Towards the automatic evaluation of stylistic quality of natural texts: constructing a special-­purpose corpus of stylistic edits from the Wikipedia revision history

This thesis proposes an approach to automatic evaluation of the stylistic quality of natural texts through data-driven methods of Natural Language Processing. Advantages of data driven methods and their dependency on the size of training data are discussed. Also the advantages of using Wikipedia as a source for textual data mining are presented. The method in this project crucially involves a program for quick automatic extraction of sentences edited by users from the Wikipedia Revision History. The resulting edits have been compiled in a large-scale corpus of examples of stylistic editing. The complete modular structure of the extraction program is described and its performance is analyzed. Furthermore, the need to separate stylistic edits stylistic edits from factual ones is discussed and a number of Machine Learning classification algorithms for this task are proposed and tested. The program developed in this project was able to process approximately 10% of the whole Russian Wikipedia Revision history (200 gigabytes of textual data) in one month, resulting in the extraction of more than two millions of user edits. The best algorithm for the classification of edits into factual and stylistic ones achieved 86.2% cross-validation accuracy, which is comparable with state-of-the-art performance of similar models described in published papers.Master i Datalingvistikk og språkteknologiMAHF-DASPDASP35

The Small Histories project: the internet, life stories and 'performances of reconstruction'

This project revolves around Small Histories, an online web-based software system for the uploading and sharing of life stories: http://www.smallhistories.com. I created Small Histories to explore the ways in which the internet can facilitate the urge to tell, share and compare one’s personal history and, by doing so, generate an online network of interlinked personal narratives connected to historical times, events and places. The project originated with a personal event: the tracing of my biological Israeli father in 1997 and my subsequent explorations of my Israeli and German family histories. The stories I encountered in these explorations differed, depending on who was telling them. The Small Histories system was a response to the potential of the burgeoning internet to represent such differing viewpoints, and to generate new forms of encounters with the past. Since then the system has developed in tandem with the internet, especially the explosive growth over recent years of what has been called social software. Conceptually, this project explores the fast-evolving social internet as a setting for auto/biographical narrative practice and how this overlaps with and changes accepted notions of performance, community formation, identity construction and acts of memory. As a framework for these investigations, I propose that the internet is a catalyst without precedent for the production of performances of reconstruction, where fragments of the past are dug up, collected, assembled and presented as an imaginative reconstruction of ‘what used to be’, in an attempt to re-establish a lost sense of roots, identity and belonging; a coherent narrative of identity in an era of fragmentation

Problem space of modern society: philosophical-communicative and pedagogical interpretations. Part II

This collective monograph offers the description of philosophical bases of definition of communicative competence and pedagogical conditions for the formation of communication skills. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study using the methods of logical and semantic analysis of concepts, the method of reflection, textual reconstruction and comparative analysis. The theoretical and applied problems of modern society are investigated in the context of philosophical, communicative and pedagogical interpretations

Autopoietic-extended architecture: can buildings think?

To incorporate bioremedial functions into the performance of buildings and to balance generative architecture's dominant focus on computational programming and digital fabrication, this thesis first hybridizes theories of autopoiesis into extended cognition in order to research biological domains that include synthetic biology and biocomputation. Under the rubric of living technology I survey multidisciplinary fields to gather perspective for student design of bioremedial and/or metabolic components in generative architecture where generative not only denotes the use of computation but also includes biochemical, biomechanical, and metabolic functions. I trace computation and digital simulations back to Alan Turing's early 1950s Morphogenetic drawings, reaction-diffusion algorithms, and pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) in order to establish generative architecture's point of origin. I ask provocatively: Can buildings think? as a question echoing Turing's own "Can machines think?" Thereafter, I anticipate not only future bioperformative materials but also theories capable of underpinning strains of metabolic intelligences made possible via AI, synthetic biology, and living technology. I do not imply that metabolic architectural intelligence will be like human cognition. I suggest, rather, that new research and pedagogies involving the intelligence of bacteria, plants, synthetic biology, and algorithms define approaches that generative architecture should take in order to source new forms of autonomous life that will be deployable as corrective environmental interfaces. I call the research protocol autopoietic-extended design, theorizing it as an operating system (OS), a research methodology, and an app schematic for design studios and distance learning that makes use of in-field, e-, and m-learning technologies. A quest of this complexity requires scaffolding for coordinating theory-driven teaching with practice-oriented learning. Accordingly, I fuse Maturana and Varela's biological autopoiesis and its definitions of minimal biological life with Andy Clark's hypothesis of extended cognition and its cognition-to-environment linkages. I articulate a generative design strategy and student research method explained via architectural history interpreted from Louis Sullivan's 1924 pedagogical drawing system, Le Corbusier's Modernist pronouncements, and Greg Lynn's Animate Form. Thus, autopoietic-extended design organizes thinking about the generation of ideas for design prior to computational production and fabrication, necessitating a fresh relationship between nature/science/technology and design cognition. To systematize such a program requires the avoidance of simple binaries (mind/body, mind/nature) as well as the stationing of tool making, technology, and architecture within the ream of nature. Hence, I argue, in relation to extended phenotypes, plant-neurobiology, and recent genetic research: Consequently, autopoietic-extended design advances design protocols grounded in morphology, anatomy, cognition, biology, and technology in order to appropriate metabolic and intelligent properties for sensory/response duty in buildings. At m-learning levels smartphones, social media, and design apps source data from nature for students to mediate on-site research by extending 3D pedagogical reach into new university design programs. I intend the creation of a dialectical investigation of animal/human architecture and computational history augmented by theory relevant to current algorithmic design and fablab production. The autopoietic-extended design dialectic sets out ways to articulate opposition/differences outside the Cartesian either/or philosophy in order to prototype metabolic architecture, while dialectically maintaining: Buildings can think