Cognition friendly interaction: A concept of partnership in human computer interaction

This paper identifies yet another field of research, the discipline of human computer interaction, where the concept of self-similar fluctuations can play a vital role. A concept of interaction between computation and cognition is developed that is friendly toward the cognitive process. It is argued that friendly interactions must have a memory and be antipersistent. To cast this in a mathematical form, fluctuations in the interactions recorded over a period of time are studied, and it is shown that these fluctuations must necessarily be self-similar with the value of the self-similarity parameter confined to the interval (0, 1/2), for the interaction to be friendly. A statistical measure of complexity, of the interaction process, is also formulated as a function of the self-similarity parameter. Finally the question is raised as how to build a friendly software and a possible evolutionary process through which friendly softwares may emerge is indicated. (c) 2001 American Institute of Physics.