The Wellspring Initiative

AI Topics, the pathfinder sponsored by AAAI, is proud to announce the WELLSPRING INITIATIVE. This is our first major trek into the landscape behind the published literature. During this expedition we'll be on the lookout for footprints from the paths walked by AI scientists. These impressions may be physical (correspondence, lab notes, photos...) or ethereal (recollections, insights, anecdotes...). Our goal is to help the audience of the AI Topics web site better understand the dynamics of scientific inquiry and the satisfaction, both personal & professional, that a career in AI offers.

More Wellspring Resources Oral History Resources Interviews & Oral Histories

We will formally launch the WELLSPRING INITIATIVE at the Seventeenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Twelfth Innovative Applications of AI Conference, in Austin from July 30 - August 3, 2000.

AI Topics has been a reliable source of basic, understandable information about AI for several years. With the Wellspring Initiative, we will be able to offer our audience original, unique, and very pertinent content. It is essential that they hear from the diverse AI community about the human side of exciting discoveries ... current challenges ... the paths that led to AI's doorstep ... and the opportunities that awaited across the threshold. After all, much of AI's future depends upon the interest and support of the visitors who come to our site from all over the world and include students, teachers, government officials, guidance & career counselors, grantmakers, and future AI scientists.

As you know, AI is so much more than the sum of the published papers. A childhood fascination with problem solving, an inspirational piece of science fiction, a nuturing mentor, the teamwork in the lab, the serendipity, the correspondence with a former colleague that got you through some rough times, the various career adjustments, the creative side of surviving on grants, and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel are just some of the vistas we'd like to bring to our audience. Such scenes are insightful and inspirational, and may well be an invaluable source of scholarly information.

Though Austin is the live music capital of the world, we won't ask you to sing for your supper at the Conference . . . but we'd sure like you to stop by BOOTH #203 and tell us some AI stories, for this is really the objective of the first phase of the initiative. If the community is supportive, we (and maybe even some students) would hope to conduct formal interviews that would be made available online not only in transcript form, but also as voice and/or video clips. And if you're curious about the impact that these can have, just check out some of the related sites listed later in this brochure. But for now, we would be pleased to get some AI footprints of a paragraph or two. So please come on by and say/type a few words.

Some possible topics: What path did you take to AI? What proved to be your most useful high school course and/or experience? Is there an interesting story about how a program's acronym was devised? What unlikely collaboration led to wondrous results? When did your interest in science began? If you met someone on the bus and s/he asked you to describe what you do in AI, and you were getting off at the next stop in 2 minutes, what would you say? What career move proved pivotal? What are the most amazing aspects of the science of AI and a career in AI? What single insight about AI would most pleasantly surprise high school student?

A Few Related Sites & Items

What is an Oral History? From The Chemical Heritage Foundation. "An oral history is a structured conversation on tape that attempts to construct an 'orchestrated autobiography' of the narrator. ... Oral history interviews explore the development of organizations, moments of innovation, and the growth of ideas in ways rarely found in secondary source materials or in other formal, printed communications."

"The 'In the Making' part of STIM's title [Science and Technology in the Making] is a result of the fact that major players in STIM projects are still alive and serving as active creators and participants. Their contributions in the form of stories, artifacts, and written accounts are part of the history presented on the Web sites. According to Lenoir, this leads historians 'to multiply the perspectives of contemporary history and engage the community who made the technology in a collaboration to write their own history.' Thus, the traditionally silent subjects of a historical study become personally involved in the writing of their community's history."

• For an inside peek at one of their projects, see: Final Report - Sloan Project MouseSite.

Building Inclusive Science in Classrooms Through Oral Histories. Angela Calabrese Barton and Margery D. Osborn. Women's Studies Quarterly, 28(1-2), 271-295 (2000). "Through the use of oral history projects, students were able to challenge their views about the nature of science. Students moved from a view of science as happening only in specific events (i.e. lab work) to science as a daily interactive activity. They began to see scientific knowledge as changing rather than static in nature. They began to feel as though they were a part of science, rather than controlled by science. And, they began to recognize that science is a product of a community...."

Unlocking Our Future: Toward a New National Science Policy - A Report to Congress by the House Committee on Science (September 24, 1998). "If we are to maintain public appreciation and support for our scientific enterprise, a way to translate the benefits and grandeur of science into the language of ordinary people is sorely needed. Scientists have wonderful stories to tell, yet too often they get told poorly, if at all. Educators and journalists have a role to play in communicating the achievements of science, but scientists must recognize that they, too, have a responsibility to increase the availability and salience of science to the public." - from the preface to Part V(C): Communicating Science.

To see for yourself just how compelling an oral history can be, check out this interview with Joshua Lederberg [Early interest in science - video recording] from The Joshua Lederberg Papers which is part of the National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science collection.

NEWS from AI in the news

• Physicist still leaves some all shook up. By Dave Brooks. The Telegraph (February 5, 2003). "With Albert Einstein, science has long had its Gandhi, but only in the past few years has science pondered creating its Young Elvis. That would be physicist Richard Feynman, a man whose establishment-tweaking personality was so much larger than life that his friend Marvin Minsky (yes, that Marvin Minksy) told a gathering last week at MIT: 'I could tell you lots of anecdotes, because Richard was one long anecdote.' ... Feynman tells tales of breaking into top-secret safes at Los Alamos out of sheer feistiness; of turning his party-animal drumming habit into a minor stage career; of using a minor talent for sketching as a great way to meet women, who prove surprisingly interested in posing nude; in taking a quirky interest in a central Asian country to its illogical extremes; and most importantly, of feeling the exhilaration that comes from deep insight into nature ­ which is what makes people become scientists in the first place. Feynman is the person that every geek wants to be: very smart, honored by the establishment even as he won’t play by its rules, admired by people of both sexes, arrogant without being envied and humble without being pitied. ... Is such celebrity-ification of scientists good? I think so, even if people do have a tendency to go overboard. Anything that gets us thinking about science is something to be admired, whether it comesin the form of an algorithm or an anecdote."
• Robot is what the future used to look like. By Michael Sangiacomo. The Plain Dealer (February 9, 2004). "Elektro was a star attraction at the New York World's Fair in 1939, made guest appearances at appliance stores around the country through the 1950s, and even starred in a sexploitation flick called 'Sex Kittens Go to College.' ... Elektro is the only survivor of a group of eight robots created by Westinghouse in Mansfield between 1931 to 1940. The company predicted the robots - built for an estimated cost of several hundred thousand dollars each - would be the ultimate household appliances, handling daily drudge work such as washing dishes and cutting the grass. ... Still, one thing is missing: Elektro's companion, Sparko the robot dog. The dog could bark, sit up on his hind legs and beg, and often appeared with Elektro in the early days. 'It just disappeared,' said [Scott] Schaut. 'But I know it's right here in Mansfield, tucked away in someone's basement or attic. I'll find it if I have to go door to door.'"
• Britishlibrary starts email archive. Australian IT (October 12,2004). "TheBritish Library is creating an archive to store the emailsof the nation's top authors and scientists, as the writtenword is replaced by electronic messages. ... Jeremy John, whohas set up the library's first digital archive, is appealingto writers and scientists to ask them to store their correspondencein a way that will allow future generations to see their work.... John says the collection contains numerous files that hecannot read because he does not have the correct software,or even the necessary computers. ... He is appealing for helpfrom members of the public who own obsolete machines so hecan unlock archaic files. ... John has obtained more recenttechnology such as laptops belonging to Donald Michie, a pioneerof artificial intelligence and one of the leading codebreakersat Bletchley Park in the Second World War. ... A British Libraryspokeswoman says it welcomes emails from prominent people inall walks of life. 'We want people with a canon of work behindthem,' she says. 'We're interested in writers, scientists....'"
• Also see: British Library to archive e-mail. By Jo Best, Silicon.com. Published on ZDNet News (October 19, 2004).
• NewDigital Curation Centre set up to preserve digital media. Postedby P. Pothen. PublicTechnology.net (November 3, 2004). "TheUK funding bodies for universities, colleges and research councilshave combined to fund the Digital Curation Centre, with an annualbudget of over £1ma year. Formally launched at a ceremony today in Edinburgh, theDCC is charged with raising awareness and providing practical toolsand support to a new breed of digital curators, drawn from researchunits, archives, libraries and computing centres. ... The researchcommunity has decided to make concerted effort to secure its investmentin the digital. It is essential that research builds upon research,and that valuable outputs are available for scientists to use again,to check claims, re-interpret and to test new ideas. ... ProfessorTim O'Shea - Principal of the University of Edinburgh, lead institutionfor the DCC, welcomed its launch, saying: 'As a computer scientistand as Principal of an institution which lost its artificial intelligencearchive to fire not two years ago, the importance of the DigitalCuration Centre is manifest and I'm therefore delighted that theUniversity has been able to work in collaboration with others todeliver this facility for the UK.'"
• A piece of Net history on the auction block. By Matt Hines. CNET News.com (February 2, 2005). "Famed New York auction house Christie's is preparing to offer up a collection of rare documents and publications that trace the origins of computers and the Internet. Slated to go up for auction on Feb. 23, the collection is being identified as 'The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking & Telecommunications.' The assortment of reference materials, letters and scientific journals was originally gathered by Jeremy Norman, a collector and dealer of rare books and manuscripts." Check out their 8 pages of photos (Images from computing's history) and the auction site.
  • Excerpt from Jeremy Norman's introduction to the Christie's auction catalogue: "In the process of writing Origins of Cyberspace I was surprised to learn how few copies of some of the foundation documents in the history of computing, networking, and telecommunications are preserved in the institutional libraries of the world even though, when taken as a whole, the development of the technologies that led to the Internet are having an effect upon society similar to the impact that Gutenberg’s discovery of printing by movable type had more than five hundred years ago. ... Why is there such a disparity between the vast holdings of libraries on book history and the comparatively limited holdings of libraries on the history of the technologies that eventually led to the Internet? ... Still another reason that some academic libraries may have ignored the history of computing and related fields until comparatively recently is that many of the publications were issued as privately circulated reports rather than as conventionally published books. Sometimes there were less than 100 copies of these reports issued since in the early years very few people were interested in these topics. My theory is that most of these ephemeral publications, usually issued in very small printings, were thrown out rather than preserved."

Click here for MORE RELATED LINKS

If our interest in the day-to-day fabric of AI is making you wonder whether an archive or a library might have an interest in your personal collection of AI material, perhaps we can help. We are aware of several places that are very enthusiatic about starting, or adding to, an AI collection and we would be pleased to put you in touch with them. And anyone who is even thinking about tossing his/her personal papers must read the very illuminating and compelling online brochure, Scientific Source Materials: Saving Personal Papers and Archival Records in Physics and Allied Fields, offered by The American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics. As stated therein:
"[H]istorians and other scholars are often appalled by the loss or destruction of materials which could have immeasurably aided their research and their understanding of the progress of science. The sketchy notes tracing the development of an important theory or the instrument used in a key experiment are significant cultural artifacts, easily as fascinating as a ship from the days of sail or the preliminary drafts of a well-known poem. Materials illustrating less great but more typical science are valuable for other kinds of historical studies. The historian is deeply concerned not only with the final solution of a scientific research problem but with its evolution. Scholars may also wish to understand the context of the problem--how the research developed through the interactions of different groups; how the groups were organized, educated and funded; how research was linked to prevailing philosophies and economic needs of society, and so forth. By exploring such questions the historian hopes to illuminate the scientific process for the benefit of both the public and of science itself."

To experience the excitement of being able to browse through a scientist's personal papers, visit CMU's Allen Newell Collection, and be prepared to encounter fascinating, handwritten marginalia.