interactions as well as purely personal interactions. We would like to handle both human and computer variants with similar ease and effectiveness.

As we considered in some detail in Chapter 6, the Web offers a powerful mechanism for the delivery of content. A question that we noted with this capability is the limitation of further distribution of content obtained through exchange transactions. We pay for a file containing a popular movie that we want, but how would the provider guard against our turning around and giving the file to all our friends? Conversely, of course, when we buy a file containing a movie we may feel entitled to play it on various computers or personal electronic devices that we might possess. On a more technical level, we sometimes seek to gain legitimate access to information that another person or company views as proprietary to their business. Consequently, they want assurance that we will safeguard that information. Historically, we provide such assurances by signing Non-Disclosure Agreements. While such agreements have significant commonality, companies often have specific assurances that they want included in the language of the document. Moreover, it is generally a requirement of a non-disclosure agreement to explicitly list the information being shared. All of these requirements are well suited to systematic negotiation through computer based systems.

Other areas where per-transaction policy negotiation is quite amenable to computer based systems are the implied or specific warranties on content obtained through exchange transactions. It is straightforward to set a personal policy directive that I want at least one-year parts and labor warranties on all computer systems that I buy. In some transactions, this might be included in the purchase price while in others it might cost extra. One might also be concerned about the return policy for purchases. And, elemental to most transactions is agreement of what laws apply to the transaction and what the recourse for disputed results is. While pre-interaction negotiation won’t solve all problems, it might help make clear what each party’s recourse is when something goes awry. These are all transaction details that a transcendent personal device could address.

Computer enabled applications typically entail the definition of their own contextual environment. They define actions that they’ll perform and parameters to describe those actions in detail. This results in such applications sometimes providing the definition of entirely new sensori-motor concepts to the human experience. Their actions and defining parameters constitute the specification of a vocabulary through which a person interacts with the application, or through which one application interacts with other applications. Most of the time, this new vocabulary seems centered on new nouns, adjectives and adverbs. The extensions to the language center on the objects of our actions or in the more subtle nuances defined for actions themselves. On more rare occasions, new verbs are brought to light. In such cases, the applications themselves suggest new sensori-motor responses to new stimuli that actually expand the paradigm for human activity. In some instances, the end result is the transformation of nouns into verbs. Consider that just 15 years ago, most people would not have understood the sentence “Text me when you get home;” at least not in the same way that we would interpret it today.

This evolution of language brought about by expansion of the sensori-motor environment is certainly not new. It is the way that languages are extended to encompass a changing environment. It is a great power of the recognition of context and metaphorical understanding that comprise at least some aspect of the physiological evolution that gave rise to Homo sapiens. It is much easier to integrate nuance into our existing metaphors than to develop entirely new metaphors; in essence, that’s something of an alternative definition of metaphor.

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