Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing

by Correa da Silva; Agusti-Cullell; James; van Harmelen

• ISBN13: 9780444529350
• ISBN10: 0444529357
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-10
• Publisher: Elsevier Science

Summary

Except from the Foreword The stated aim of the book series "Capturing Intelligence" is to publish books on research from all disciplines dealing with and affecting the issue of understanding and reproducing intelligence artificial systems. Of course, much of the work done in the past decades in this area has been of a highly technical nature, varying from hardware design for robots, software design for intelligent agents, and formal logic for reasoning. It is therefore very refreshing to see Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing. This is a courageous book indeed. It is not afraid to tackle the Big Issues: notions such as information, knowledge, information system, information flow, collaborative problem solving, and ontological reasoning. All of these notions are crucial to our understanding of intelligence and our building of intelligent artificial systems, but all too often, these Big Issues are hidden behind the curtains while the technical topics take center stage. AI has a rich history of philosophical books that have chosen a non-standard structure and narrative. It is nice to see that the authors have succeeded into combining a non-standard approach to deep questions with a non-standard format, resulting in a highly interesting volume. Frank van Harmelen, Series Editor Excerpt from the Introduction Our interest is to promote, through a better and deeper understanding of the notions of information and knowledge, a better and deeper critical understanding of information technology as situated in the full range of human activities, assuming as a principle that this range of activities cannot be properly appreciated when it is reduced to the simplified means-end schema proposed by Technology. We invite the reader to build his/her own points of view about these notions, considering our propositions as a starting point for a critical analysis and discussion of these points. With that, we believe we are contributing to a better understanding of the impact of technology and particularly of Information Technology in everyday life. Flavio Soares Correa da Silva, Jaume Agusti-Cullell *Bridges the gap between the technological and philosophical aspects of information technology *Gives both professionals and academics a philosophical foundation of IT so they can better understand their own discliplines *Sheds light on a part of IT which is often overshadowed by its technical counterparts

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
List of Figures	p. xiii
Prologue	p. 1
Introduction	p. 13
Intended audience	p. 21
Chapters' contents	p. 23
Intermission	p. 24
About the quotations in the beginning of each chapter	p. 26
Information	p. 27
Agents and the world	p. 34
Reality and structure	p. 36
Information systems	p. 37
A non-rationalistic stance	p. 44
Bibliographical notes	p. 45
Intermission	p. 49
Information Flow	p. 65
Communicated information	p. 68
Noise and distortion	p. 69
Received information	p. 76
Communication systems	p. 79
The purpose of communication	p. 85
Bibliographical notes	p. 87
Intermission	p. 89
Shared Understanding	p. 103
Dialogues for shared understanding	p. 106
Communication spaces	p. 108
Productive dialogue	p. 111
Facilitators for productive dialogues	p. 114
Bibliographical notes	p. 117
Intermission	p. 119
Collaborative Problem Solving	p. 139
Coordinated action	p. 144
Reliability and trust	p. 148
Bibliographical notes	p. 152
Intermission	p. 153
Ontological Reasoning	p. 175
Ontology	p. 177
Patterns of interaction	p. 184
Bibliographical notes	p. 187
Intermission	p. 189
Uncertainty	p. 203
Controlled uncertainty	p. 206
Trust, confidentiality and privacy	p. 210
Bibliographical notes	p. 212
Intermission	p. 213
Knowledge Sharing	p. 227
The illusion of life	p. 232
Bibliographical notes	p. 235
Intermission	p. 237
Knowledge	p. 247
Bibliographical notes	p. 251
Conclusion	p. 253
Epilogue	p. 259
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 279
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