From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

This paper suggests a framework for understanding the roles that children can play in the technology design process, particularly in regards to designing technologies that support learning. Each role, user, tester, informant and design partner has been defined based upon a review of the literature and the author's own laboratory research experiences. This discussion does not suggest that any one role is appropriate for all research or development needs. Instead, by understanding this framework the reader may be able to make more informed decisions about the design processes they choose to use with children in creating new technologies. This paper will present for each role a historical overview, research and development methods, as well as the strengths, challenges and unique contributions associated with children in the design process.

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The role of children in the design of new technology

Molecular dynamics simulations capture the behavior of biological macromolecules in full atomic detail, but their computational demands, combined with the challenge of appropriately modeling the relevant physics, have historically restricted their length and accuracy. Dramatic recent improvements in achievable simulation speed and the underlying physical models have enabled atomic-level simulations on timescales as long as milliseconds that capture key biochemical processes such as protein folding, drug binding, membrane transport, and the conformational changes critical to protein function. Such simulation may serve as a computational microscope, revealing biomolecular mechanisms at spatial and temporal scales that are difficult to observe experimentally. We describe the rapidly evolving state of the art for atomic-level biomolecular simulation, illustrate the types of biological discoveries that can now be made through simulation, and discuss challenges motivating continued innovation in this field.

Biomolecular Simulation: A Computational Microscope for Molecular Biology

This paper defines the research area of socially assistive robotics, focusing on assisting people through social interaction. While much attention has been paid to robots that provide assistance to people through physical contact (which we call contact assistive robotics), and to robots that entertain through social interaction (social interactive robotics), so far there is no clear definition of socially assistive robotics. We summarize active social assistive research projects and classify them by target populations, application domains, and interaction methods. While distinguishing these from socially interactive robotics endeavors, we discuss challenges and opportunities that are specific to the growing field of socially assistive robotics.

/pdf/defining-socially-assistive-robotics-2rsn9zwz3o.pdf

Defining socially assistive robotics

The interviews in the first five episodes were filmed at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in California, with the sixth interview conducted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, during the final two summers of Campbell’s life. (The series was broadcast on television a year after his death.) In these discussions Campbell presents his ideas about comparative mythology and the ongoing role ofmyth in human society. These talks include excerpts from Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The power of myth

Dynameomics: A Comprehensive Database of Protein Dynamics

The present invention provides a new and unique platform for authoring and deploying interactive characters which are powered by artificial intelligence. The platform permits the creation of a virtual world populated by multiple characters and objects, interacting with one another so as to create a life-like virtual world and interacting with a user so as to provide a more interesting and powerful experience for the user. This system can be used for entertainment purposes, for commercial purposes, for educational purposes, etc.

Artificial intelligence platform

This paper describes exploration of uses of a computational storytelling environment on the Car- diology Unit of the ChildrenHospital in Boston, during the summer of 1997. Young cardiac patients ranging from age 7 to 16 used the SAGE environment to tell personal stories and cre- ate interactive characters, as a way of coping with cardiac illness, hospitalizations, and invasive medical procedures. This pilot study is part of a larger collaborative effort between Children ´ Hospital and MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, to develop a web-based appli- cation, the Experience Journal, to assist patients and their families in dealing with serious medical illness. The focus of the paper is on young patientsof SAGE, on SAGEaffordances in the context of the hospital, and on design recommendations for the development of future computa- tional play kits for expressing and exchanging feelings and ideas. Preliminary analysis of young patientsindicates that children used different modes of interaction-direct, mediated, and differed-, depending upon what personae the narrator chooses to take on. These modes seem to vary with the mindset and health condition of the child.

Interactive storytelling environments: coping with cardiac illness at Boston's Children's Hospital

The anonymity of a user at a client computer may be preserved when authenticating with an on-line service or content provider through the use of an anonymous and verifiable (i.e., “blind”) certificate set that is created by a certificate authority from a fixed-size set of PKI key pairs. The certificate authority randomly selects a subset of PKI key pairs to generate the blind certificate set where each certificate in the set includes a respective public key from the PKI key pair subset. The certificate authority also sends the private keys from the PKI key pair subset to the user. During authentication, the client computer is configured to randomly select a subset of one or more certificates from the set to present to the provider. The provider will encrypt content using the public keys in the subset of certificates and the client will decrypt the content with the corresponding private keys.

Anonymous verifiable public key certificates

The need for data-centric scientific tools is growing; domains such as biology, chemistry, and physics are increasingly adopting computational approaches. So, scientists must deal with the challenges of big data. To address these challenges, researchers built a visual-analytics platform named DIVE (Data Intensive Visualization Engine). DIVE is a data-agnostic, ontologically expressive software framework that can stream large datasets at interactive speeds. In particular, DIVE makes novel contributions to structured-data-model manipulation and high-throughput streaming of large, structured datasets.

Dennis Bromley

Papers

Dynameomics: A Comprehensive Database of Protein Dynamics

Artificial intelligence platform

Interactive storytelling environments: coping with cardiac illness at Boston's Children's Hospital

Anonymous verifiable public key certificates

DIVE: A Graph-Based Visual-Analytics Framework for Big Data