Measuring or weighing

The recent oil disaster in the gulf of Mexico has caused a rise in the gross domestic product (GDP) adjoining countries. The same happened in Alaska when back in 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez created the biggest natural disaster till that moment. But the Alaskan GDP rose because never had there been so much activity in the country. Hotels, restaurants, shops and gas stations did serious business.
This example shows how absurd it is to use economic growth as a sole indicator of progress. Quality of life is not just measured by the number of produced units. A cynic could say: ‘the more disasters the more employment’.

Tagged with: knowledge management, implicit, framing, smart,

Jason returns

Last week I read two PhD proposals on how ‘smart’ agents and microsystems can do their work more ‘intelligently’ if they become ‘aware’ of their surroundings. This is not an uncommon way of putting things: we have ‘smart’ phones, ‘intelligent’ video recorders, and security systems that are ‘aware’ of a possible breaking and entering. But there is a difference between using these words in everyday life as a shortcut to express ourselves and using these words in a scientific context. In the latter you commit yourself to explain what exactly you mean by it. Mostly this boils down to references to ‘schemata’: knowledge structures that are used to infer what the situation is and how to behave in it. The ‘restaurant’-schemata of Schank & Abelson is one of the most famous.

Tagged with: artificial intelligence, frame problem, schemata, smart,