Resources
A Road Map for future Memories for Life research (PDF)
This proposal seeks to establish a road map of research based around one of UKCRC's Grand Challenges - Memories for Life (M4L). It has arisen from a number of activities - the topic was highlighted in the OST's Cognitive Systems Programme, and again in the first Grand Challenges in Computing Workshop held in Edinburgh. An EPSRC Network grant was awarded in 2004 and a number of workshops and meetings have led to the framing of this proposal - culminating in wide circulation to researchers in the UK community. We believe M4L is a challenge that can harness the energies, interest and work of a wide range of scientists and researchers across a range of disciplines. It represents an exciting and important set of research questions.
The BBC Memory Experience
Website for a set of BBC radio programmes on the theme of memory, including dramas and documentaries, based around the biggest ever survey of the UKs memories.
Self-Organisation in the Nervous System (full version)
David Willshaw
Foresight Cognitive Systems Research Report. I take the term self-organisation to refer to those aspects of organisation that result from interactions between the elements of the system as well as with external influences that do not themselves provide ordering information. I identify three forms of neural self-organisation: in development; as a complement to experiential changes; and as a complement to damage.
Representation (full version)
Vincent Walsh, Simon Laughlin
Foresight Cognitive Systems Research Report. In this report, we highlight developments at the centre of research in sensory and cognitive processing in the biological and cognitive sciences. Our aim is to alert those working in the computational and engineering sciences to aspects of sensory representation that could be most relevant to developing artificial systems. To this end, we emphasise research and theoretical approaches that have yet to reach the textbook canon in the cognitive sciences.
Brief version
Memory, Reasoning and Learning (full version)
Kieron O'Hara, Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt, Keith vanRijsbergen
Foresight Cognitive Systems Research Report. In this paper, we project probable research directions in computer science, with respect to memory, rea-soning and learning. We discuss potential synergies with cognitive neuroscience and related disciplines over five and 20-year horizons, linked with wider trends in computing. We summarise our suggestions in an appendix at the end of this paper.
Brief version
Learning and Memory (full version)
Richard Morris, Graham Hitch, Kim Graham, Tim Bussey
Foresight Cognitive Systems Research Report. Our central theme is that there are many types of memory. We consider a major distinction between short-term and long-term memory in relation to research that has identified distinct components of working-memory and of long-term memory. We outline the characteristics, organisation and further sub-division of these different forms of memory from both a psychological and a neuroanatomical perspective. For example, some types of long-term memory are explicit, with memories later retrieved into conscious awareness: other types are implicit, such that the initial encoding of information and the processes by which it is retrieved are unavailable to consciousness.
Brief version
Cognitive Systems Foresight Project
The project began in April 2002 and is now in its aftercare phase. It aimed to provide a vision for the future development of cognitive systems through an exploration of recent advances in neuroscience and computer science.
Memories for Life: A Review of the Science and Technology
Kieron O'Hara, Richard Morris, Nigel Shadbolt, Graham Hitch, Wendy Hall, Neil Beagrie
This paper discusses scientific, social and technological aspects of memory. Recent developments in our understanding of memory processes and mechanisms, and their digital implementation, have placed the encoding, storage, management and retrieval of information at the forefront of several fields of research. At the same time, the divisions between the biological, physical and the digital worlds seem to be dissolving. Hence, opportunities for interdisciplinary research into memory are being created, between the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences. Such research may benefit from immediate application into information management technology as a testbed. The paper describes one initiative, memories for life, as a potential common problem space for the various interested disciplines.
Companions: a response to a Grand Challenge (GC3) with a revival of something traditional (download as pdf file)
Yorick Wilks
Submission to Grand Challenges in Computing Research conference 2004. The concept of this paper is intended as an augmentation, and to some degree a critique, of the GC3 position paper Memories for Life; the argument here is that MfL is inconceivable without some facilitator/elicitor of the human data, whose very activity imposes some narrative structure on the data, without which it will be useless. A Companion-like device is the only plausible way of imposing some coherence or narrative structure on the input data of a life. At a more sophisticated level it is an argument that a lifes data must have a point-of-view inherent in it, and that the owners is the one to start with.
Comments on Grand Challenge Document (GCD): 'Memories for Life': managing information over a human lifetime (download as pdf file)
Karen Sparck-Jones
Submission to Grand Challenges in Computing Research conference 2004. The GCD *assumes* that issues about data representation and manipulation are common to a wide range of computing applications, and so can be taken to justify labelling this data "memory for life". The correct view of a GC is that it is to *demonstrate* that this common, generic capability exists, so that substantiating it computationally is an advance for computer science as opposed to a miscellanous bunch of application developments.
A Multi-Disciplinary Scientific Agenda for Addressing the Grand Challenge of Memories for Life (download as pdf file)
Wendy Hall, Kieron O'Hara, Nigel Shadbolt
Submission to Grand Challenges in Computing Research conference 2004. The creation of a coalition of disciplines, working together in the M4L problem space, is timely. To engineer such a coalition a grand challenge is a very suitable method, and the M4L challenge, as described in the GC3 position paper by Fitzgibbon & Reiter, straddles the relevant disciplinary boundaries, bringing together science and technology. This paper is intended to show what an integrated, interdisciplinary agenda to address the M4L challenge might look like.
Creating a Corpus for Memories for Life (download as pdf file)
Ehud Reiter
Submission to Grand Challenges in Computing Research conference 2004. In this paper I review some existing corpora, discuss some of the issues in creating a Memories for Life corpus, and then sketch some ideas on how to move forward with creating a corpus.
Memory for Life: Getting Things Back (download as pdf file)
Peter Brown
Submission to Grand Challenges in Computing Research conference 2004. A memory repository stands or falls by its retrieval mechanisms. Extra actions at the time of capture can aid subsequent retrieval.
Memories for Life conference report 2006
Report from Memories for Life grand challenge, from the Conference on Grand Challenges in Computing Research, held in Glasgow from 22 to 24 March 2006.
Grand Challenges in Computing Research (download as pdf file)
Tony Hoare, Robin Milner
Report from the Conference on Grand Challenges in Computing Research, held in Newcastle from 29 to 31 March 2004.
UKCRC Grand Challenge page
The homepage of the Grand Challenges Exercise, an enterprise of the UKCRC (UK Computing Research Committee) to discuss possibilities and opportunities for the advancement of computing research, particularly in the UK. Its method is to solicit submissions from the UK computer research community, identifying ambitious, long-term research initiatives that might benefit from some degree of national and international coordination.
“Memories for life”: Managing information over a human lifetime (download as pdf file)
Andrew Fitzgibbon, Ehud Reiter
This describes Memories for Life as a Grand Challenge for Computing Science; it was written as part of the
UK Computing Research Committee's Grand Challenges exercise. The focus is on computing, little is said about
human memory.
Some Questions About Data (download as pdf file)
Karen Sparck-Jones
This note examines the challenge of trying to find common material as a shared resource for projects working on memories for life. It considers the implications of the different interpretations that can be given to ‘Memory for Life’, as presented in an earlier note, and their consequences not only for the form of the data but, even more importantly, for the needs that
data serves.