Thank you all for the mental support that you’ve been sending my way. I’m half way through the final week of classes. Two and a half more weeks and I’ll be back in Rochester.

I’m feeling much better. Dre’s visit was a balm for my soul. We spent a lot of time in nature and talking about the future. And enjoying excellent food (if any future MAPers are following the blog, I will be posting a list of places to try).

I also think that I’ve made some breakthroughs on the thesis. I hope to have a draft (or something) done in the next few days.

I’m beginning to rethink everything in terms of contested spaces. Or rather acceptable behavior within spaces. Bots are accepted, or at least tolerated, in environments where they are part of the natural ecosystem. Examples include games and AI sites. But once they move into spaces where, as I posted earlier technology is only supposed to function as a mediator, then everything gets complicated. Especially if they don’t identify themselves.

That seems to be what this is all about: what is the accepted level of transparency for a given space/interaction.

Ok… I just turned in one of my outstanding finals from last quarter and registered for summer graduation. So its on. I’m going to do this!

Dre will be visiting this weekend and I’m really excited. We haven’t seen each other in three months and that’s been really, really tough.

Thesis stuff is moving forward. I’ve had a couple good meetings with faculty that are helping clarify a number of important issues.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it isn’t a train.

On the plus side I have a thesis advisor! Dr. Micheal Silverstein, sooper genius (seriously he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Grant, often referred to as the Genius Grant). He was the teacher of the scary Language in Culture class from first quarter, whose midterm question was immortalized in this post.

I’m actually rather excited about this. Though I have to admit that I am a little concerned that I now can actually sorta speak Silverstinian (silverstein-glossia ?)

I’ve hit a bit of a theoretical snag. Basically I’ve realized that in the case of bots what we are really looking as is still mediated communication between two people and not mediated communication between a person and a bot/AI. The latter model privileges a program with a level of agency that I don’t think holds up under close analysis.

The bot is nothing more than a proxy for it creator. Its every response has been predetermined when the bot is scripted/created. Since it can’t develop or in any unexpected way alter its responses or behavior all it really is doing is functioning as a communication mediator. While its creator may not be temporarily present when a bot is interacting with another person in a chat room, it is the creator’s words that emanate from the bot.

If this is the case, an interaction with a bot can be considered twice mediated person to person interaction. The first level of mediation is that chat/im software being used to communicate. The second level is the bot itself, carrying and projecting its creator’s content.

The snag is that while theoretically you are engaged in an interaction with the bots creator via the bot, from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t appear that most people register this. The bot is seen as a separate entity from its creator. So I need to resolve how I discuss bot aspects as part of the paper.