Asking questions keeps interests alive. It deepens and grows them.
I am focused on creativity and expression — the notion that we tap into a source of inspiration and are driven to express it.
The nascent project on augmented augmented team intelligence is a unification of the areas that have engaged me for many years. The main streams of this work are sketched below.
Collaboration: Creating knowledge in teams
Some of my most exciting times have been in small groups grappling with a shared problem. In these sessions ideas seem to pop into view and the creation of insights can be accelerated. Why is idea creation in small groups sometimes so effective and exciting? Can technology enhance this? This core interest is about creating methods and technology for small group idea sessions.
Reasoning: Automating knowledge work
Can technology have a substantial cognitive role in automating knowledge work? This core interest is about mechanisms that automate knowledge work, reasoning, and problem solving.
Scaling Up: Spreading knowledge around
How can we scale up systems for knowledge processes to organizational and social scales? How can technologies provide economies of scale for creation, distribution, and use of knowledge and information?
Representation: Designing symbol structures
Writing and communication provide a huge evolutionary advantage to people, freeing us from needing to discover everything by ourselves. What is the role of knowledge representations for computers when they learn rather than being programmed?