The Synthetic Librarian

I spent most of my week attending Access 2005, a Canadian library technology conference which was held in Edmonton, Alberta. I also spent one day at Netspeed 2005, also a library technology conference but with a different audience held immediately following Access 2005. This is my commentary. I apologize for the lack of coherent structure… I’m under time pressure but want to say what I’ve got to say. Executive summary: I observe “small parts loosely coupled” as a consistent theme of many presentation and advocate looking for theory behind the practice while optimistically pursuing all the mechanisms, solutions, and technologies that we enthusiastically presented at Access.

Access was a truely remarkable conference and I regret that I was only able to be there for about 3/4 of all the presentations. The presentations were diverse and complimentary. I will describe a set of common themes that I observed that, based on my conversation with other participants may be seen as unusual. I believe what emerged through the presentations was that library technology is striving to capture emergence. Looking at the conference through “emergence colored glasses,” the highlight of the conference was a presentation by Humanities Computing professor Stan Ruecker on content-rich browsing interfaces.

The audience was much in awe of Ruecker’s interface examples. Peter Binkley’s comments after the presentation captured the enthusiasm that I think was the concensus. He said something like, “Your interfaces are like choclate and I just want to smear them all over my own work.” (By the end of the conference I anticipated with great delite every occaision when Peter approached a microphone… he is blessed with remarkable wit). Ruecker showed us several examples of his work and the common element in all of them was presenting the user with an insane amount of data.

The first example was a pill database. The idea of the appliation is to let users get information about the medication they take by first visually identifying the pill. The interface we saw presents users with a screen with hundreds or thousands of pills. He made a strong case for how and why that interface worked. Ruecker then showed many other interfaces that had similar features. The interfaces were innovated and generated a lot of enthusiasm as Peter’s comment demonstrates.

My enthusiasm, however, is not for the specific interfaces or their domain-specific success. I was impressed by the one slide where he explained WHY these interfaces should work theoretically. He brought into the discuss J.J. Gibson’s theory of affordances. Affordances, recognize that agent(user) and environment are coupled together and that environment and the environment represent opportunities for action.

In this case the idea is that interfaces “afford” actions to their users. Why present an insane amount of information to the user? Won’t that confuse them? It will not confuse them it the interface affords some action. In this case the interface contains an insane amount of information and controls to change how it is visualized or to reduce the amount of information (both of which are domain-specific changes). This means that the interface affords opportunties to improve or refine it.

In contrast, one might argue that simple interfaces like google’s afford very little. While the impose a small cognitive load on the user the provide little or no opportunity for action. This theory is nice because it explains both why Google works and why Ruecker’s interfaces work… with one theory.

Let me say, I’m not a fan of affordances, but I am a fan of theory in science and psychology. In this case I have no objection to invoking affordances as an exploratory mechanism but I would like to go beyond Ruecker’s explanation however and bring in the concept of embodiment. Embodiment, like affordances, acknowledge’s that the user/agent is coupled with its environment. Embodied theories of behavior explicitly state that “cognition is for action.” That is, we perceive so we can act; not so that we can think. If thinking is happening, it is a separate parallel process. Embodiment also argues that we solve many symbolic problems, not by thinking about them, but by exploiting our environment. In short, a complex environment makes us smarter.

So embodiment says,

1. if we are inseparable from our environment,
2. and if our brains are hardwired so that perception result in action,
3. a user will repeated consult the environment for potential actions in loose loops,
4. thus providing opportunities for action will result in “smarter” behavior

Allow me to say, that this is of course, an extreme dumming down of this type of explanation. I recommend Andy Clark’s book “Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again” or Nuenez and Lakoff’s “Where does Mathematics Come From?”.

This brings me to loose-coupling and emergence. Many of the presentations at Access extoled the virtues of loose-coupling. It is taken for granted now that, in software design, we want “small parts, loosely coupled.” The emphasis on web services, REST, and AJAX all result from and reinforce this idea. Such loose-coupling is seen as the right thing to do because it makes things for manageable, scalable, and flexible. If we engineer software from loosely coupled components we end up spending less time fixing things later and exploit other people’s work more easily… so there is strong reusability angle as well.

Loose-coupling is not just a popular in programming however. I see Catherine Steeves excellent (if shaky) presentation on collaboration as an effort to apply loose-coupling to social networks just as much as Gene Smith’s presentation on folksonomies was. Folksonomies exploit social networks that we didn’t know were there. Catherine advocates finding social networks (in meat-space) that we may not know are there by finding bridge-builders in our existing networks. For me, Access would not have been complete with Catherine presentation which both advocated for collaboration and warned of the dangers of over-collaboration. Essentially, the message I heard was: look for the edge of chaos and try to stay there.

The notion of loose-coupling is frequently invoked in computing science in exactly that way: the edge of choas. It helps to explain how complexity emerges from choas. And that brings me to emergence.

Gene Smith’s presentation on folksonomy was well balanced explaining how some advocate that folksonomy means that we don’t need domain experts, that we don’t need catalogers and that tagging will “just work out” in the end. Other react against that and argue that in some problem domains that cannot or will not happen. Yet, his presentation is optimistic that there is much value in folksonomy and tagging. The balanced approach he took agrees with me very much.

I see those that claim that tagging is a revolution as overly optimistic. In essence I see them as arguing that we can pick an architecture of simple components that are loosely-coupled and that we can expect the higher level complexity to emerge. They see this pattern throughout nature and are optimistic that it will happen on the web because we already have some early positive examples of interesting emergent properties (social bookmarking). I would say however, that in those examples, as in nature, we do not see consistent success of emergence from small-parts-loosely-coupled. In nature, often the “local interactions” of small part cancel each other out or result in “noise.” Similarily the results of folksonomy are not yet astonishing: I would characterize them as mildly asthonishing in some limited examples. Definately a cause for attention, optimism, and further work, but no reason to declare that we have a solution to hard problems.

It gives us reason to look as both folksonomy but also further toward ontology. The semantic web provides a tractable architecture for knowledge systems. I have read Peter recently say that he thought RDF was scary but will now look toward it. I feel that we have no choice but to look at RDF and the semantic web; if for no other reason but to explore the possibility that folksonomy may be TOO simple to build the components of loosely-coupled architecture. Historically, in part, RDF and the sematic web can trace their roots to a book by Lenat and Guha back in the 1980s called “Building Large Knowledge Based Systems.” This work describes the ideas behind the Cyc project. Probably the most interest ontology-based artificial intelligence system around. The idea is that the small parts are atomic pieces of information “stones are hard” or “math is hard.” These are loosely coupled by inference rules. So we could infer from the first two that “stones are like math in that they are both hard” and thus form the basis for metaphors used in complex ideas.

While Lenat went on to found Cycorp which applies this theory to military and big banking applications, Guha went on to work on the sematic web.

Gene Smith (I think it was him) commented at one point in his presentation that one solution to a tagging problem that came up with an application he wrote for a client might be solved by “algorithms” and someone asked what those woudl be. He said he didn’t know but it was a class of solution they might hire a programmer to invent. It might be that the class of solutions he called “algorithms” really allude to the difference between what can be handled by components that are “taxonomy/folksonomy” and those that are “ontology.” Obviously, whenever you apply a taxonomy you start to see ontology. The work of Lenat and Guhu, RDF, and the semantic web might lend some insight there.

This brings me to my last point. Synthetic psychology. If you have read Braitenberg’s vehicles you may know this terms. I know this work from the UofA’s Biological Computing Project which uses the “small parts loosely coupled” approach to in explaining cognition/psychology/behavior. The idea is similar to what we have seen but there is an emphasis on using models to discover principle crucial to explaining why a system works.

I think that is what Access 2005 impressed on me. We have good reasons to adopt some new methods and technologies. But perhaps went unsaid but that was implied is that we need to look for the reasons why these mechansims work, beyond the here-and-now. In synthetic psychology we avoid unecassarily complicated explainations by adopting this methodology:

1. Pick an architecture of simple componment and rules for there interaction
2. Design a system from that architecture
3. Look for surprising or interesting results
4. Analyse the system to discover what was critical to create the surprise/result

For programmers this is not shocking. For science it is turning things upside down. The approach is called “synthetic” because it advocated building first and analysing later. It advocates that you can learn about feature crucial to the success of a system through wise modeling choices.

Ruecker’s explanation seems to fit this method. For each problem domain a cross-discipilary group choose an architecture and designed a system. They then analyzed it to see what worked and why it worked. We can be very enthusistic about the success of the specific examples. We could say, “wow, we’ve got that pill inteface problem licked now” but we should be more enthusiastic about the method. The brilliance of this work is that is gives us a path to follow toward future success!

Oh yeah… since this has degraded into a rant… I might as well tack on my other unstructure thoughts about access. I’m sad I missed the hackfest. The food was outstanding. One fellow I had lunch with on Tuesday from Yale commented that this food was really above the norm for similar conferences. I agree. A really friendly group. Doug Poff remains the king of good questions… while the rest of us remained stunned after a good presentation he is actively seeking more info.

I did not expect to like Garbage. I had it on a list of CDs to borrow from my local public library ever since I heard two catchy songs in video games on the Sony PS2. I was reminded of Garbage’s existence again while taking a class in Learning Principles and Advertising this term. Garbage was used in a paper (Hung, 2001) on the affect of music and conditioning in teaser ads. The professor for the course describes the music as “brit pop.” I decided to check out the CDs from the library.

The lyrics below are an excerpt from Parade. The tune itself is very pop-ish; very upbeat and catchy. The lyrics are distopian but clearly not pessimistic. I’m hooked…

get it right get it right get it right now
let’s burn
the factory
that makes all
the wannabes
let’s burst all
the bubbles
that brainwash
the masses

My favorite playlist trick is to put a little high-energy Garbage mixed in with Jack of Jill and then finish with Jimmy Eat World’s Authority Song.

Two great places to brunch in Edmonton are Culina on 99th and Cafe de Ville just north of Jasper Ave. I’ve had brunch at both places in the last two weeks and I took photos of the great food for posterity.

Today Kim and I had brunch with our friend Sharon at Culina. Kim had bacon and eggs while Sharon and I both had the special. Bacon and eggs at Culina is special. They have bacon that is pork meat taken from the shoulder and is not served in strips. You can see it clearly in the attached photo. It is quite tender and not as greasy as regular strips of bacon. It tastes more like turkey to me.

The special today at Culina was a frittata with corn and melted edam served with sausage with herbs and maple covered in a tomato chutney. The frittata was moist and light but I really don’t like quiche and this is really just quiche. It tasted fine though. The chutney was refreshing. The sausages were remarkable. The maple was not overpowering and the herbs were prominent but balanced. These were the best sausages I have had in a long time and the played well with the chutney!

The Usual Suspects will be b-luncing at Culina again in just a few weeks. I look forward to whatever the special is that week. After today’s experience I am hoping that the menu includes those lovely sausages again!

Last week the Usual Suspects brunched at Cafe de Ville downtown. I had the Catania which is reminiscent of eggs benedict; however I do it a great disservice by making such a simple comparison. The Catania is thick bread topped with sliced grilled vegetables with a poached eggs on each covered with a spinach dressing and feta cheese. It is served with potatoes fried with dried tomato and seasoning. This is truly a gestalt dish; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Attention to given to every little detail in this dish. The vegetables are sliced in a way that allows them to mix and form a meshed bed under the poached eggs. The eggs are not poached in little cups and are thus unique and not quite soft-poached and not quite hard poached (which is how I make them at home. how did they know?!). The sauce was not trying to be a hollandaise variant as would be the obvious ploy in this type of dish. Instead it was a new experience taking this dish from being a “fancy eggs benny” to being its own thing.

While at de Ville I also shared a dish of baked brie in puff pastry with a friend. The brie seemed somewhat strong to me but it was rich and delicious. I regret not taking a photo of that plate as it was the most artful presentation at the table that morning! I highly recommend trying it. I was warned that the baked brie would take 20 minutes and might not come before my main order. That was odd as it is listed as a “starter.” Why offer a starter that will threaten to relegate your main dish to the heat lamp?! However, I was delighted that the brie came in ample time.

Over at the Blue Plate on 103 Ave just north of Jasper, they offer a Eggs Benedict Florentine. Its really good but nothing compared to the Catania. Both have spinach and feta cheese. Both are like eggs benedict but the Catania is unique in some many subtle ways. Of course it costs twice as much so I’ll give my dollar to the Blue Plate much more often to de Ville and the Florentine is really worth it but the comparison is still worth making.

I discovered the music of Emiliana Torrini by accident. I was looking for places to go when a friend was in town and looked at what bands were playing at local clubs. Somehow, that led me to find a description of Emiliana Torrini. The description I found contained one of those totally useless descriptions that just throw out the names of three or four pop artists. She was compared to Bjork and Kate Bush. Everyone compares female singers to Bjork and Kate Bush when they cannot figure out how to describe them. But hey… somehow they got my attention. I said to myself, “Nobody really sounds like Bjork.” On a whim, I checked to see if my local public library had any discs by Torrini and, in fact, they did!

Despite the dubious path that lead me to her music, I don’t regret listening to the disc. Torrini does in fact sound a bit like Bjork and it is no wonder as they are both Icelandic.

The title of the album I listened to, “Love in the Time of Science” was interesting. The opening track was short but incredible. A+ for first impressions. The rest of the album is good and some tracks are better than good. Her music is smooth and interesting. Some of the instrumentals remind me of The Flaming Lips (just a bit, as on the opening of the track “Baby Blue”). There are a lot of influences that come out in this album. Some tracks reminded me of something that could be a theme to a Bond tune (just a bit). Some reminded me of the band Red Delicious.

This music is definitely interesting and just the right mix of “different enough” and “similar enough.” The titles of the tracks really made an impression on me too:

1. Sea People
2. To Be Free
3. Wednesday’s Child
4. Baby Blue
5. Dead Things
6. Unemployed in Summertime
7. Easy
8. Fingertips
9. Telepathy
10. Tuna Fish
11. Summerbreeze

I know a few consultants besides myself who aspire to be Unemployed in Summertime. And sandwiching Dead Things between that track and Baby Blue was intriguing…. perhaps more so in title than in the actuality of the music.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the lyrics: “Sad things have to happen… sometimes.” (followed by the sound of a telephone/computer like noise)

The animated “documentary” titled Ryan, was shown at the Edmonton Public Library’s theatre on September 25, along with Alter Egos which is about the making of Ryan. I highly recommend seeing these films! However, not at all for the reason’s EPL describes:

Winner of the Oscar for best animated short, director Chris Landreth’s Ryan is an “animated documentary” based on the life of artist Ryan Larkin. Once one of Canada’s most influential animators, Larkin now lives on welfare and begs for money on the streets of Montreal. Employing stunning visual effects, the film traces Larkin’s descent into mental illness and addiction. Ryan will be shown along with the documentary Alter Egos – which gives further insight into Larkin’s struggles and examines the complex relationship between him and Landreth.

I have previously written about Ryan and I disagree with EPL’s description of the two films. Ryan is not based on the life of Ryan Larkin. It is based on an interview with Ryan Larkin. The visuals are interesting, certainly deceptive, but not stunning. The film does not trace Larkin’s descent into mental illness though it does attempt to blame him for not overcoming his mental illness and implies a false causal relationship between Larkin’s substance abuse and his illness/situation. I am not convinced that Landreth was as interested in having Larkin as the subject of the “documentary” as he was interested in becoming a part of Larkin’s life.

Ryan should not be seen without seeing the documentary “Alter Egos.” Alter Egos is about the making of Ryan and while it does not attempt to explain Larkin’s descent to the streets, it manages to provide more explanation than Ryan does. Alter Egos exposes Landreth for what he became by making Ryan and is a much more potent film.

You can get Ryan/Alter Egos from Edmonton Public Library. I was able to rent it at my local Blockbuster and you can order it directly from the National Film Board.