Documents, Requests and Transactions The web can be seen as a technology which delivers documents in exchange for requests. A request might be a URL, a hyperlink, or internet search. Documents can be any form of media, whether stored, or streamed in real-time. Requests are framed by documents (context); documents are framed by requests. Often requests (when made to a search engine) will themselves be short documents (a search term). So we can write: Document Request Document Request ... Example 1: Physician Associate E-Portfolio
ActivityDocument RequestActivity Document
Example 2: Online acute oncology In professional online courses, constraints will overlap. The dynamics of interacting constraint is revealed by analysing the documents produced by learners on forums. The graph below shows the difference between the length of postings and the topic:
The relation between three types of constraint and the posting produced by learners may be written: Document Pro f essional Course Personal constraints
References Ashby, W. R. (1965). “Measuring the internal informational exchange in a system”. In: Cybernetica 1.1. ISSN: 00114227. Grathoff, Richard, ed. (1978). Theory of Social Action: Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Talcott Parsons. English. Indiana University Press. ISBN: 978-0-25335957-5. Krippendorff, Klaus (2009). “Ross Ashby’s information theory: a bit of history, some solutions to problems, and what we face today”. In: International Journal of General Systems 38.2, pp. 189–212. ISSN: 03081079. DOI: 10.1080/03081070802621846. Luhmann, Niklas (1996). Social Systems. ISBN: 978-08047-2625-2. Schutz, A. (1974). Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality: Problem of Social Reality v. 1. English. 1972 edition. Hague ; Boston: Springer. ISBN: 978-90-2475089-4.
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All learning occurs within constraints, whether produced by documents on the web, instructions of a teacher, assessment criteria or peer commentary. When seen as a problem of interacting constraints, how different is the online learning situation from the face-to-face ‘pure we-relation’ described by Schutz?
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Constraint and Online Learning
Intersubjectivity and Teaching: Analysing constraint in online and face-to-face engagement through the cybernetic lens of Ross Ashby Mark Johnson, David Taylor, Maria Limniou University of Liverpool
Intersubjectivity Alfred Schutz on the intersubjectivity of the ‘pure werelation’: “In listening to a lecturer [...] we seem to participate immediately in the development of his stream of thought. [...] We catch the other’s thought in its vivid presence [...] The other’s speech and our listening are experienced as a vivid simultaneity[...] we participate in the immediate present of the other’s thought"(Schutz 1974)
Talcott Parsons developed Schutz’s ideas into his theory of Double-Contingency: intersubjectivity concerns the expectations of ego and alter. Worth noting that Schutz was unhappy with this (see (Grathoff 1978) Parson’s idea was further developed by Niklas Luhmann(Luhmann 1996). 1
Constraint and Cybernetics: “The cybernetician observes what might have happened but didn’t" " Ross Ashby on cybernetics and constraint: Suppose a fleet, equipped with all modern signalling devices, finds just before it sails for war that a component used throughout the apparatus has proved defective, so that the fleet has to put to sea with only fifty old-fashioned hand-lamps for signalling from ship to ship. Clearly, the admiral may dispose of his fifty signallers in various ways over the ships, and there may be no manoevre of the whole fleet that is completely impossible; yet this lack must impose some characteristic on the fleet’s manoevrings. After studying its manoevres for some time the enemy admiral might well say: This fleet’s ways of manoevring strongly suggest to me that it is seriously short of internal communications(Ashby 1965) Essentially there is a distinction between the inside and the outside, which might be drawn using Spencer-Brown’s notation (Spencer-Brown 2008) as:
acceptable outcome. Such is the surgeon, whose patient lives or dies; [...] the manager whose business prospers or fails;”
Information Theory: Difference and Repetition
Observed Fleet behaviour Unobserved behaviour
Ashby on Science
• Where there is high constraint, there is high order. • Where there is low constraint, there is disorder. If you had four elements, ABCD, low constraint at the top would produce an undifferentiated ABCD, and an ‘outside’:
Information theory is about making distinctions between similar and dissimilar events, signals, messages, etc, and counting them in categories to determine the degree of variation or surprise in a message. If something is repeated or is otherwise superfluous to the correct interpretation of a message, it is deemed ‘redundant’. Redundancy entails Similarity or analogy which has an inside and an outside. Ashby notes:
ABCD At the bottom, consider that these elements are radically distinguished from one another - there is high constraint: A B C D
The principle of analogy is founded upon the assumption that a degree of likeness between two objects in respect of their known qualities is some reason for expecting a degree of likeness between them in respect of their unknown qualities also Redundancies are very important in the establishment of effective communication - they overcome noise and ambiguity in interpretation. Redundancy shapes or constrains communication. It functions rather like a grammar. If Shannon’s equation for counting the surprisingness of events or signals is measures what is perceived, the redundancy equation measures the context (or the outside) of what is perceived:
Ashby’s conception of science and constraint concerns the limitations of the human intellect. Science, he argued, had to be a simplification of nature. This limit concerned the practicalities of success or failure agreed within a society: “those activities in which the valuation is generally agreed on, and in which the person shows his capacity by whether he succeeds or fails in getting an
There is a difference between systems with high degrees of constraint and those with low constraint.
Ashby saw Shannon’s Information Theory as a corollary of his Law of Requisite Variety which stated that a complex system can only be controlled by a system of equal or greater complexity.
Inside Outside So the relationship between the observed manouvres of the fleet and the unobserved but expected behaviour might be written:
Ashby’s Constraint Analysis
In scientific investigation, scientists note what they perceive; the cybernetician is always more interested in the context of perceived patterns: they are interested in the redundancy.
In between, there are many possible combinations of A,B,C,D with intermediate degrees of constraint. Eg: Figure 1: Lattice of constraint between 4 variables
A B C D
See (Krippendorff 2009) for more information.
Constraint and Intersubjectivity Consider a teacher with a set of constraints (concepts) ABCD, and a learner with constraints WXYZ. Each manipulates each others’ constraints:
A B C D ←→ W X Y Z
(1)
Z B C D ←→ B Z X Y
(2)
B Z C Y ←→ B C X Y
...etc
(3)