Inform looks very interesting, though I will apparently have to do a lot more reading before I can totally grok what it is and why.
I've been working on an idea I am calling the Story Empathizer. The struggle I'm having is that my idea is so abstract, it's hard to write an instance of it.
story = meaning + expression
In the world of computing, context is liminal. We write explicit answers to "what?" and "how?", and call them "data" and "algorithms". Those answers are entirely meaningful: defined. Context, on the other hand, is ethereal: untouchable. Context is the answer to "why?". It exists in our code like the waters of a river exist in the walls of the Grand Canyon: only present at time of writing. We encode our intentions into software just like a river carves time into earth. There is no inverse function: no intention decoder.
When we communicate with natural language, we start without shared context. If I want to be understood, I must share my context. I do that by writing a second story: a backstory. The reader uses that backstory to define the meaning of my expression.
With shared context, we aren't limited to reading. We have all the parts of the equation, and can use them to read, write, and empathize.
read: meaning = story - expression
write: expression = story - meaning
So what if we could move this process out of our brains, and into a computer? Well, that's the dream, anyway..
I've been working on an idea I am calling the Story Empathizer. The struggle I'm having is that my idea is so abstract, it's hard to write an instance of it.
In the world of computing, context is liminal. We write explicit answers to "what?" and "how?", and call them "data" and "algorithms". Those answers are entirely meaningful: defined. Context, on the other hand, is ethereal: untouchable. Context is the answer to "why?". It exists in our code like the waters of a river exist in the walls of the Grand Canyon: only present at time of writing. We encode our intentions into software just like a river carves time into earth. There is no inverse function: no intention decoder.When we communicate with natural language, we start without shared context. If I want to be understood, I must share my context. I do that by writing a second story: a backstory. The reader uses that backstory to define the meaning of my expression.
With shared context, we aren't limited to reading. We have all the parts of the equation, and can use them to read, write, and empathize.
So what if we could move this process out of our brains, and into a computer? Well, that's the dream, anyway..