Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Thus, for us, theory creation is a process of thought, followed by program-
ming, then by additional thought, with each serving the other. Thus AI really
operated under a novel view of science. Normal scientific method holds that
first a theory is postulated, and then tested and found to be right or wrong.
But in AI our theories are never that complete, because the processes we are
theorizing about are so complex. Thus our tests are never completely deci-
sive. We build programs that show us what to concentrate on in building the
next program.
Except for occasional exceptions continuing in the Yale tradition, such as
Mueller's model of daydreaming (Mueller 1990) and Turner's model of sto-
rytelling (Turner 1994), sustained work on narrative disappeared in AI.
Birth of NI
While AI research became refocused, narrative became no less important. Nar-
rative influences simply became felt in other areas of computer science. In these
other areas, narrative became an influence as part of a general move towards
an interdisciplinary engagement with the humanities. For example, in human-
computer interface design, the research focus moved from the hardware in-
terface, through programming language as interface and interactive terminal
as interface, to a view of the interface as a computer/human dialog (GUI's are
based on this model) and a growing concern with the entire use context (in-
cluding the social context) as the “interface” (Grudin 1989). This shift in the
design focus has been accompanied by a shift in system design methodolo-
gies, particularly the adoption of qualitative techniques from the social sciences
(e.g. ethnography) and the use of iterative design cycles and rapid prototyping.
These new methodologies focus on understanding the use context and man-
aging the inherent incompleteness of any description of that context or the
system requirements (Loewgren 1995). As system designers began coping with
the rich complexities of designing both for and within a cultural context, they
began tapping the long craft tradition of other design fields (e.g. architecture,
graphic design, industrial design, etc.) which have been successfully designing
artifacts within rich cultural settings for hundreds, if not thousands of years
(Winograd 1996). As the field of human-computer interaction became more
interdisciplinary (e.g. borrowing anthropological and qualitative sociological
techniques), it was just a matter of time before the concept of narrative was
examined for interface design principles (Laurel 1991).
Other fields of CS also began tapping humanistic perspectives in general
and narrative concepts in particular. For example, in hypertext research, nar-
