Eric wrote:
>I have to agree that this a weakness of the system. In effect, it asks
people to learn algebra in order to do what they normally do, but do it
better. Symbolic logic was intended as a step in that direction, but it
failed to capture important nuances in useful ways. Our hope with
computerized systems is that we can do a better job of making important
relationships apparent to the beholder (or ourselves, when working on a
hard problem) but it is not clear that we have the mental cycles to do
that well, even as the beholder -- much less as the author.
>
I agree with much of this, but not that the difficulty of
learning/practicing IBIS in any of its variants implies a 'weakness of the
system'. Doing IBIS correctly and effectively, especially in real time in
front of a group of people, does indeed require practice and mastery. But
so do many other worthwhile things -- playing a musical instrument,
learning a sport, writing code.... The fact that playing the guitar, for
example, requires years of effort doesn't imply that this is a weakness of
the instrument. You can do powerful stuff with a guitar if you have the
right (painfully acquired) skills.
Having practiced IBIS and variants for many years, as well as taught and
mentored many others (as well as seen too many try to adopt it and fail),
I've started to think that perhaps we need to upgrade the frame of
reference we use for the skill required to create useful "algebras" for
collaborative design and decision-making. The toughest part is getting the
initial real-time 'capture' right. Once the raw material is there in the
right form, adding value to it with computational and other processes is
relatively easy. But discerning what is "right" has many dimensions -- what
is right for that particular group of people, faced with their particular
task and constraints, with their particular collection of learning and
discourse styles... It takes a lot of judgement, creativity, experience,
and skill to determine and apply all these -- just as it does to do the
right thing in a basketball game or jazz improvisation.
Jeff Conklin and others (disclaimer: including me) argue some of this in
the paper "Facilitated Hypertext for Collective Sensemaking: 15 Years on
from gIBIS", http://kmi.open.ac.uk/tr/papers/kmi-tr-112.pdf.
Al
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