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"Towards Culturally Situated Agents"
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Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 11:43:09 +0100
To: SIA@cyber.reading.ac.uk
From: Kerstin Dautenhahn
---Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email---
Call for Papers and Participation
Issues in Cross Cultural Communication "TOWARDS CULTURALLY SITUATED AGENTS" URL: http://www.nttmsc.com.my/kido/pricai98cfp.html
INTRODUCTION
Culture underlies every aspect of social behavior and influences communication style, personality, character, motivation, knowledge and cognition. There is an extensive body of work on cross-cultural differences in communication styles in the linguistics and cultural anthropology literature.
In the intelligent user interface design community, over the years, fueled by the recognition that different types of users are motivated by different needs and goals, attention has been given to the development of adaptive user interfaces. However, this line of research and development has given little consideration to the influence that culture plays in shaping what users want out of the computational experience. In order to create interfaces that accommodate different user styles, therefore, it is important to understand these cultural influences, since, in many cases, a user will react to interfaces on the basis of cultural background.
Similarly, if we are to view an agent, software or robot as a social member of a "cyber society, " then that agent must be able to invoke cultural knowledge in order to communicate flexibly with human users and possibly other agents. If agents are reflective only of their designers' communicative behaviors and are not able to adapt to the styles of other agents which they meet in heterogeneous, distributed environments and virtual reality worlds, then our agents may be trapped in a Tower of Babel.
The goal of this workshop is to discuss cultural influences as they (may) inform interactions among human and software agents. This workshop is intended to attract participants from those communities concerned with such a perspective of communication.
TOPICS OF INTEREST The workshop aims to be interdisciplinary in nature and is therefore open to contributions from various research fields. The topics which the workshop addresses are relevant, for instance, in: anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), CSCW, machine learning, adaptive systems research, collaborative virtual environments, multi-media multi-user environments, ethnology, social sciences, psychology and cognitive science.
The scope of this workshop includes, but need not be restricted to the following topics:- the nature of cross cultural communication, including case studies and examples- the origin and evolution of communication- linguistic and ethnographic studies of cross cultural communication- negotiation strategies among humans from different cultural backgrounds- negotiation strategies among agents informed by different cultural principles- user interfaces and new media for cross cultural communication- the impact of Internet technology on cross cultural communication- culturally situated metaphors in interface, machine and agent design- ethnomethodology in interface and agent design- culturally dependent metaphors and language of describing and talking about humans, machines and agents: influences on the design process, theory/model building, and scientific experimentation- case studies of program execution problems due to agent to agent and human to agent miscommunication- standards which are open to the development of multiple ontologies of mult iagent communication in heterogeneous environments- working examples of culturally adaptive agents in multiagent or human-agent systems Papers should address these topics in the context of how they relate to issues in agent design and agent behavior.
PARTICIPATION AND SUBMISSION OF PAPERS The workshop will comprise a few keynote talks, a panel discussion with participants from different research areas and presentations of preliminary findings by workshop participants.
Participants will be selected by the organizing committee (see below) based on submitted papers.
Potential participants who wish to present their work at the workshop should submit a short paper (up to 5,000 words) or extended abstract (1,500 to 2,500 words). Contributions should describe work in progress, completed work, positions, or give significant insight into the issues on cross cultural communication. Other potential participants should send a statement of interest (one page), briefly describing their work and their interest in the workshop.
Some of the participants will be asked to contribute a paper to the final working notes. All participants will be invited to bring a poster presenting their work.
Submissions should be sent by e-mail (ascii, unix compatible PostScript, or rtf) to the Workshop Chair, Takashi Kido, msc-kido@po1.infosphere.or.jp
For more information about the workshop, please contact the Workshop Chair, Takashi Kido, msc-kido@po1.infosphere.or.jp
IMPORTANT DATES- Abstracts/Papers due by: July 18 1998- Notification of Acceptance: September 20, 1998- Camera-ready version of Final Paper due: October 18, 1998- Date of Workshop: Sunday, November 22, 1998
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Kido Takashi NTT MSC Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Patricia O'Neill-Brown Asia Pacific Technology Program U.S. Department of Commerce Washington, DC, USA
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Kerstin Dautenhahn Department of Cybernetics University of Reading UK
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Stephen Smoliar FX Palo Alto Laboratory US
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Workshop Chair Please send abstracts/papers or any questions to Kido Takashi NTT MSC SDN BHD (437563-H) Letter Box No. 37, 18th Floor, UBN Tower No. 10. Jalan P. Ramlee, 50250 Kuala Lumpa, Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone: +03 238 4077 Fax: +03 238 4037- 202 0476
E-mail: msc-kido@po1.infosphere.or.jp ```
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