I recently visited the 2010 AAAI Fall Symposium ”Computational Models of Narrative” (Arlington VA which I now know to be bordering on Washington DC) as organized by Mark Finlayson, Pablo Gervás, Erik Mueller, Srini Narayanan and Patrick Winston (the papers are here, somewhere among many others). It was a fine followup of another fine meeting organized by Whitman Richards, Mark Finlayson and Patrick Winston (the 2009 MIT Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative, see the report).
Patrick Winston emphasized the importance of stories for our lives by expressing the Strong Story Hypothesis (at the plenary meeting of the Fall Symposia). Shallowly paraphrased: our story capacity is our distinguishing characteristic. We also saw Roger Schank speak (wearing glasses, or wasn’t he?), which was a treat, one of several offered at the meeting.
Here is Bob Abelson commenting on Schank’s 1982 book Dynamic Memory (unfortunately as a jpg):
Schank himself quotes this nice excerpt in his text in the 1994 festschrift for Abelson (p. 31-32). What I find particularly stimulating here is how the (for me slightly cliché) memory reported on becomes fresh and shining (for me) by the analogy made with research writing. I like stories. They are important.
Tags: AI, cognition, language, profession, research
