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understanding representation as based only on textual, logical, or mathemati-
cal constructs, and as such, did not offer useful models for thinking about non-
textual media. Within the scope of AI and cognitive science, important steps
toward a theory of cognition and representation informed by narrative theory
had been made by Roger Schank and his students, by George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson, and by Phil Agre's work on writing and representation. The analysis
and extension of these texts was a key part of our mutual education in NI.
In literary theory, including post-structuralist, semiotic, and reader-
response approaches, we found a discipline that had undergone radical trans-
formation and creative growth since the 1960s, but which had been largely
oblivious to, and uninfluenced by, both the theoretical roots of computation
in the early part of the century and the theoretical implications of the massive
changes in communications occurring as a result of the exponential growth of
computational technology in the last 20 years. The challenge of literary the-
ory was also that while it provided us with a powerful set of analytical tools
(e.g., Saussurean linguistics, semiotics, reception aesthetics, deconstruction-
ism), it offered no guidelines as to how to use them to synthesize and construct
computational media informed by that analysis. Beginning with such theo-
rists as Wolfgang Iser and Roland Barthes, we found frameworks we would
appropriate for rethinking AI's traditional conceptions of meaning, agency,
comprehension, and language.
Crossing disciplinary boundaries: Learning how to talk with each other
Some of the greatest challenges we faced were in making explicit our implicit
disciplinary assumptions and practices. This had far reaching and recurring
implications for our attempt to read and discuss texts together. On the most
basic level there were a host of terms and concepts that were unfamiliar to
different members of the group. By reading the core and crossover texts in
our disciplines we set out to understand each other's language. But the dis-
ciplinary differences were not only terminological: the standards and practices
for what constituted acceptable talking, reading, writing, analysis, presenta-
tion, and production (texts and artifacts) were all quite different. Table 1 gives
a somewhat caricatured, but useful breakdown of the differences.
We encountered these differences time and again, and learned to recognize,
understand, and even engage in each other's different practices. The structure
of the group helped in this process. The Narrative Intelligence Reading Group
was student-initiated and student-run, so it had no curricular or departmental
guidelines to adhere to. Each semester its members would meet to establish the
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