Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.
All materials contained hereafter are copyright property of John C. Wang, no parts can be reproduced without prior consent from the author.
John C. Wang is a graduate student at the National Taiwan University, Taiwan. He is a member of the Intelligent Robotics Lab at NTU, author of the UniBase Network Programming Framework, founder of the Ideae Group, and an active member of the intelligent agent research community. He can be reached at http://ideae.csie.ntu.edu.tw/jcwang/.
A goal of this study is to define a set of communication primitives that is sufficient to support collaboratics over modern communication media. For more information on collaboratics, please visit the Ideae Group, the germinating ground for collaboratics.
In the following sections, we discuss contributing factors to the primitives we are defining. We use the terms sender, receiver, and message as they are usually defined in the context of communications.
Intentions are the primary concern in effective communication. Without intentions to measure against, it would not be possible to discuss effectiveness. However, even when there is a clear intention, the communication may not always be effective. In collaboratics, the computer is geared to provide assistance to effectively deliver intentions.
Attitudes expressed when a message is sent affects how a message will be conceived. The wrong attitude often prevents successful communications. Appropriateness of an attitude is often dependent on the relationship between the communicating parties. A casual attitude, for example, can harm or enhance the effectiveness of communication, depending on whether the receiver expects to be treated casually.
Presentation of a transmitted message is maximized for the sender's intention, to the best of the sender's ability. Although what will be perceived may not be that intended, presentation is still vital as nothing will be delivered without being covered in the presentation.
Transmission introduces changes to a presentation out of the sender's control. Measures are taken to ensure that the variations can be recovered and sufficient information is provided so that recovery is possible. For changes that cannot be recovered, such as transmission delays, proper precautions, whether explicit or implicit, must be taken.
Perception is the process in which the receiver recovers meanings from a received message. As the context of perception is often very different from that in which the message was originally composed, some conversion can be applied to make the received message better convey the original intention.
The effectiveness of communication can be measured from the reaction of the receiver in response the received message. The degree of coherence between the reaction and the original intention is one way to rate the effectiveness of the communication.
Tracking measures the flow of communication without explicit intervention in the process. Tracking helps determine factors affecting future communications, including user habit, communication patterns, personal preference, etc.
Here we suggest some of the operations that may constitute the set of primitive communication primitives. These may be implemented as object methods or simple calls. Semantics, rather than types, of the parameters are suggested as well.
SetIntention( Explicitness, Priority, GeneralTerms )
SetAudience( AudienceModel )
SetAttitude( PresentationOrder, GeneralTerms )
SetTargetMedium( MediumDescriptors )
SetTargetSociety( SocietyDescriptors )
GeneratePresentation( PresentationOrder, GeneralTerms )
SetTxPriority( Priority )
SetTxQuality( Quality )
SetPerceptionHints( GeneralTerms )
SetPerceptionAvoids( GeneralTerms )
GetCoherence( PrivacyClearanceLevel, OrigianlIntention )
GetResponseProgress( PrivacyClearanceLevel, ResponseEvaluator )
GetTrackInfo( PrivacyClearanceLevel, GeneralTerms )
UpdateAudienceModel( PrivacyClearanceLevel, AudienceModel )
Last Update: September 20, 1996
Created: September 19, 1996