Re: performatives and trust

From: "pat hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>

> Tim, greetings. Thanks for the pointers, but I think that this is
> still too limited. It is not clear to me that web publication is very
> much like speech acts at all. Speech acts take place between
> creatures which have a social life and carefully distinguish between
> their private thoughts from their public assertions, neither of which
> apply here. In some ways, putting an ontology onto the web is more
> like electronic telepathy than speech, and the communication problems
> are rather like those that would probably arise if my brain had the
> problem of making sense of your thoughts.  I think we need some
> entirely new ways of thinking about this. For example, what would be
> the common ground (in Herb Clark's sense) of a telepathic
> 'conversation'?

I think you have identified some interesting assumptions here.  But I don't
think you or anyone should (or can) burn those assumptions into internet
standards.  In fact, I would argue that recent trends of internet usage are
going in the opposite direction than you indicate.  If you doubt this, lurk
a while in some of the p2p groups like [1].   I for one do not consider the
metadata that I encounter on the web anything but speech acts, and believe
that it would be foolish to believe otherwise.  And most of the knowledge I
discover on the net in recent months, is not via some search at google, but
rather by some social transaction.  Such social transactions provide far
more relivant results.  What we need are atuomated agents to assist  our
social processes; not some kind of group think.

[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decentralization

  The future internet is *NOT* a communication media for the Borg !!!

Seth Russell

Received on Tuesday, 5 June 2001 11:18:41 UTC