Discourse Architecture

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Discourse Architecture Very Large-Scale
Conversation Cornell University/CS IS/December
2002
Warren Sack Social Technologies Group UC
Berkeley ? Film Digital Media Department UC
Santa Cruz
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Talk Outline

• Social Technologies Group An Overview
• Discourse Architecture
• Definition
• Related Work
• Technologies
• Object(s) of Study
• Two Kinds of Work
• Very Large-Scale Conversation
• Conversation Map Demo
• Open Source Project Browser Demo
• Conclusions Technologies of Discourse Self

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Social Technologies People
4
Social Technologies Projects

• Conversation Map summarizing and visualizing
  very large-scale conversations (e.g., newsgroups)

5
Social Technologies Projects

• Open Source Project Browser summarizing and
  visualizing email CVS logs
• Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ph.D. student, PARC Research
  Scientist

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Social Technologies Projects

• Open Source Software Development as Learning
  Environment
• Dilan Mahendran and Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ph.D.
  students
• John Canny, CS Division Steven Weber,Political
  Science Department and Bob Cole, Haas Business
  School, UC Berkeley. Also, Dr. Francoise
  Detienne, INRIA, France and related work with
  Paul Pangaro, Elaine Coleman, and Rachel
  Strickland at Sun Microsystems.

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Social Technologies Projects

• Street Stories wireless GPS device for
  archiving and accessing audio-based, community
  stories
• Mahad Ibrahim, Ph.D. student Craig Rixford and
  Mike Kim, masters students, Seema Moorjani,
  undergrad

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Social Technologies Projects

• Translation Map Sociotechnical protocol and
  visualization for coordinating geographic and
  linguistic translation
• with Sawad Brooks, Brown University

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Discourse Architecture Definition

• Network architecture the computer science of
  connecting machines to machines.
• Information architecture that area of
  information science concerned with connecting
  people to machines by making it easy for people
  to find information on networked machines.
• Discourse architecture the practice of
  designing environments to connect people to
  people through networked computers. Or, more
  specifically, discourse architecture is the
  practice of designing networked environments to
  support conversation, discussion, and exchange
  between people.

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Discourse Architecture Related Work

• Is this HCI? Yes, but it is not just task-based.
  We need to understand how people come together,
  move apart and change over time thus, it's just
  as much about how technology changes people as it
  is about designing technology for people as they
  are today.
• Is this Computer-Assisted Learning? Yes, but
  with extra attention paid to the social and
  cultural dimensions.
• Is this CSCW? Yes, but it is not necessarily
  focused on work. However, CSCW's current
  interest in the production of social capital
  comes close.
• Is this CMC? Yes, but its as much about the
  design of computational technologies as it is
  about their evaluation and use.
• Is this information retrieval? Yes, but it is as
  much about social and cultural productions as it
  is about information. But, IRs use of sociology
  is close in spirit cf., collaborative filtering,
  social navigation, etc. e.g., Google,
  Kleinberg, etc.
• Is this NLP? Yes, but it is especially important
  to think of users as also authors situated in a
  larger social context.

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Discourse Architecture Technologies

• Newsgroups
• email
• Listservs
• Usenet
• Weblogs
• Chat
• Instant Messager
• Audio messaging
• Etc.

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Discourse Architecture Object Of Study

• Communication, butwith the understanding that

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Discourse Architecture Object Of Study

• What can be produced over the course of a
  conversational exchange? A discourse.
• subjects e.g., roles and their
  interrelationships
• common sense e.g., a mutual understanding
• common time e.g., (a)synchronicity, turn-taking
  rules, etc.
• common space e.g, the production and
  differentiation of the private, the social and
  the public
• community difference

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Discourse Architecture Work

• Two kinds of work
• Theory and Analysis Discourse architects are
  interested in analytical techniques for
  identifying conversational structure and
  explicating the forces that shape it.
• Design the design and implementation of new
  computer network technologies for discourse that
  is, the means to shape the conversation that
  takes place within a given system.

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Discourse Architecture Design

• Just as physical architecture facilitates certain
  activities and inhibit others (compare, for
  instance, the exchanges supported by
  amphitheaters versus those supported by cafes),
  so do system architectures facilitate certain
  types of conversations.

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Discourse Architecture Design
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Whats wrong with this picture? What would a
better email client look like?
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Very Large-Scale Conversation Examples

• Newsgroups
• email
• Listservs
• Usenet
• Weblogs
• Chat
• Instant Messager
• Audio messaging
• I.e., network-supported discussions involving
  fifty or more people

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Conversation Map Listserv as VLSC
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OSBrowser Sociotechnical Architecture
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Conclusions

• Reinventing conversation The term Dialectic
  originates from the Greek expression for the art
  of conversation.
• Related work in art and philosophy
• Digital Dialectics (MIT Press) Peter Lunenfeld
  (Art Center) et al.
• Digital Compositing Digital compositing
  exemplifies a more general operation of computer
  culture assembling together a number of
  elements to create a single seamless object." Lev
  Manovich (UCSD), The Language of New Media (MIT
  Press)
• Meta-Morphing (UC Press) Vivian Sobchack (UCLA)
  et al.
• Montage e.g., Sergei Eisenstein,A Dialectical
  Approach to Film Form
• Changing the self Individuals, groups,
  villages, nations, nation states, social
  movements, VLSC, etc.
• Sherry Turkle called the computer the second
  self
• Foucault provides a long genealogy of
  technologies of the self.