This site presents the research and results of the Witnessed Presence and Systems Engineering project, which raised the question:
How should autonomous systems be designed for human beings to accept them?
The research was initated by Caroline Nevejan and originally embedded in the Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems Group chaired by professor dr Frances Brazier. To answer the research question interviews were conducted with professionals from a variety of disciplines. Every person knows his or her field well and is therefore entitled to formulate insights in this field. In ancient Greek this kind of knowledge, which evolves from professional experience (metis) and a certain ethical behaviour (ethos) is called Parresia. It is an honour given to certain people. Every interview hereuder can be considered as an act of Parresia.
The notion of witnessed presence was taken as a starting point to explore this question (Nevejan 2009). Before language is uttered, human beings recognize spatiotemporal trajectories of other beings and this sets the parameters for any sequential interaction (Kuhn 2000). The pre-linguistic exchange of recognitions is therefore one of the foci of this study. Inspired by the position of the witness in Law, the notion was embraced that being witness includes taking responsibility for one’s perception, which affects possible actions and testimonies profoundly. In this sense witnessing can be distinguished from observing, in which cognition plays a significant role, and perceiving, in which sensorial input has dominance. Witnessed presence, which operates on all levels of consciousness, is one of the building blocks of social rules, defined by space and time, they determine the social structures that human beings inhibit (Giddens 1993). To make witnessed presence operational the YUTPA framework was developed, in which the relation between presence and trust is analyzed and designed in 4 dimensions: time, place, action and relation (Nevejan 2007).
The assumption at the start of this study was that in the outsourcing industry, as developed in India, new forms of interaction between man and machine are orchestrated and therefore new forms of witnessing are emerging. Another assumption of this study is that artists, designers, engineers and business developers have an intuition about their work, which takes the notion of witnessed presence into account without formulating it as such. The intention of the research is to make this tacit knowledge surface and to find words and concepts of witnessed presence on which further research into the human acceptance of autonomous systems can be based.
Further research
In the Summer and Fall of 2009 the insights of this exploratory research will be analysed
In addition four artists will contribute to the research from the perspective of their own media addressing the question:
‘What happens when one witnesses another?’
Finally, in the Fall of 2009 all gathered material will be included in the content management system Anymeta: the interviews, the documented work of the artists, the dissertation upon which this study builds and other relevant materials. This website facilitates both linear and associative exploration. Participants on this site will be able to collect fragments of text and images and add their own to create new contributions on this site. The expectation is that further research can be designed on the basis of this work.
Biography:
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The constitution of Society, Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 2000. The road since structure, philosophical essays, 1970–1993, with an autobiographical interview. Editors.James Conant and John Haugeland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp: 94-104
Nevejan C. (2009) Witnessed presence and the YUTPA framework. In: PsychNology Journal 'Ethics in Presence and Social Presence Technology', volume 7 (1).
Nevejan C. 2007. Presence and the Design of Trust, PhD diss. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
This website is work in progress. You can use the content of this website under the Creative Commons license Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs.
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH SO FAR:
Brazier, F. M. T. and van der Veer, Gerrit. (2009). Interactive distributed and networked autonomous systems: delegation or participation, in: Proceedings of the Human Interaction with Intelligent & Networked Systems Workshop (HINNS 2009).
www.iids.org/aigaion/?page=publication&kind=list&type=recent
Nevejan C. (2009). Spacio-temporal movements in communities of practice, in which human beings and autonomous systems participate. in: Proceedings of the Human Interaction with Intelligent & Networked Systems Workshop (HINNS 2009).
www.iids.org/aigaion/?page=publication&kind=list&type=recent
Nevejan C. (2009) Witnessed presence and the YUTPA framework. In: PsychNology Journal 'Ethics in Presence and Social Presence Technology', volume 7 (1).
www.psychnology.org
This website is work in progress. You can use the content of this website under the Creative Commons license Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs.
ABOUT
Witnessed Presence and Systems Engineering
Principal investigator: Dr. Caroline Nevejan (www.nevejan.org)
Research context: Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems group, VU
Supervision: Professor Dr. Frances Brazier (www.cs.vu.nl/~frances/)
Camera: Leen de Baat (www.ldebaat.eu)
Website: Thomas Quillian (www.few.vu.nl/~thomasq/)
Transcriptions: Helen Vreedeveld & Alexandra Pixley
Funding:
Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems
VU University Amsterdam www.iids.org/
Stichting NLnet www.nlnet.nl
The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture
www.fondsbkvb.nl/english/index.php
This website is work in progress. You can use the content of this website under the Creative Commons license Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs.
Caroline