Understanding and misunderstandings in conversation often stem from emphasis. People tailor their responses based on where their conversational partners place emphasis. Attention distributions play a crucial role in inflecting responses in dialogue. Emphasis influences what comes next in a conversation, shaping the interaction between speaker and listener. Text-only conversational exchanges rely on context without additional cues. Attention, as demonstrated by LLMs, significantly affects the platform’s text generation capabilities and conversation continuation.More
Tag Archives: city
Word-based geocoding
The tomb of Oscar Wilde is at at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The What3Words (W3W) address is ///crawler.falls.gossip. Tombs are good objects to locate via W3W geocoding as they typically fit within a 3×3 meter grid system. The cell immediately to the right of ///crawler.falls.gossip is geocoded as ///bottled.premises.beards. So the code does not…More
Chatting with an AI about urban inexistence
“Intentional inexistence” is a philosophical term adopted by the nineteenth century philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917) to indicate the commonplace human capacity to imagine things. We may suppose that inexistence refers to things that don’t exist (nonexistent things) or that are under demolition, but that presumes too much — or too little. As explained by Linda…More
Cryptographic City
The description of my next book is out with the cover design on the MIT Press website. The graphic designer says that the cover is in code, though I have yet to decipher it. Cryptography’s essential role in the functioning of the city, viewed against the backdrop of modern digital life. Cryptography is not new…More
Dark sentience
Architecture and media theorist Mark Shepard offered a helpful definition of “sentience” in his appropriately titled 2011 book Sentient City. “What are the implications of calling a city ‘sentient’? The word sentience’ refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, but does not necessarily include the faculty of self-awareness” (31). He states that self…More
Urban discourse
Dialogue typifies what it is to be intelligent. I’m thinking of two or more people engaged in conversation. Alan Turing proposed conversation as the test for AI. If participants or observers can’t tell the difference between a human conversing with a simulation and a human being conversing with another human then it’s fair to say…More
City of gold
In 2012 the architectural firm FR•EE proposed a master plan for a generic high tech city they immodestly called FR•EE City. The firm was founded by Mexican architect Fernando Romero. “Envision a place where residents are guaranteed security, healthcare and education, a city where access to information is unrestricted and innovative technologies are fully integrated…More
Hash blogs
Hash is a prominent term in computing and cryptography, according to the OED, “so called because it consists of small pieces of code arranged in an apparently jumbled and fragmented way.” See posts tagged hash. To hash is to chop up, to hack, a term applied readily to food (recooked and chopped meat), narcotic dried…More
Urban affordances
The term affordance was invented by the psychologist James J. Gibson (1904-1997): “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (1979, p.27). He introduced the concept by referring to the relationship between the non-human animal (water bugs and bears) and its environment,…More
“Smart city” claims
A “smart” public transportation network is one where schedules and real-time data are delivered on demand to smartphone users. Such an effective and “smart” system enables a traveller to transition from bus to train to tram without having to wait due to missed connections. The system adapts its information flows to the traveller’s changing needs…More