Re: is communication a requirement to collaborate?

"Anthony Bucci" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> What I'm driving at is, there's often an artificial separation between
> communication as explicit exchange of bits, and communication as observing
> someone else.  In a computer, what difference does it make?  Bits travel
> from one agent to the other and information is conveyed thereby.  It's
> just our human-level storytelling about the system that distinguishes
> these two cases.  I don't think the storytelling is very useful.

Is body language a form of communication? Or indirectly, seeing a dog wag
his tail as his master emerges from the store? And furthermore, does it seem
that these events communicate something to everyone who observes them? A
one-to-many relationship.

Collaboration, co-action, teamwork, these terms suggest to me a mutual
desire, a joint goal. In the example of two people passing without
collision, that *may* be a joint goal. They each work individually,
observing oncoming traffic and making course corrections to achieve that
end. They might chose not to work individually, and instead defer to a
single pre-agreed-upon behavior, in order to achieve this: Passing on the
right/left. However, just because the two players are attempting to achieve
complementary outcomes...

Consider a persuit scenario, where one of the two passing people wants to
bump shoulders with the other. What's the difference? Both players are once
again observing oncoming traffic, and making course corrections to achieve
their end. It merely so happens that only one of them will succeed.