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94 Socially Intelligent Agents
Figure 11.1. Overview of EgoChat system
easier, we apply SIAs on these electronic communication media. Our method
for supporting knowledge creation is based on human-style talking agents called
“virtualized-egos” (VEs). A VE is one’s other self; it works independently of
one’s real self and can talk on one’s behalf. A VE compiles everyday e-mails
as an autobiographical memory that stores experiences of a community mem-
ber and generates a story from this memory. VEs work in our system called
EgoChat, which is a virtual environment for a conversation among humans and
VEs with voices. With EgoChat, community members can exchange their ex-
periences with each other even if some members are absent because VEs can
talk on behalf of the absent members.
2. Overview of EgoChat
Figure 11.1(a) shows a screen shot of EgoChat. A user is talking with three
VEs, each of which has the 3-D head of another community member.
Speeches of VEs are ordered as a story. In this research, we define a story as a
series of comments that represents relationships between community members.
Whenweexamineconversationsinamailing-list, wefindthatamembershaving
the same interests are inclined to talk with one another. We therefore assumed
