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Anthrobotics™
BRIEF HISTORY OF
ANTHROBOTICS™ PREDECESSOR EFFORTS
Marty Stoneman is the founder and principal investigator of Anthrobotics™.
Marty is a long-time interdisciplinary scholar whose experience spans many
widely-spaced academic fields. He has experience as a research scientist
(brittle rock fracture) and innovation-instructor at Battelle; as a patent
attorney at Battelle and General Electric (computers); as a
multi-disciplinary author and presenter, especially about human behavior and
linguistics, humor, and management; as a graduate mathematician and lawyer;
and as a lifelong interdisciplinary digester and integrator of experimental
results and theorizing in most of the many dozens of academic fields
concerned with human behavior, e.g., sociology, pediatrics, psychology,
drama, linguistics, music, psychiatry, anthropology, economics, history,
biology, philosophy, etc., etc..
Beginning in late 1980, Marty began part-time to seek ways to make new
breakthroughs in broad understandings about human behavior, especially in
the areas "between the ears", e.g., thought, languaging, learning, etc. If
successful, he wished then to apply these new understandings to seek
radically new approaches -- new paradigms -- for "strong AI" machines
(typified by fictional machines like HAL-9000 and C3PO and Commander Data).
In the search for breakthroughs, he would avoid well-worked artificial
intelligence areas like rule-chaining, expert systems, neural nets, fuzzy
logic, and standard robotics, and peripheral areas like speech recognition
and machine vision.
One of his initial assumptions was that the academic system of advancement
based upon specialization tends to slow down the discovery of broadly-based
and important understandings about human behavior. This is because it splits
the seeking of such understandings among dozens of separate fields (and
hundreds of sub-fields), each with its own special language and theories and
peer groups, and with very little integration between them. For example,
compare this academic situation about humans with those of other animals no
more than slightly genetically different from humans, say Jane Goodall's
work with chimpanzees or Dianne Fossey's work with gorillas.
Another of Marty's initial assumptions was that there had been at best
inconsistent efforts within most academic fields about human behavior to
work only with ideas which were stated in "measurable" terms, similar to the
requirements of the "hard" sciences. In most "scientific studies" about
human behavior, this "measurability" rule was not being followed
consistently. So he assumed that if unwavering attention were paid to
measurability, there might follow valuable new insights and discrete models
even about previously "fuzzy" things like love, loyalty, consciousness, and
emotions.
So Marty tried to direct his initial efforts toward developing a new (but
normal-sounding) interdisciplinary and "measurable" type of natural language
and vocabulary into which the findings of all the human-behavior specialties
could be placed and in which broad interdisciplinary ideas about human
behavior could be stated. For "peer" feedback during this development, Marty
and his wife, Jane, published several books using such language under the
pseudonym "Rikki". They received feedback from many widely-disparate
academic specialists (each of whom thought the book applied mainly to
her/his own field) that the books' ideas were in line with the findings of
and appreciated in that expert's own narrow field. Other recognition
included use in major university linguistics curricula and kudos from the
Teilhard du Chardin Society.
As Marty began family-funded full-time research efforts in 1983, in offices
in converted bedrooms in their home, a new interdisciplinary model about
human behavior overall, including linguistic behavior and thinking behavior
(and love, loyalty, consciousness, and emotions!), took shape. And
eventually, with the help of workshopping and discussion primarily among the
members of a growing core group called "Anthrobotics™", and including many
years of participation by Jay Alderson, (25 years with General Electric,
almost all in software design and management positions and currently in
software consulting), Dan Stoneman (an electrical engineering graduate and
software consultant), Rick Gessner (a nationally-known programming talent
and software designer), and Glenn Stoneman (with expertise in the
interpretaion and application of biological data), these efforts provided an
underlying interdisciplinary model for the design of humanoid-machine
systems for the accomplishment of "strong AI" in the "between the ears"
areas.
This interdisciplinary model was then given a fully computational form for
use in digital computers and humanoid-machines, and flow charts and data
structures were designed to incorporate the new ideas -- a new paradigm --
into the systems and subsystems that became the current Anthrobotics™
technology.
1996 Anthrobotics™ |
