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the proper protocols. For example, the computer must be able to process the input of the other computers using first its appropriate specialized input/output modules, and then the applications that know how to process the information at hand. Correspondingly, a person needs to hear the voice of another person and interpret it, using voice recognition modules and more general capabilities of language understanding.

Once a group is established, within the group each person can use an interaction or collection of interactions to promote the business at hand. For example, a person may read a document to the group, using document processing skills (reading and modulation of content) as well as communication skills (converting the content into spoken sentences processed by the voice output module). Similarly, the computer may, for instance, be scanning a photo, converting it into the proper bits of information via the scanner interaction module, and then, say use a compression application, and then the transmission module, to send the image to another computer. In this way, the computer and personal applications can effect their desired end.

So, we have something of a cursory overview of the interaction environment that we’d like to better understand. Let’s now delve into an overview of the inner workings of people and then computers in order to see if we can find some similarities in the basis for the policy environments in each case.

Human Structures and Processes

The abstract, systematic study of the human body includes a number of discrete disciplines. Two basic and interrelated such disciplines are anatomy and physiology. Anatomy comprises the study of the static characteristics of the body. It encompasses the consideration of the body’s structure and makeup: skeleton, linkage tissues, muscles, nerves, fluid systems, organs and the like. The study of the general dynamic systems of the body is termed physiology. Physiology concerns itself with the physical processes through which a person’s body supports its continued living as facilitated by both its internal interactions as well as its interactions with the physical world in which it exists. As a prelude to consideration of the human body’s operational processes, it is perhaps useful to observe that most such processes make use of active control of systems that operate from positions of unstable equilibrium. Thus, generally opposing mechanisms are used to effect motor control through positive impulses from the body’s control systems, the central and peripheral nervous systems. To move an arm requires the coordination of opposing muscles and to transmit an impulse across a nerve requires coordination of opposing chemical components. Such an approach to command and control of the body relies heavily on a highly structured and hence hierarchically capable cognitive system that is the centerpiece of the human sensori-motor experience. In turn, the sensori-motor experience provides conceptual framework for human cognition. Consider the following.

As we discussed previously, the physical ecosystem within which living organisms exist effects interactions through the four basic forces: gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force. Virtually all interactions that human physiology supports are based on electromagnetic and gravity based processes. Many of the electromagnetic based processes are presented to the human body through secondary or indirect mechanisms. These indirect mechanisms establish the metaphors through which cognitive system perceives the physical world around us. We see things. We hear things. We feel things. We touch things. We smell things. We taste things. These are all manifestations of the electromagnetic force. Establishing context through which metaphorical understanding becomes a significant basis of human cognition would

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