[Gbbopen-list] What's the position of "blackboard" in AI research?

[Chun Tian (binghe)]

Hello, GBBopen & Dan Corkill

Me again, a Chinese, Linux system administrator and Common Lisp  
programmer.

I'm reading several papers of Dan Corkill on this link:

http://dancorkill.home.comcast.net/~dancorkill/pubs/

It seems that author has been working in this area for more than 20  
years (1986-2008). At current, I still only have very basic knowledge  
about GBB, and after read half of the GBBopen's tutorial document, I  
still don't know how these space, unit, and events be used to solve  
problems. The only thing I can see right now, is the great hack of  
CLOS/MOP, and the portability on almost all CL platforms. (I should  
read more until I can understand it, sorry.)

The (stupid) question is, why I didn't see (almost) anything about  
blackboard in other AI books? (Of sourse, I read few AI books ^_^)

In book "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" (Stuart J.  
Russell & Peter Norvig), I didn't find anything about "Blackboard".  
The most related topic maybe "Multi-Agent Planning" which appear in  
Chapter 12 "Planning and Acting in the Real World".

In another book "Expert Systems: Principles and Programming" (Joseph  
C. Giarratang & Gray D. Riley), I found some notes about blackboard in  
its section 5.6 "The State of Uncertainty":

	... The best we can do on this mountain is model it on the expertise of
	our expert, or try to include more than one approach to uncertainty and
	let the different techniques fight it out. Such an evolutionary  
approach
	is based on the classic *blackboard architecture* in which different
	agents simultaneously work on a problem from different angles. All the
	agents post their pieces of the puzzle on a public blackboard for all  
to
	see in the hope that different pieces may suddenly come together ...

But this book didn't give any reference to Dan's papers, or anyone else.

So is this (blackboard related topics) is "outdate" or important-but- 
most-people-dont-think-so theory?

Thanks,

Chun Tian (binghe)


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