Sharing work, experience, interpretation, and maybe even meanings between natural and artificial agents
Kirstie L. Bellman · 2002
Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) are becoming increasingly popular as environments where humans and artificial agents can share collaboratively the use of a variety of different information processing and visualization tools. The paper builds on a new concept, first proposed at the NIST 1996 Semiotics conference that MUVEs provide an exciting testbed for developing new semiotic concepts and mathematical foundations. The approach is to provide a computer-mediated, instrumented environment in which all agents' actions are observable, permitting an analytic basis for recording and analyzing all agents interactions and results. The hope is that this 'shared experience' and common interpretations within a defined context will allow the development of notations that represent the 'meanings' among agents in that environment.