Mr. Rogers started out by saying that he had spent most of his career developing software systems and had become interested in the problems of the present day where certainties are crumbling and there was an urgent hunger for spiritual insight and the search for meaning in a world that seems to be losing its humanity. There is growing awareness that peoples views of mythology can be used to get help in meeting these problems. The MYTHSEEKER Software gives ways to explore mythology in virtual reality using artificial intelligence. It is the first intelligent software probe into the mythic content of experience and it is being developed by a team of experts from many disciplines. The software is psychological and metaphorical, but not religious or political. It is supportive, but not controlling.

The mission of the MYTHSEEKER Institute is to create personal mythseeking in virtual environments, develop interactive software, offer classes to facilitate the process and create a network of MYTHSEEKER centers. It plans to develop personal mythseeking digital assistants, integrate personal myth into software architectural spaces; and develop new cutting-edge applications in medical, metabiology, and cross-cultural communication. There are many windows on reality such as engineering, science, creative arts, philosophy and psychology. Each of these has its own view of the world and mythology. The word myth comes from the Greek word mythos, a story or drama. Every culture has a mythology and there are certain common patterns and forms found to be present in each basic mythic pattern. The MYTHSEEKER System helps each user find a personal mythology for vision, creative change, help in facing adversity, and in going through "rites of passage".

There are three successive phases of involvement. First, an interactive assessment phase, Second, a facilitation phase, and Third, an interactive enaction phase. The assessment phase interactively gathers information about a user's life experience and parameters to suggest involvement with particular mythologies. Mythic Life Patterns (MLP) gains information about the user's life history, cultural or spiritual preferences, among other areas. Texture of Experience (TOE) works with variables such as preferred visual texture, shape or time pacing. The facilitation phase analyzes the assessment data to select mythologies and enactments for the specific user. The enaction phase creates the interactive virtual environment for exploration of mythologies and their aspects.

The MYTHSEEKER architecture consists of four software modules. The Existential Analyzer module performs MLP and TOE assessment and is implemented as an expert system. The Facilitator Module and the Enactor Module are also expert systems. The Executive Module provides the services required to execute the other three modules and serves as an interface to the platform's operating system. The architecture uses a client server approach on either a stand alone platform or a distributed system. The design is object-oriented at every level and highly modular for expandability and portability. The Executive Module is programmed in Java. The expert systems are programmed in Prolog based on knowledge engineering. Prolog is well established and is portable with Java. Strong use is made of Macromind Director and related tools, and major virtual reality development tools.

This was a very interesting presentation and covered a lot of material that can't be presented in a meeting report. McCagie Brooks Rogers is an articulate speaker who presented a lot of information in a short period of time. You can obtain much more information by going to:

http://www.mythseeker.com

This was second meeting of the LA Chapter year and was attended by about 22 persons.
Mike Walsh, LA ACM Secretary