Understanding in distributed social-administrative network systems

Understanding is crucial for smart man-machine communication and therefore in the future of a well balanced information society. A pragmatic definition is given, valid for machines and humans. The solutions follow the developmental course in the history of philosophy and realize them based on the pattern concept of information science and the intelligent methods of frames, scripts, semantic nets and natural language understanding achievements. An extensive experiment using corpora of citizens claims indicate the feasibility and limits in application of current information technology and the emphasis of the elevated human role.