Intention Broadcasting

Read published short paper on Intention Broadcasting

How an intention broadcasting system works compared more conventional forms of organizing

Abstract:

Social media innovations, together with rapidly improving data sharing methodologies, are enabling individuals and groups to instantly disseminate, or ‘broadcast’, messages across many diverse networks. This phenomenon, combined with the growing use of social media services for sharing and coordinating intentions, led me to develop the concept of “intention broadcasting”.

(Blog revised: 10 December 2009)

Intention Broadcasting is the process of sharing and coordinating intentions via computer-mediated systems.

It has similarities to status messaging but with the emphasis on the future.

A fully-functioning Intention Broadcasting system should also enable the intended audience to directly respond via a feedback loop that can directly affect the intention. For example, in relation to organizing an event the recipient should be able to indicate their intention to join up.

Intention Broadcasting – A Model for Computer-mediated Intention Sharing and Coordinating

In order to help make the following key phases easier to remember I have decided to run with the “broadcasting” metaphor and use related terms:

Goal: the agent has a need or desire that necessitates a desired outcome.
Options: the agent has various options based on the combined knowledge, skills and the perceivable affordances in the given environment.
Intention: the agent selects an intention towards achieving the goal.
Broadcast: the agent passively broadcasts their intention to a defined target audience (broad or narrow) via computer-mediated networks, e.g. social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter.
Tuning: the targeted audiences are “tuned in” to receive relevant intentions. The tuning is done using any method or technologies that can help filter the intentions: groups, RSS, “constant searches” , API connections, etc.
Rating: if necessary a collaborative rating system can be used to help protect both the broadcaster and audience from bad intentions and potentially unreliable people, e.g. a bad plumber.
Coordination: systems for enabling the parties to overcome contextual problems though interaction and collaboration.
Outcome: Goal accomplished.



In light of the clear interest in this blog post by Jeremiah Owyang about the Intention Web, I thought I should start promoting my short paper on Intention Broadcasting that was published as part of the Proceedings of I-KNOW ’09 and I-SEMANTICS ’09 Conference 2-4 September 2009, Graz, Austria. It is basically a summary of my final MA thesis that I undertook at Media Lab, Helsinki, which is now part of the new Finnish Aalto University.

Read it here in Scribd or Download the PDF