of necessary states Q which are connected by necessary changes X.
  4. Such a process can be described by an actor story AS.
  5. All properties which belong to the whole actor story and therefore have to be satisfied by every state q of the actor story  are called  non-functional process requirements (NFPRs). If required properties are are associate with only one state but for the whole state, then these requirements are called non-functional state requirements (NFSRs).
  6. An actor story can include many different sequences, where every sequence is called a path PTH.  A finite set of paths can represent a task T which has to be fulfilled. Within the environment of the defined problem P it mus be possible to identify at least one task T to be realized from some start state to some goal state. The realization of a task T is assumed to be ‘driven’ by input-output-systems which are called actors A.
  7. Additionally it mus be possible to identify at least one executing actor A_exec doing a  task and at least one actor assisting A_ass the executing actor to fulfill the task.
  8. A state q represents all needed actors as part of the associated environment ENV. Therefore a  state q can be analyzed as a network of elements interacting with each other. But this is only one possible structure for an analysis besides others.
  9. For the   analysis of a possible solution one can distinguish at least two overall strategies:
    1. Top-down: There exists a group of experts EXPs which will analyze a possible solution, will test these, and then will propose these as a solution for others.
    2. Bottom-up: There exists a group of experts EXPs too but additionally there exists a group of customers CTMs which will be guided by the experts to use their own experience to find a possible solution.

EXAMPLE

The mayor of a city has identified as a  problem the relationship between the actual population number POP,    the amount of actual available  living space LSP0, and the  amount of recommended living space LSPr by some standard E.  The population of his city is steadily interacting with populations in the environment: citizens are moving into the environment MIGR- and citizens from the environment are arriving MIGR+. The population,  the city as well as the environment can be characterized by a set of parameters <P1, …, Pn> called a configuration which represents a certain state q at a certain point of time t. To convert the actual configuration called a start state q0 to a new configuration S called a goal state q+ with better values requires the application of a defined set of changes Xs which change the start state q0 stepwise into a sequence of states qi which finally will end up in the desired goal state q+. A description of all these states necessary for the conversion of the start state q0 into the goal state q+ is called here an actor story AS. Because a democratic elected  mayor of the city wants to be ‘liked’ by his citizens he will require that this conversion process should end up in a goal state which is ‘not harmful’ for his citizens, which should support a ‘secure’ and ‘safety’ environment, ‘good transportation’ and things like that. This illustrates non-functional state requirements (NFSRs). Because the mayor wants also not to much trouble during the conversion process he will also require some limits for the whole conversion process, this is for the whole actor story. This illustrates non-functional process requirements (NFPRs). To realize the intended conversion process the mayor needs several executing actors which are doing the job and several other assistive actors helping the executing actors. To be able to use the available time and resources ‘effectively’ the executing actors need defined tasks which have to be realized to come from one state to the next. Often there are more than one sequences of states possible either alternatively or in parallel. A certain state at a certain point of time t can be viewed as a network where all participating actors are in many ways connected with each other, interacting in several ways and thereby influencing each other. This realizes different kinds of communications with different kinds of contents and allows the exchange of material and can imply the change of the environment. Until today the mayors of cities use as their preferred strategy to realize conversion processes selected small teams of experts doing their job in a top-down manner leaving the citizens more or less untouched, at least without a serious participation in the whole process. From now on it is possible and desirable to twist the strategy from top-down to bottom up. This implies that the selected experts enable a broad communication with potentially all citizens which are touched by a conversion and including  the knowledge, experience, skills, visions etc. of these citizens  by applying new methods possible in the new digital age.

 

 

ADVANCED AAI-THEORY

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 21.Januar 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Here You can find a new version of this post

CONTEXT

The last official update of the AAI theory dates back to Oct-2, 2018. Since that time many new thoughts have been detected and have been configured for further extensions and improvements. Here I try to give an overview of all the actual known aspects of the expanded AAI theory as a possible guide for the further elaborations of the main text.

CLARIFYING THE PROBLEM

  1. Generally it is assumed that the AAI theory is embedded in a general systems engineering approach starting with the clarification of a problem.
  2. Two cases will be distinguished:
    1. A stakeholder is associated with a certain domain of affairs with some prominent aspect/ parameter P and the stakeholder wants to clarify whether P poses some ‘problem’ in this domain. This presupposes some explained ‘expectations’ E how it should be and some ‘findings’ x pointing to the fact that P is ‘sufficiently different’ from some y>x. If the stakeholder judges that this difference is ‘important’, than P matching x will be classified as a problem, which will be documented in a ‘problem document D_p’. One interpret this this analysis as a ‘measurement M’ written as M(P,E) = x and x<y.
    2. Given a problem document D_p a stakeholder invites some experts to find a ‘solution’ which transfers the old ‘problem P’ into a ‘configuration S’ which at least should ‘minimize the problem P’. Thus there must exist some ‘measurements’ of the given problem P with regard to certain ‘expectations E’ functioning as a ‘norm’ as M(P,E)=x and some measurements of the new configuration S with regard to the same expectations E as M(S,E)=y and a metric which allows the judgment y > x.
  3. From this follows that already in the beginning of the analysis of a possible solution one has to refer to some measurement process M, otherwise there exists no problem P.

CHECK OF FRAMING CONDITIONS

  1. The definition of a problem P presupposes a domain of affairs which has to be characterized in at least two respects:
    1. A minimal description of an environment ENV of the problem P and
    2. a list of so-called non-functional requirements (NFRs).
  2. Within the environment it mus be possible to identify at least one task T to be realized from some start state to some end state.
  3. Additionally it mus be possible to identify at least one executing actor A_exec doing this task and at least one actor assisting A_ass the executing actor to fulfill the task.
  4. For the  following analysis of a possible solution one can distinguish two strategies:
    1. Top-down: There exists a group of experts EXPs which will analyze a possible solution, will test these, and then will propose these as a solution for others.
    2. Bottom-up: There exists a group of experts EXPs too but additionally there exists a group of customers CTMs which will be guided by the experts to use their own experience to find a possible solution.

ACTOR STORY (AS)

  1. The goal of an actor story (AS) is a full specification of all identified necessary tasks T which lead from a start state q* to a goal state q+, including all possible and necessary changes between the different states M.
  2. A state is here considered as a finite set of facts (F) which are structured as an expression from some language L distinguishing names of objects (LIKE ‘d1’, ‘u1’, …) as well as properties of objects (like ‘being open’, ‘being green’, …) or relations between objects (like ‘the user stands before the door’). There can also e a ‘negation’ like ‘the door is not open’. Thus a collection of facts like ‘There is a door D1’ and ‘The door D1 is open’ can represent a state.
  3. Changes from one state q to another successor state q’ are described by the object whose action deletes previous facts or creates new facts.
  4. In this approach at least three different modes of an actor story will be distinguished:
    1. A pictorial mode generating a Pictorial Actor Story (PAS). In a pictorial mode the drawings represent the main objects with their properties and relations in an explicit visual way (like a Comic Strip).
    2. A textual mode generating a Textual Actor Story (TAS): In a textual mode a text in some everyday language (e.g. in English) describes the states and changes in plain English. Because in the case of a written text the meaning of the symbols is hidden in the heads of the writers it can be of help to parallelize the written text with the pictorial mode.
    3. A mathematical mode generating a Mathematical Actor Story (MAS): n the mathematical mode the pictorial and the textual modes are translated into sets of formal expressions forming a graph whose nodes are sets of facts and whose edges are labeled with change-expressions.

TASK INDUCED ACTOR-REQUIREMENTS (TAR)

If an actor story AS is completed, then one can infer from this story all the requirements which are directed at the executing as well as the assistive actors of the story. These requirements are targeting the needed input- as well as output-behavior of the actors from a 3rd person point of view (e.g. what kinds of perception are required, what kinds of motor reactions, etc.).

ACTOR INDUCED ACTOR-REQUIREMENTS (AAR)

Depending from the kinds of actors planned for the real work (biological systems, animals or humans; machines, different kinds of robots), one has to analyze the required internal structures of the actors needed to enable the required perceptions and responses. This has to be done in a 1st person point of view.

ACTOR MODELS (AMs)

Based on the AARs one has to construct explicit actor models which are fulfilling the requirements.

USABILITY TESTING (UTST)

Using the actor as a ‘norm’ for the measurement one has to organized an ‘usability test’ in he way, that a real executing test actor having the required profiles has to use a real assisting actor in the context of the specified actor story. Place in a start state of the actor story the executing test actor has to show that and how he will reach the defined goal state of the actor story. For this he has to use a real assistive actor which usually is an experimental device (a mock-up), which allows the test of the story.

Because an executive actor is usually a ‘learning actor’ one has to repeat the usability test n-times to see, whether the learning curve approaches a minimum. Additionally to such objective tests one should also organize an interview to get some judgments about the subjective states of the test persons.

SIMULATION

With an increasing complexity of an actor story AS it becomes important to built a simulator (SIM) which can take as input the start state of the actor story together with all possible changes. Then the simulator can compute — beginning with the start state — all possible successor states. In the interactive mode participating actors will explicitly be asked to interact with the simulator.

Having a simulator one can use a simulator as part of an usability test to mimic the behavior of an assistive actor. This mode can also be used for training new executive actors.

A TOP-DOWN ACTOR STORY

The elaboration of an actor story will usually be realized in a top-down style: some AAI experts will develop the actor story based on their experience and will only ask for some test persons if they have elaborated everything so far that they can define some tests.

A BOTTOM-UP ACTOR STORY

In a bottom-up style the AAI experts collaborate from the beginning with a group of common users from the application domain. To do this they will (i) extract the knowledge which is distributed in the different users, then (ii) they will start some modeling from these different facts to (iii) enable some basic simulations. This simple simulation (iv) will be enhanced to an interactive simulation which allows serious gaming either (iv.a) to test the model or to enable the users (iv.b) to learn the space of possible states. The test case will (v) generate some data which can be used to evaluate the model with regard to pre-defined goals. Depending from these findings (vi) one can try to improve the model further.

THE COGNITIVE SPACE

To be able to construct executive as well as assistive actors which are close to the way how human persons do communicate one has to set up actor models which are as close as possible with the human style of cognition. This requires the analysis of phenomenal experience as well as the psychological behavior as well as the analysis of a needed neuron-physiological structures.

STATE DYNAMICS

To model in an actor story the possible changes from one given state to another one (or to many successor states) one needs eventually besides explicit deterministic changes different kinds of random rules together with adaptive ones or decision-based behavior depending from a whole network of changing parameters.

LIBRARIES AS ACTORS. WHAT ABOUT THE CITIZENS?

eJournal: uffmm.org, ISSN 2567-6458, 19.Januar 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

In this blog a new approach to the old topic of ‘Human-Machine Interaction (HMI)’ is developed turning the old Human-Machine dyad into the many-to-many relation of ‘Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI)’. And, moreover, in this new AAI approach the classical ‘top-down’ approach of engineering is expanded with a truly ‘bottom-up’ approach locating the center of development in the distributed knowledge of a population of users assisted by the AAI experts.

PROBLEM

From this perspective it is interesting to see how on an international level the citizens of a community/ city are not at the center of research, but again the city and its substructures – here public libraries – are called ‘actors’ while the citizens as such are only an anonymous matter of driving these structures to serve the international ‘buzz word’ of a ‘smart city’ empowered by the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’.

This perspective is published in a paper from Shannon Mersand et al. (2019) which reviews all the main papers available focusing on the role of public libraries in cities. It seems – I could not check by myself the search space — that the paper gives a good overview of this topic in 48 cited papers.

The main idea underlined by the authors is that public libraries are already so-called ‘anchor institutions’ in a community which either already include or could be extended as “spaces for innovation, collaboration and hands on learning that are open to adults and younger children as well”. (p.3312) Or, another formulation “that libraries are consciously working to become a third space; a place for learning in multiple domains and that provides resources in the form of both materials and active learning opportunities”. (p.3312)

The paper is rich on details but for the context of the AAI paradigm I am interested only on the general perspective how the roles of the actors are described which are identified as responsible for the process of problem solving.

The in-official problem of cities is how to organize the city to respond to the needs of its citizens. There are some ‘official institutions’ which ‘officially’ have to fulfill this job. In democratic societies these institutions are ‘elected’. Ideally these official institutions are the experts which try to solve the problem for the citizens, which are the main stakeholder! To help in this job of organizing the ‘best fitting city-layout’ there exists usually at any point of time a bunch of infrastructures. The modern ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ is only one of many possible infrastructures.

To proceed in doing the job of organizing the ‘best fitting city-layout’ there are generally two main strategies: ‘top-down’ as usual in most cities or ‘bottom-‘ in nearly no cities.

In the top-down approach the experts organize the processes of the cities more or less on their own. They do not really include the expertise of their citizens, not their knowledge, not their desires and visions. The infrastructures are provided from a birds perspective and an abstract systems thinking.

The case of the public libraries is matching this top-down paradigm. At the end of their paper the authors classify public libraries not only as some ‘infrastructure’ but “… recognize the potential of public libraries … and to consider them as a key actor in the governance of the smart community”. (p.3312) The term ‘actor’ is very strong. This turns an institution into an actor with some autonomy of deciding what to do. The users of the library, the citizens, the primary stakeholder of the city, are not seen as actors, they are – here – the material to ‘feed’ – to use a picture — the actor library which in turn has to serve the governance of the ‘smart community’.

DISCUSSION

Yes, this comment can be understood as a bit ‘harsh’ because one can read the text of the authors a bit different in the sense that the citizens are not only some matter to ‘feed’ the actor library but to see the public library as an ‘environment’ for the citizens which find in the libraries many possibilities to learn and empower themselves. In this different reading the citizens are clearly seen as actors too.

This different reading is possible, but within an overall ‘top-down’ approach the citizens as actors are not really included as actors but only as passive receivers of infrastructure offers; in a top-down approach the main focus are the infrastructures, and from all the infrastructures the ‘smart’ structures are most prominent, the internet of things.

If one remembers two previous papers of Mila Gascó (2016) and Mila Gascó-Hernandez (2018) then this is a bit astonishing because in these earlier papers she has analyzed that the ‘failure’ of the smart technology strategy in Barcelona was due to the fact that the city government (the experts in our framework) did not include sufficiently enough the citizens as actors!

From the point of view of the AAI paradigm this ‘hiding of the citizens as main actors’ is only due to the inadequate methodology of a top-down approach where a truly bottom-up approach is needed.

In the Oct-2, 2018 version of the AAI theory the bottom-up approach is not yet included. It has been worked out in the context of the new research project about ‘City Planning and eGaming‘  which in turn has been inspired by Mila Gascó-Hernandez!

REFERENCES

  • S.Mersand, M. Gasco-Hernandez, H. Udoh, and J.R. Gil-Garcia. “Public libraries as anchor institutions in smart communities: Current practices and future development”, Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pages 3305 – 3314, 2019. URL https: //hdl.handle.net/10125/59766 .

  • Mila Gascó, “What makes a city smart? lessons from Barcelona”. 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pages 2983–2989, Jan 2016. D O I : 10.1109/HICSS.2016.373.

  • Mila Gascó-Hernandez, “Building a smart city: Lessons from Barcelona.”, Commun. ACM, 61(4):50–57, March 2018. ISSN 0001-0782. D O I : 10.1145/3117800. URL http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3117800 .

WHY QT FOR AAI?

eJournal: uffmm.org, ISSN 2567-6458, 2.January 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email:
gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

This is a continuation from the post QUANTUM THEORY (QT). BASIC PROPERTIES, where basic properties of quantum theory (QT) according to ch.27 of Griffiths (2003) have been reported. Before we dig deeper into the QT matter here a remark why we should do this at all because the main topic of the uffmm.org blog is the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) paradigm dealing with actors including a subset of actors which have the complexity of biological systems at least as complex as exemplars of the kind of human sapiens.

WHY QT IN THE CASE OF AAI

As Griffiths (2003) points out in his chapter 1 and chapter 27 quantum theory deals with objects which are not perceivable by the normal human sensory apparatus. It needs special measurement procedures and instrumentation to measure events related to quantum objects. Therefore the level of analysis in quantum theory is quite ‘low’ compared to the complexity hierarchies of biological systems.

Baars and Edelman (2012) address the question of the relationship of QT and biological phenomena, especially those connected to the phenomenon of human consciousness, explicitly. Their conclusion is very clear: “Current quantum-level proposals do not explain the prominent empirical features of consciousness”. (Baars and Edelman (2012):p.286)

Behind this short statement we have to accept the deep insights of modern (evolutionary and micro) biology that a main characteristics of biological systems has to be seen in their ability to overcome the fluctuating and unstable quantum properties by a more and more complex machinery which posses its own logic and its own specific dynamics.

Therefore the level of analysis for the behavior of biological systems is usually ‘far above’ the level of quantum theory.

Why then at all bother with QT in the case of the AAI paradigm?

If one looks to the AAI paradigm then one detects the concept of the actor story (AS) which assumes that reality can be conceived — and then be described – as a ‘process’ which can be analyzed as a ‘sequence of states’ characterized by decidable ‘facts’ which can ‘change in time’. A ‘change’ can occur either by some changing time measured by ‘time points’ generated by a ‘time machine’ called ‘clock’ or by some ‘inherent change’ observable as a change in some ‘facts’.

Restricting the description of the transitions of such a sequence of states to properties of classical probability theory, one detects severe limits of the descriptive power of a CPT description compared to what has to be done in an AAI analysis. (see for this the post BACKGROUND INFORMATION 27.Dec.2018: The AAI-paradigm and Quantum Logic. The Limits of Classic Probability). The limits result from the fact that actors within the AAI paradigm are in many cases ‘not static’ and ‘not deterministic’ systems which can change their structures and behavior functions in a way that the basic assumptions of CPT are no longer valid.

It remains the question whether a probability theory PT which is based on quantum theory QT is in some sense ‘better adapted’ to the AAI paradigm than Classical PT.

This question is the main perspective guiding the further encounter with QT.

See next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUELLEN

  • Bernard J. Baars and David B. Edelman. Consciousness, biology, and quantum hypotheses. Physics of Life Review, 9(3):285 – 294, 2012. D O I: 10.1016/j.plrev.2012.07.001. Epub. URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22925839
  • R.B. Griffiths. Consistent Quantum Theory. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003