C.A.P. Smith - Working Through Synthetic Worlds

WORKING THROUGH SYNTHETIC WORLDS

Edited by

C.A.P. SMITH
Colorado State University, USA

KENNETH W. KISIEL
Lockheed Martin Corporation, USA

&

JEFFREY G. MORRISON
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, USA

ASHGATE

C.A.P. Smith, Kenneth W. Kisiel and Jeffrey G. Morrison 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

C.A.P. Smith, Kenneth W. Kisiel and Jeffrey G. Morrison has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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Ashgate Publishing Limited

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Union Road

Farnham

Surrey, GU9 7PT

England

Ashgate Publishing Company

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Working through synthetic worlds.

1. Virtual reality in management. 2. Virtual corporations.

I. Smith, C. A. P. II. Morrison, Jeffrey G. III. Kisiel, Ken.

658.0568-dc22

ISBN: 978-0-7546-7712-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-7546-9430-4 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-4094-8619-0 (ebk-ePUB)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Working through synthetic worlds / edited by C.A.P. Smith, Jeffrey G. Morrison, and Kenneth W. Kisiel.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-7546-7712-3 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9430-4 (ebook)

1. Human-computer interaction--Technological innovations--Forecasting. 2. Virtual reality--Technological innovations--Forecasting. 3. Virtual reality in management--Forecasting. I. Smith, C. A. P. (Charles Adams Plater), 1956- II. Morrison, Jeffrey G. III. Kisiel, Kenneth W.

QA76.9.H85W645 2009

004.019--dc22

2009026052

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

C. A. P. Smith

Paul R. Messinger, and Xin Ge

Richard Brath, Mike Peters, Joseph MacInnes, and William Wright

Michael Osias, Joan L. Mitchell, Donna Eng Dillenberger, David Ward, and Sandra K. Johnson

John W. Bodnar, Russ Vane, and Brian Rogers

Warren Tignor

Vadim Slavin, Randy Stiles, and Thomas Trinko

John Miller, Greg Nuyens, John Light, and Cynthia Pickering

Ed Waltz

Jeffrey G. Morrison, Kenneth W. Kisiel, and John DeBello

Robert Rice

Kenneth W. Kisiel

Selmer Bringsjord and Alexander Bringsjord

Maria T. Schultheis, Lisa K. Simone, and Ana C. Merzagorra

Diana Burley

Peter Garretson and Nathan T. Denny

Ben Goertzel

Robert Cox, Patricia Crowther, and John Campbell

Judi McCuaig, Joe MacInnes, and William Wright

Theresa A. OConnell, Elizabeth D. Murphy, and Renate Roske-Shelton

Jeffrey M. Stanton

Richard Brath is a Partner at Oculus Info Inc. He has been actively involved in the design and development of information visualization and design software over the last twenty years with an emphasis on creating innovative visual solutions that solve real-world business needs from conception and design through to full enterprise-scale implementations deployed to hundreds of thousands of users. Richard originally acquired a Bachelor of Architecture from University of Waterloo and produced international award-winning architectural designs. He transferred and extended those skills to design for special effects, information visualization and human computer interaction at the same time as acquiring a Master of Computer Science from University of Toronto. Richard is a frequent contributor to information visualization research conferences and was a recent keynote speaker at IEEEs IV09.

John W. Bodnar is a Senior Biological Warfare Analyst at SAIC, McLean, VA. His interest in analytical methods and tools for biology and for the Intelligence Community comes from previous experience conducting biological warfare analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, analyzing the Revolution in Military Affairs as a Navy Reservist for the Office of Naval Research and the US Naval War College, and researching and teaching biochemistry and bioinformatics at Northeastern University, the US Naval Academy, and Stevenson University.

Alexander Bringsjord is a Junior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) majoring in management and philosophy, and carrying out research mostly in the following areas: advanced synthetic characters, the fundamental nature of the human mind, and the formal foundations of economics. He has a special interest in the legal and ethical aspects of autonomous agents.

Selmer Bringsjord specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science, and in building AI systems on the basis of formal reasoning. He received the bachelors degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and the PhD from Brown University in 1987, where he studied under Roderick Chisholm. Since 1987 he has been on faculty in the Departments of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, where as a Full Professor he teaches AI, formal logic, human and machine reasoning, and philosophy of AI. Dr. Bringsjord is the author of papers ranging in approach from the mathematical to the informal, and covering such areas as AI, logic, gaming, philosophy of mind, and ethics. He has lectured and interviewed in person, and on television and radio, across the globe.

Dr. Diana L. Burley is Associate Professor, Director of the Center for the Study of Learning and the Executive Leadership Doctoral Program at The George Washington University. She holds a Ph.D. in Organization Science and Information Technology, and an M.S. in Public Management and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. For more than 15 years, Dr. Burley has examined the social and organizational implications of new information and communication technologies. She is widely published in the areas of knowledge management, electronic government, and IT workforce development; and has received competitive research grants from several sources including the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Center for the Business of Government. Dr. Burley served as an NSF program director where she managed multi-million dollar grant programs in computer science education. Based on her work, she was honored by the US Federal Chief Information Officers Council for outstanding effort toward the development of US Federal IT workforce.

John Campbell is Associate Professor of Information Systems in the Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering at the University of Canberra. A major theme throughout his research work is how users interact through information systems in the social world and, in particular, the ways in which organizational decision-making and community interaction are enacted through collaborative technologies. He has published articles in various journals including