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EgoChat Agent 95that members in a general community have the same inclination, and that thisinclination represents the relationships of community members.The EgoChat system consists of three storytelling processes and two storageprocesses (Figure 11.1(b)). In the storytelling processes, community memberscan share their knowledge by creating a knowledge stream with their VEs.When a user wants to some community knowledge, she inputs her interest intoEgoChat by voice [storytelling process (a)]. The voice messages are recognizedby a commercial speech recognition system, and then VEs start talking aboutrelated topics [storytelling process (b)]. VEs will continue talking with oneanother unless the user interrupts the conversation to make a comment or changethe subject [storytelling process (c)].As the community member talks with VEs, her personal memory is enrichedin the processes of storing comments. Before using EgoChat, the personal memoriesare stored in VEs by using automated summarizing technology or summarizinghumanly from past exchanges on electronic media such as mailing-lists[storage process (1)]. Besides text-based messages, VEs store new oral messagesfrom a user on EgoChat [storage process (2)]. In this way, VEs sharecommunity knowledge in past messages of community members and users addnew ideas to their virtualized-egos in a loop of community knowledge creation.3. Storytelling by VEsVEs generate messages in turn, and these messages are ordered as a story asfollows.1. Start a turn. taking turns2. Each VE selects a message associated with a topic from personal memory.3. Only a VE whose message is presented in the most orderly and most reasonableway in the context speaks the message.4. The turn ends, and the next begins.By repeating the above process of generating and selecting messages, VEscan tell a story.In the following three sections, we propose two sets of representations ofthe personal memory that characterize a personality of a VE as an agent ofa community member; and lay out how an appropriate VE is selected duringprocess 3.3.1 Topics-and-summaries representationEach VE has a set of topics. Past posts from a community member relatedto each topic are filed away into the personal memory of a VE. For example,when a VE in a community of liquor fans has topics such as brandy, beer andsake (Figure 11.2(a)), comments about brandy like “I used to drink V.S.O.P”