> I heard a story about an Admiral telling a Captain, "I need information
> on the situation in the Middle East." The Captain wrote a report on the
> current political situation, people that live there, etc. and when he
> gave it to the Admiral, the Admiral said, "No, I wanted to know how many
> battleships there are in the region." Another Admiral told the Captain,
> "I need information on the situation in the Indian Ocean." The Captain
> wrote a report on the number of battleships in the region and when he
> gave it to the 2nd Admiral, the 2nd Admiral said, "No, I wanted to know
> the current political situation, people that live there, etc."
One definition of a "good" secretary (or staff officer, or executive
assistant) is the ability to "know" what your boss wants and to resolve
these ambiguities.
I think this means understanding the underlying assumptions behind the
request. The problem with computer systems as we build them today is that
they take a one line request out of context and try to process it ("I need
information on the situation in the Middle East ...").
In reality, situations are ongoing constructions with new events reshaping
the way we view the world. I would guess that Andrew's story about the
Middle East is part of an ongoing situation, whereas Andrew's story about
the Indian Ocean was in the process of constructing a new situation. To be
able to understand that, I need to know something about the process of
constructing and doing things in situations, and I need to know what
situations are currently active.
In cognitive science, there is a new way of thinking termed "situated
action" or "situated cognition" that tries to construct situations /
representations as required. This seems to be more "human-like" than a lot
of the methods used in computer science and AI - but we haven't built
large systems like that yet.
This fits on one page for me, how about you :->
John O'Neill
[Host's Note: Welcome back, John O'Neill, who was lost from LO when a
change in his local network made his address invalid. If LO mail to *you*
stops for more than 48hrs, there's a big problem someplace and it might
be at your end. E-mail me, and if you don't hear back it's because
something is broken. ...Rick]
--"John O'Neill" <jao@cook.dsto.gov.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>