Strange Aeons

Recently a new project started in ARG:dundee, the argumentation research group at Dundee University. This project, the Dialectical Argumentation Machines project, is quite exciting and involves building tools for working with arguments on the web.The project abstract is as follows:

Humans use argument to express disagreement, to reach consensus and to both formulate and convey reasoning. The theory of argument has found wide application in artificial intelligence, providing mathematical structures for automated reasoning, communication protocols for distributed processing and linguistic models for natural language processing. A key stumbling block, however, has been joining together models that focus on abstract, mathematical relationships with those that focus on concrete, linguistic relationships. The first objective of this project is to develop for the first time a theoretical account that connects static, "monologic" argument with dynamic, multi-person, "dialogic" argument and ties together abstract, mathematical models with concrete, linguistic representations. Furthermore, models of argument have been predominantly confined to the lab. Our goal is to translate the research advances into high profile, large scale deployments using partners with enormous user bases. Prototype systems in this area have been sufficient to demonstrate the unique advantages of practical argumentation systems to potential users of this research such as those within the broadcasting domain. There is a demonstrated public demand for argument-based exploration of current issues with complex scientific and ethical dimensions, demonstrated, for example, by the longevity and success of high profile programming featuring topical issues discussed in a stylised argumentative debate format. The second objective of this project is to develop the theory into implemented components that can form a foundation for application development to support actual programmes with prototype testing Unique advantages afforded by the technology will allow users to interact with the programme material as if they were themselves contributors, allowing arguments to be probed, tested and extended, and the distinction between in-programme and post-programme content to be blurred. The interaction metaphor shifts from 'message-then-next-message' to 'question-answer-riposte-challenge...'. The rich structure is natural for users, and provides rich metadata for programme-makers. Finally, in 2007 an exciting vision of the "world-wide argumentation web" (WWAW) was laid out, in which systems such as those constructed to work alongside practical prototypes could interact, both with each other and with other debate and argumentation systems, both populist and academic. Argument fragments, expressed as resources on the Semantic Web, can cross-refer, allowing different debating systems to navigate the WWAW according to various rules of dialogue captured by dialectical games. To bring this vision of the WWAW into reality, the third and final objective of the project is to allow execution of arbitrary dialogue games on a platform that provides interfaces for human players, and both interfaces and control for computer players of dialogue games. In this way, we want to harness the enormous channel to market and the high-profile reference case that is offered by collaboration within broadcasting. At the same time, the project will be developing platform technology that can support exploitation in other areas. During the project, we will work with the Scottish Mediation Network in the context of mediation tools, with the Ontario courts in the context of judicial summaries, and with the Universities of Lugano and Groningen in the context of legal education to identify exploitation routes for the technology.

Although I am not employed by this project it has brought the opportunity to increase the size of the group with the addition of three new members, Mark Snaith, who was one of my honours project students last year working on OVA and worked with ARG:dundee over the summer developing the newlook argdb and integrating it with OVA, John Lawrence, who originally developed MAgtALO whilst an MSc student working for Chris, and Floris Bex who recently completed his Ph.D thesis, entitled "Evidence for a Good Story" supervised by Henry. These new members all bring different perspectives to the group discussion but already it seems that there are now enough of us in the group that it is less hard work to keep the discussions going. Before we all had to work harder to share the load of running a group discussion between three of us. That is much easier with six.

As promised here are the slides from my Argument Blogging presentation at CMNA 9 in Pasadena, California.

This Dilbert cartoon seemed apropo given that I am still working on my CMNA9 presentation of the Argument Blogging Project work. I managed to record a short film of Colin talking about his project at the School of Computing 09 degree show held in the Queen Mother Building at Dundee University. I am not a videographer but I think that I managed to capture the essence of Colin's implementation work on the project (or rather Colin managed to make a good presentation and I managed to hold the camera reasonably steadily and zoom in/out and focus on the relevant bits almost at the right times).

We (meaning Andy) have run a successful Yahoo! HackDay at Dundee for the last couple of years. This year some of our students went down to the Yahoo! OpenHack event in Londidium to present their own hack: IntelliSearch, for which they won Best Mozilla Hack. Anyhow, two of the three students who developed IntelliSearch, Laurence & Chris, have been working in their spare time, on a multiplayer online game called Zandrok. Anyhow, yesterday I met with Chris to discuss his fourth year project which will use software agents in relation to Zandrok. More information will be forthcoming once we iron out what exactly we plan to achieve, but it should be an exciting project. In the meantime, here is the IntelliSeach presentation:

Not really blowing my own trumpet, because I haven't had anything to do with this but it is the research group that I am part of, but Chris and others have managed to get a new journal started called "Argument and Computation" which is being published by Taylor & Francis. The original announcement is over at the ARG:dundee blog. The editorial board seems to consists of just about everybody who is anybody in the world of computational models of argumentation. The remit is basically along the following lines:

Argument and Computation aims to promote the interaction and cross-fertilisation between the fields of argumentation theory and computer science. It will be of interest to researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, computer science, logic, philosophy, argumentation theory, psychology, cognitive science, game theory and economics.

but what is interesting is that the journal is soliciting papers that have a core focus on argumentation with an explicit practical or theoretical application to A.I. or computer science. This will make the journal stand apart from others in the same sphere such as Argumentation and Informal Logic which do not require any connection to computational models and are often more philosophically oriented. Anyhow an  informational flier is now available in case you want to convince your librarian to order a subscription.

So work on the new MetaLab that I mentioned a while back is continuing. We are very near to making purchasing decisions for the first year budget, and working out a plan for the coming year or two. The space we have available is shown in the photo to the left. I am hoping that one of those desks will be moved into my office in the near future as I have requested some extra work surface. Hopefully I can get rid of the huge cupboards that dwarf my narrow office and replace them with a whole line of work surface right along the (only) straight wall in there. I think that the first action is going to be making some space in the lab, by removing some desks, and moving the video editing suite downstairs from its current location in one of the research pods. After that the path is a little unclear at present. We shall see.

I shall probably regret saying this but I am over the busy hump of the semester. At least as far as time-tabled business is concerned anyhow. It is halfway through the second semester of the academic year and most of my active teaching related stuff, e.g. heavy regular lecture load, concentrated into the first half of the semester leading to a nice graceful curve down towards the end of the semester. In theory this means that I can begin to start ramping up my research activities again until the pattern repeats itself next academic year. The good thing is that I have a bit more time to spend posting here and at the other place because most of my blog posts have been on the websites for teaching modules that I am involved in. So, in summation, half semester gone, heaviest load of lectures gone, second semester exams written and ready to go the external examiner. A busy time! I have also managed to get a KTP proposal submitted so I am managing a few research related jobs. I just need to get my ARGMAS reviews finished tomorrow and it will have been a good week.

In my reading about HackerSpaces in preparation for our new SoC MetaLab I found a couple of useful resources. This set of slides describes some HackerSpace design patterns [local pdf mirror]. In our discussions so far regarding the MetaLab we have discussed what to get and currently have a rather lengthy list of planned toys and installations with the aim of balancing between cheap toys that can be incorporated into projects to enable students to get away from the traditional computing student software development projects, and more substantial toys that most students could not afford to purchase for themselves. One of our discussion points was about ensuring that there is enough staff-based expertise for the equipment that we wish to get and how that can be maintained. The current contender is for periodic, open workshops, perhaps once a month, where any member of the school can turn up to learn a new skill, be it hardware oriented, like soldering, or software, like learning processing. Anyhow I think that at this point it is very important to start getting the infrastructure in place and just trusting that the users and their projects will follow.

Make everything infrastructure-driven. Rooms, power, servers, connectivity, and other facilities come first. Once you have that, people will come up with the most amazing projects you didn’t think about in the first place. 

I can't guarantee that any of our students will come up with great and interesting projects. Then again I have been pleasantly surprised by my current honours student projects this week and the degree to which they are taking ownership of them. I was also happy to talk to some other fourth years who were doing projects using a custom built surface style interface. The gist of this conversation was along the line of, "huh! This is a piece of crap and I could have built a better one", and that was before I knew how extortionate the price was for the one we have.

We have an empty lab in the SoC that is currently used by students who bring in laptops. It used to be populated with standard desktop machines but as we already have two other labs full of similar machines, actually four labs if you consider the honours and MSc labs, it was felt that the space could be used for something more exciting. The current thinking is to develop a techzone although I have taken to calling it the MetaLab. The idea is that we use the budget which would otherwise buy a lap full of regular machines, and spend it on more interesting gear that could be used in teaching and research projects by staff and students, although primarily aimed at student use. With that in mind, and because I am on the initial brain-storming committee, I have started putting together some ideas on my research wiki.

There was an interesting discussion on slashdot today about a university researcher who had been informed that the university holds the copyright to, and consequently owns, any software that the researcher develops during their contract. A complicating factor was that the research project was publicly funded NSERC although according to their policy they allow the university to claim ownership of rights pertaining to the material of the project. So in this case it looks as though the researcher is not in a good position if they want to retain rights to their software. On the surface this seems to be (just about) reasonable, although not a position I wish to ever find myself in, however it appears to put researchers in computing into a difficult situation. One poster sums up the situation very well:

As academics, there is a much greater expectation of being able to continue our research at another institution (universities are not in product competition, but are expected to cooperate -- it's mostly public funding after all). A history researcher can reasonably expect to continue his history research if he moves post or goes on sabbatical. As can a social scientist. For a computing researcher (or for microbiologists), however, the IP of the written code becomes a complicating factor. If one university claims copyright, but the only researcher involved moves to another university, it could completely stymie any research progress.

In many other academic research disciplines I could pack up my kit and continue my research at another university. If I were researching argumentation theory in a philosophy department then I could could move to another university and take my research with me. Because I produce software as a by-product of my research, and because another entity could claim ownership of that research, or at least parts of it, I would likely be hindered in immediately picking up from where I left off. This is mostly a thought exercise but I do wonder how this would affect me. I certainly would not be able to continue my research from where I left off if I could not take my software with me because the software I write, although useful to others, is primarily written as a tool for my own use.