🔖Knowledge Representation: Knowledge Maps (Part III: Concepts and Labels)

Knowledge could be broken down to concepts and the associations between them, words functioning as links between concepts. A concept could be seen as a unit or chunk of meaning, for example “mother”, “father”, “child”, “home” are a few of the concepts we incorporate in our conceptual vocabulary, the collection of concepts we hold in our mental world. The previous four mentioned examples are just words, though words are just labels, transporters of meaning, and they don’t equate to concepts. A word (written or spoken) same as an image, a symbol or sound are just a representation/externalization of a concept outside of the mental world, we could regarded them simple as labels. Sure, they are strong correlated, and concepts could exist without labels, same as labels could exist without the articulation of a concept in the mental world. In a simpler formulation we could say that:

Label + Meaning = Concept

Meaning and labels are concepts too, fact that makes the definition kind of redundant, but that’s less important as long the overall meaning is understood. In addition the concept of meaning is quite complex, meaning being considered as existing within a given context, a context that carries its own meaning and it’s a concept in itself. More redundancy, isn’t it?

We could in theory put on a paper all the concepts we know, to be more focused, all the concepts we know related to other concept functioning as topic. Such constructs are similar to the ones of tag clouds, user-generated tags used to describe the content of a web page. Another type of such collection of concepts is the shopping list or any other types of lists.

 

Example of tag cloud	Example of shopping list

                               

Each of the words from the above tag cloud, respectively shopping list, are labels of the concepts they represent. In contrast to the shopping list, the size of the labels used in the tag cloud is proportional with their occurrence, but that’s less important for now. The fact is that both are representing a collection of concepts. More complex collections could be based on concepts derived from scientific works, book indexes are another such of example.

In the above shop list, “movie tickets” is a multipart label for a “single” concept, though it’s composed of the labels of two different concepts – “movie” and “ticket”. In this way concepts/labels could be formed by the aggregation of meaning for concepts, respectively concatenation of labels for labels. In theory we could put together as many of concepts or labels as we wish, though there are some limits imposed by linguistics. In daily life aggregations/concatenations of 2-3 concepts/labels are pretty usual: “knowledge mapping” (= “knowledge” + “mapping”), “knowledge management”, “business intelligence”, “collective intelligence”, “harnessing collective intelligence”, etc. There are also examples of labels encompassing already a concatenation of other labels, words formed with prefixes (e.g.: “un” + ”believable” = ”unbelievable”), affixes (“engineer” + ”ing” = ”engineering”) or hybrid/compound words (e.g. “auto” + ”mobile” = “automobile”)  are the simplest examples we used on a daily basis, some of the languages being more abundant than the others in such compounds (e.g. German language is quite rich in such hybrid words). 

The linguistics and semantic meaning of words offer us a deeper overview on the formation of words and meaning, though we don’t have to go that far. I will just limit myself to mention that a morpheme is the smallest compound of a word, composed at its turn of multiple phonemes, the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound, and graphemes, the smallest units of written language. In addition words or labels does not necessarily have to respect the rules of language morphology as a whole, one of such compounds that entered in my vocabulary many years ago, comes from the Disney’s musical film Mary Poppins, and those who the movie, probably already intuit what I’m talking about: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is formed, according to Wikipedia, from the following morphemes: super- "above", cali- "beauty", fragilistic- "delicate", expiali- "to atone", and docious- "educable", and the sum of these parts signifying roughly "atoning for educability through delicate beauty".

Given the richness of languages in what concerns the morphology, syntax and declension, how do we choose the labels? Also this is a complex topic and my knowledge stops somewhere. I prefer to use the infinitive form for verbs, nominative and singular form for substantives, sometimes called the dictionary forms, and include the prepositions when they change the meaning (English language is full of such constructs).  It’s not always so easy to do that, but I try to stick to it whenever is possible. In what concerns the labels formed of multiple other labels I prefer to choose the smallest unit of meaning that defines a concept “uniquely”.

Classes of Meaning

 A class of meaning equivalence, shortly class of meaning, comprises all the labels that share the same meaning [1]. Such a class comprises all the synonyms, acronyms and forms of construction of natural language used to label a concept. For example, depending on context, any of the following labels could be considered as belonging to the same class of meaning: abode, apartment, flat, home, mansion or residence. Many of us use acronyms in daily life, with formal or informal character: EOD (End of Day), ASAP (As Soon As Possible), US (United States, Uncle Sam, Upstream, Ultrasound), KM (Knowledge Map, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Mapping, kilometre), etc. 

The syntagm “forms of construction of natural language” refers primarily to the various elements of orthography  hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis and punctuation, which introduce some variance in the labelling of concepts. On whether we write “knowledge based” or “knowledge-based”, “center” or “centre”, “Knowledge Management” or “knowledge management”, “class of meaning” or “meaning class”, the various labels refer to the same concept. Normally in a Map would be enough to include only one member of a class of meaning, unless is intended to highlight the synonymy or any other similar association type.

🔖Knowledge Representation: Knowledge Maps (Part II - Knowledge Mapping)

It’s natural to talk about K-maps within Knowledge Representation, and extensively within Knowledge Management, domains in which the process of creating a K-map is known as Knowledge Mapping, shortly K-mapping. In essence that’s what K-mapping is about, creating a K-map, however in literature could be found more elaborated definitions. According to D. Hyerle, K-mapping is “a rich synthesis of thinking processes, mental strategies, techniques and technologies, and knowledge that enables humans to investigate unknowns, show patterns of information, and then use the map to express, build, and assess new knowledge” [1]. 

Within the same context but from a slightly different perspective, [3] regards it as a “consciously designed communication medium using graphical presentation of text, stories, models, numbers or abstract symbols between map makers and map users”. In the context of K-mapping in organizations, B. Bergeron defines it as the “process of identifying who knows what, how the information is stored in the organization, where it’s stored, and how the stores of information are interrelated” [2]. All the above definitions focus on mapping as a process, knowledge as the object of the mapping process and the context in which it occurs.

The use of various types of K-maps introduces similar concepts, K-mapping being referred as concept mapping when talking about concept maps or when the granularity of a map is at concept level, mind mapping when the focus is Mind Maps or externalization of mental maps, semantic mapping when discussing about semantic maps, process mapping in the case of process maps, etc. Related concepts stress other aspects of K-mapping referring to different levels of abstraction, for example ontology creation or ontology engineering, in this context ontology mapping referring to the mapping between different ontologies. Same happens in the world of the databases in which data modeling or semantic modeling refers at the creation of a data model, while data mapping refers at the mapping between two structures.

As stressed before, the various types of K-maps in use introduce their own creational philosophy, which with a little effort could be raised at the state of methodology. K-mapping as a process could be reduced to input, output and what happens in between. As input for a K-map could be used the various types of media content, mental models, knowledge of experts, discussions outcomes or any other sources of information. As knowledge is not always available at our disposal, searching for knowledge, identifying knowledge is quite a time consuming task, especially when knowledge is not indexed, easily accessible or we don’t exactly know what we are searching for. In general we talk about knowledge acquisition, which refers to the process of extracting knowledge, structuring and organization of knowledge. 

When creating a K-map we are doing extensively knowledge acquisition, essential in the process of learning. In exchange, when we create K-maps on the mental models, we are externalizing our knowledge, transforming the tacit in explicit knowledge, figuring out or better said evaluating what we stored in our brain, grounding of knowledge by finding meanings, formalizing concepts, finding the best formulation, finding new associations, building on previous knowledge, examine beliefs, integrating, mixing and recombining knowledge, identify patterns in knowledge, patterns of thinking, becoming creative, etc. Also these aspects are part of K-mapping, even if they are not so visible in the process, however they are stressed especially during K-mapping. 

The structuring and organization of knowledge in K- mapping is done in representational form (visualization), translated into spatial organization or simple aggregation of information, in patterns or models of expressions, and here the various types of K-maps are used as a form of expression. Mapping techniques need to be flexible in order to reflect the representational richness of knowledge, they evolve with experience, “the one who maps” learning with time to take advantage of the appropriate type of K-map or pattern. K-mapping is thus an iterative process, a K-map being evolved during several stages, the final outcome being unexpectedly different than the inputs or expected outcomes.

K-mapping applies to individuals as well as to groups, collaborative or coordinative K-maps involving more complex forms of acquisition, process or visualization, often being involved some forms of negotiation and knowledge sharing from which the output emerges. Collaborative K-mapping seems to be preponderant to the contexts in which the force of the group emerges, mainly economical and scholar organizations, and recently social networks.

References:
[1] M. Jafari, P. Akhavan, A. Bourouni, R. H. Amiri, (2009). A Framework For The Selection Of Knowledge Mapping Techniques. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Vol. 10, No. 1, [Online] Available from: http://www.tlainc.com/articl180.htm (Accessed:16 October 2010)
[2] B. Bergeron. (2003). Essentials of Knowledge Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 0-471-28113-1.
[3] H. P. Tseng, Y-C. Lin (2008) A Knowledge Management Portal System for Construction Projects Using Knowledge Map. Knowledge Management:
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications, M.E. Jennex (Ed.). ISBN-13: 978-1-59904-934-2.

🔖Knowledge Representation: Knowledge Maps (Part I - An Introduction)

Most of us are familiar with the geographic Maps, during school hours or outdoor trips we had at least once the possibility of guiding ourselves using a Map. Paraphrasing Alfred Korzybski, “the map is not the territory”, though a Map offers a bird’s eye view of the territory, it might be not perfect, nor so detailed as we would like it to be, though it allows people identifying their position, their destination, their route left behind and the one ahead, the obstacles, the boundaries, the known and unknown zones. Our marvelous memory allows us storing details of such Maps, more or less perfect copies of the Maps, voluntarily or involuntarily memorized. 

Even more, we are creating in our brain an adaptable dynamic Mental Map of the world we live in, reflecting the changes occurred in it the way we perceive them. It is what Robinson, quoted by [1] calls it “reduction of reality” and “construction of an analogical space”, the complex structure of reality being reduced to an easy to memorize Map attempting to be a reflection of reality. A geographic Map uses Names, color, spatial organization, and a small set of symbols in order to represent a projection of the geographical world we live in. In a similar manner we could map also the various types of knowledge using a similar set of tools known as Knowledge Maps or simply K-maps.

Especially between students, could be met the practice of underlining or marking a chunk of text with special marker(s), highlighting the respective text as important, at least for a second review. The chunk of text could be a concept, a definition or a whole paragraph, and that’s actually the input for a K-map. In theory you could put the whole chunks of texts together on post-it or electronic documents, group them together in some way, and there you have a rudimentary K-map. Thus could be intuited that a K-map is a graphic organizer of chunks of texts identified as information or knowledge. Putting together row text allows structuring the content based on identified associations, it could be sequential structure, logical implication, importance, topic, etc. 

Thus are created implied or explicit association between the various chunks of text. Further value could be added by breaking the text in smaller chunks, summarize a chunk in fewer words, replace words with more meaningful words, add numbering, symbols, other types of markings (e.g. NB = “nota bene”, QED = quod erat demonstrandum), references, questions, etc. Of course, the same could be done in the book itself though ignoring the fact that book’s owner or further readers could argue such methods, the value comes from having the chunks of text coming from different books in one place or, if you want, in fewer text containers, and the electronic documents make this approach such an easy task.

From a visual perspective, processing a whole chunk of text could be time consuming, especially when we look for specific information, typically key words, primary concepts, definitions, etc. Marking such text in special ways brings some additional value, though the linear character of text makes it still difficult to process. What if we break the text at conceptual level? Wouldn’t such output be easier to process? Now it depends also on each person’s capabilities, though working with concepts seems closer to the mental structure of our mind, in the way meaning is represented and created. 

What if we further represent the associations between concepts explicitly, giving them names, and thus associating other concepts with them? Wouldn’t be such structures easier to process and understand? Such structures would be also K-maps, though their content is more refined. Actually the concept-based and whole propositions could be mixed together in K-maps, the degree of refinement of such concepts being more a figure of taste or, as will be further seen, of philosophy.

Until now we considered a K-map as being an aggregation of chunks of text of various granularities, implied or explicit associations, and the later could be labeled using other more or less standardized concepts. We talked also about formatting, meaningful display, resources, symbols and other types of markings. These are in fact the content elements of a K-map, but in definitive what is a K-map?!

Extrapolating the above considerations, a Knowledge Map or K-map could be considered as a visual graphical tool used to aggregate and represent information or knowledge. The definition seems to need further refinement because the graphical character implies a visual component, representation could involve aggregation and thus the later term could be abandoned, while following the DIKW pyramid, knowledge involve information. Graphical is the form of representation, while the role of visual is to represent explicitly the channel of communication, in fact stressing its visual, respectively graphical character, a K-map could be considered as synonym to visual aid or graphical organizer, terms more frequent used, especially in teaching. No matter of the degree of knowledge encompassed, a representation of the knowledge is not the knowledge itself, it resumes thus to information that triggers knowledge and the associations existing between information. Thus, a K-map could be defined as a visual graphical tool used to represent information and the associations existing between them, either implicit or explicit. The term information encompasses here any type of symbols or chunk of texts. When information is present in its most granular form, at concept level, the K-map is a visual graphical tool used to represent concepts and the associations existing between them.

The definition of a K-map represent the “what” from the W5H1 syntagm, how about the why, who, when, how, by whom and by what means? Why a K-map, isn’t the text or what we know enough? Do we really have to break the knowledge into such maps? Maybe we don’t, it depends on each persons capacities, some of us have a really good memory, retain everything they read and recalled it any time. For others, such capabilities come with some effort, spending some time in memorizing the information we consider as useful for the future, and also this step depends on each person’s capabilities and skills. As mentioned in introduction, the read material could be “formatted”, broken into pieces, annotated, summarized, restructured in order to increase the efficiency of memorization and recall. 

According to researchers, in brain itself takes place some unconscious restructuring of information, associations are created, strengthened and removed, the later activity resulting in forgetting the information once stored, the recovery of such information necessitating a review of the source or sources used in the first place to acquire the respective information. Considering the huge amount of information our brain deals with, it’s almost impossible to identify during a simple read, all the connections existing between the various concepts assimilated, especially when they aren’t so evident. This perspective of what’s happening in our brain is quite simplistic, though can be discovered already some gaps in the learning process, gaps which in theory could be addressed with the help of K-maps. As its name and definition denote, a K-map has the function of a map, used to represent knowledge. 

Once such a map created, it would be easier for us to access it, and thus to refresh our information, eventually use it as a reference to the actual text. In addition, when evaluating the associations of such a map, existing or inexistent, we could identify new associations, conditions under which they hold (e.g. range of applicability, exceptions), new concepts, new contexts, etc. Let’s not forget that the human is a social being, the meaning of the concepts we deal with relying also their meaning at macro level – organizations, communities of practice, friends or any other types of groups. The individual maps could be used in order to compare and evaluate knowledge, collective collaborative and coordinative creation of K-maps coming with their benefits too. They could be used as a baseline for learning, negotiation, documentation or (self-) evaluation. 

The creation of a K-map requires additional time, time we don’t always have. Does it really make sense to create such a map all the times? It’s probably recommended to create it when we acquire new knowledge, especially when we want to identify the concepts on which the respective chunk of knowledge is built upon. Once the backbone concepts mastered, the necessity of a map decreases to some degree, in the end its necessity depending on individual needs. A K-map could be useful also when externalizing the knowledge, especially the tacit knowledge, in organizations being quite a valuable tool in documenting the various types of information organization work with, process maps, flow maps, value stream maps, being several examples of such K-maps.

How to create a K-map? In definitive maybe we create such maps without knowing it, it’s built in our “ADN” as we often arrive to express complex thoughts by externalize them in diagrammatic form. There are more than 50 types of K-maps available in the literature: Concept Maps, Semantic Nets, Conceptual Graphs, Mind Maps, and so on. They have many similarities, often the similarities residing in the philosophies used to create them. Adhering to one or more of such maps is a question of need, preferences, habitude and requirement. Sometimes also deviations from the philosophy behind a map could prove to be useful as long satisfies a purpose, same as a map arrives to be misused, for example by placing too much content, be it irrelevant or relevant, or of using too much formatting, not respecting guidelines, etc. There are several requirements a K-map should satisfy – it should be simple to use and navigate, with an approachable level of complexity and thus understandability, adaptive and dynamic.

 “By what means” could refer here to the tools used to create K-maps and the channels used to distribute them. Again it’s a question of need, preferences, habitude and requirements. In the past years appear many tools used for the creation of K-maps, having multiple features, but still lacking in representational content the human mind is used to. The paper and a crayon could prove efficient as well, while those with an exceptional memory could create such maps directly in the inner mental world. Everything is possible, everything it’s a question of practice and self-improvement of techniques.

References:
[1] Hyerle, D. 2008. Thinking Maps®: A Visual Language for Learning. In: Thinking Maps®: A Visual Language for Learning, ISBN: 978-1-84800-149-7. [Online] Available from: http://www.springerlink.com/content/x57121720731381j/ (Accessed: 23 June 2009)

🌐 Meta-Blogging: Is Blogging Stagnating?

Introduction

When I started this blog, it wasn’t in my intent to do meta-blogging (blogging about blogging), though a few days ago, while browsing through Linkedin posts, Nic Oliver’s question “Where have all the bloggers and commenters gone?”  draw my attention. The question is rooted in his observation that a few social sites, he was member of, are registering an apparent decrease in the number of blogs and comments. Is it really this happening? The question preoccupies me not only as blogger and owner of a blog on web-related theme, but also as I’m interesting in the evolution of web and its trends. 

Until now I had no reasons to pose such a question, I mean even if the current blog had few visitors in the past month, this was also a consequence of the fact that lately I haven’t managed to post something new, however my sql-troubles blog acknowledges a considerable increase in the number of visitors, from about 50 users per week at the beginning of this year to about 250 users currently. I know that’s not a big number when compared with other professional blogs, though for beginning that’s even a little more than I expected. I could corroborate the increase in the number of visitors with the increase in the number of posts and the fact that I tried to post each week something.

A Look at Personal Navigation History

Looking back at my navigation history of the past months I have to recognize that I focused more on professional blogs, mainly on the MSDN blogs which are going through a considerable boom, probably a result of a change in strategy coming from Microsoft. Spending more time on content creation and reading of a several profession-related books, the time spent on reading others’ blogs decreased considerably. I even kind of neglected Linkedin in the detriment of Facebook, though the time spent on Facebook decreased considerably lately because of the lack of time corroborated with saturation in what concerns the wanted and not wanted content, from the later category I remark the Farm Ville and Mafia games content. I could add also the relatively small number of new features added to Facebook, feeling that something more could be done in this direction, especially in what concerns content filtering, categorizing and aggregation. I am remarking these facts also because the respective problems could apply to other social networks or blogging too, and from this point of view I have several person observations.

Personal Blogging Concerns

I’m using Blogspot since almost 5 years now, it’s a nice blogging platform, though with a few exceptions the number of important new features since then is quite small, lacking several important features. The best example is the editor which provides few built-in html functionality when compared with the HTML tags available in HTML4 or newly HTML5. Sure, the HTML editor supports in theory all HTML tags though they need to be entered manually, and this equates with considerable effort from my part in some cases, especially when I consider the programming language code that needs special formatting in order to be easily readable. I found myself in the position to appeal from necessity to an editor like Windows Live Writer, though it has its issues too. To content formatting adds content presentation, in this category falling blog’s layout, quite inflexible from some points of view, and content categorization. Labeling and clouds are great in order to highlight important keywords, though I feel something more could be done in this direction, for example aggregating labels in categories or in Knowledge Maps.

Another important problem for myself is commenting, and here are several aspects. First, and maybe the most important aspect related to users authentication for commentaries, some of the blogs request a user to be logged in in order to comment, sure some of the websites are integrated with Facebook, Twitter or myOpenID credentials, though not all the users have and want to create a new account for this purpose (SideWiki it’s out of discussion here as it’s not integrated directly in the blogs). Secondly, the comments have poor or inexistent rich formatting, often resuming to text messages. Third aspect: it would be useful to have more flexibility in what concerns the notification when a new comment is posted.  Fourth aspect: also comments require sometimes some categorization, especially in what concerns in filtering out adulatory or irrelevant content. Fifth aspect: annotation, one of the important features of the Read-Write web is almost inexistent.

Saturation Point

All the above aspects could in theory make users a little unsatisfied with the blogging experience and reflect thus in a possible decrease in the number of blogs, posts or comments. In order to understand what’s happening we have to go deeper and understand the value of blogs for both, bloggers and readers, the important link between the two being the content. I was thinking that maybe we reached a content saturation point in which bloggers have less to say, the important subjects being exhausted. Maybe we reached also a break-even point between request and demand in what concerns the content reached an equilibrium in some domains, the variety and coverage of content facilitating this. Maybe the readers lost their interest, in definitive they want to be entertained, otherwise they’ll find another entertainer. Now not sure how many bloggers want to be in the position of an entertainer…

Time and Satisfaction as Drivers

As I was highlighting above, also the available time for blogging is a problem as good content and comments requires time, often some research in addition to the personal experience, from the later perspective the subjects could drain, bloggers having nothing more important to say (I actually have seen a few blogs closed because of that). The inverse ratio between time spent on one side and financial or personal satisfaction on the other side is possible to have depleted over time. For sure many people are blogging because they have something important to tell the world on professional and non-professional themes. It’s not only the interest but also some satisfaction involved, either financial or appreciative. 

The financial outcomes are quite small, resulting from ads and number of clicks gathered, the relevance of ads’ content being quite an important factor, and here I’m having some personal complaints too. The appreciative satisfaction is somewhat reflected in the number of visitors, the comments they post and the value they have for the blogger, and I would say that’s quite an important factor. I have also to remark the destructive/pejorative intent of some of the comments, many readers lacking in some basic blogging and social web ethics, being inclined to denigrate rather than criticize constructively. To this adds the volume of spam, the use of captchas, excepting their role of reducing the quota of spam, have the side effect of annoying the commenter, in some situation the use of captchas being totally badly-designed.

Content Absorption

A considerable number of blogs were just reflecting personal non-technical events from bloggers’ life, social networks like Facebook absorbing increasingly such content, and from this perspective I have to recognize that they are more appropriate for this purpose. Probably many commenters moved to the (social) professional networks, having more freedom in posting the questions, and potentially more experts, and thus a higher number and diversity of opinions, plus the feedback seems to function better. In addition, the professional nature of such networks could bring in theory more value than the blogs, the marriage between blogs and professional networks being the logical and maybe necessary move, though this requires a richer integration between the two platforms.

Behavioral Change

Maybe readers have started to do some research by themselves or learned to use online encyclopedias like Wikipedia that offer a good inverse ratio between content on one side and complexity, variety, spread, navigation on the other side. Maybe the users moved to the video content, richer in visual and auditive experience, many universities, companies, professionals and non-professional posting their webcasts or radiocasts online, collections like YouTube/Edu being a good example. Or maybe the users are too demoralized because of the crisis, sure that’s a forced possible cause, though in the end also the socio-economical factors should be considered.

Some Statistics

I was wondering how many bloggers moved their blogs between the various platforms or they totally abandoned their blogs or how many readers comment actually what they read. Even if I’m a little reticent to the way some statistics on the web reflect the reality as long I don’t know the background and the way they were collected, they could be used at least as approximation/trending. Technorati through its State of Blogosphere annual report seems the most quoted source for such statistics, though the report for 2010 it’s not already available, while the statistics for the previous years seems to be dispersed across several posts. Here are some important facts related indirectly to the current topic quoted by SEJ from Technorati:

- 77% of Internet users read blogs
- 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog
- the most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week

Unfortunately no number in what concerns my three above concerns. Anyway, several blogs, for example Caslon Analytics blogging and PCMag.com, are quoting an old report coming from Perseus, in which is estimated that about 66% of the blogs are temporarily or permanently abandoned after two months. I wanted to dig more into the topic but the time and the ocean of information, in which is still difficult to search for relevant information, made me stop here…

Learning: Random Thoughts on Knowledge and Learning

Kristen Weatherby, sharing her thoughts after Reform event held in UK, writes on “The Teachers Blog” in “Knowledge versus Learning” post:

“I believe very strongly that education is about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next.”

“Knowledge is the basic building block for a successful life…. What is to be criticised is an education system which has relegated the importance of knowledge in favour of ill-defined learning skills.”

 I’m not a teacher, even if I coquetted with the idea of teaching, and it’s not (yet) in my attributions to criticize or defend the past or future of education, however as a simple mortal who spent some time in schools, I hope I’m allowed a few observations.

Taking the first quote from above I would like to start with two other quotes that worth to meditate on:

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (T.S. Eliot,  "The Rock")

 “Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.” (Frank Zappa)

Knowledge is not the most important asset that we have to transmit to further generations, but the wisdom we’ve acquired, teaching them how not to make the same mistakes that we did. Philosophers and spiritual leaders attempted in many books to reveal the importance and the many facets of wisdom, highlighting in parallel the limitations of knowledge. Spending our lives on the quest of knowledge has quite a high price that might cost us the future of our children. Also wisdom might not be enough, but together with love, beauty and music, could make a difference.

Coming back to the actual subject of this post, I strongly believe that it's important to make the educational system adaptable to the changes occurring in our society, to create an infrastructure that sustains and embraces change. In many countries the educational systems remained the same for years, even decades, or the changes are insignificant when compared to the changes occurred in our society, especially in the area of technologies, business’ dynamics or culture. Change is inevitable, and there is a time for change, propitious for change, and when this time passes, the system is forced to change from outside, and then there are also victims. It’s not a personal theory, but the laws of nature - an educational system is part of another ecosystem, which at his turn is part of a bigger system, and so on, thus a change occurring in an upper system has greater impact in lower ecosystems if the respective ecosystems are not prepared to support the change. The actual economical crisis is maybe the best example in this direction.

     Something needs to change, but what? We are living in a world overloaded of information, we are attempting to derive knowledge from information, but the sea of information is so deep that we risk to sink, we are attempting to process information using the processing power of computers and that’s not so easy, as the attempt of mimicking meaning, which has an important role in the identification of knowledge, it’s still in its baby steps. Einstein was saying something like "a problem cannot be solved at the same level (of consciousness) it was created" ( I hope is the right quote).  Until we find the right solution to the big problem, we could try to solve the common small issues we deal with.

    The debate between memorization of facts and figures, respectively personalized learning, in fact could be reduced to the attempt to find a balance between quantity and quality – quantity as a measure of what is learned, and quality as a measure of what remained after. (Maybe it’s not the best formulation, but the meaning is close to what I intended to say.)  In theory all we have to do is to optimize the equation based on the two, and most probably many other aspects (e.g. financial, personal or technological resources). Normally the solution is somewhere in between, and rarely at extremes. In this case, again, at least in theory, should resume in using effectively and efficiently what we have, in strengthening the weaknesses.

    For me as a student and later as hobbyist “researcher”, the most time consuming activities are searching for information, indexing and mapping the information found. I’ve been spending lot of time for searching simple definitions, definitions that should help us define the world we live in. In addition, often it’s not easy to fish for the facts, having to read a whole book in order to find 2-3 important ideas. For sure we need to simplify the content, to personalize it to the degree of interest and understanding for each person, but in order to reveal the networked structure of network, I think that we need to provide the same type of structural knowledge navigability. Wikipedia is somehow providing that, but it’s just a start.  Only relatively I was introduced in the world of visual representation of knowledge. 

Various types of simple tabular diagrams, circle, trees or brace maps have been used for decades in almost all fields, but I have hardly seen in manuals or teachers to refer to more complex knowledge maps like Mind Maps, Cognitive Map, semantic networks or Vee-diagrams, and I feel that they better reflect the structural patterns of knowledge than the text. The promoters of such maps insist on the importance of associations, visual rhythm, patterns, colour or spatial awareness, on the role of left brain vs. right brain, on the cognitive processes, the methods of memorizing, how knowledge is created, stored, processed, mixed and remixed, on how to collaborate in order to solve problems. Making people aware of these is a step, and it starts with learning people how to learn, on how to use the tools and resources effectively and efficiently, on how and where to find information, how to take notes and map knowledge. I don’t think this requires a huge amount of investment, and there are schools that made important steps in this direction.

The personalization of the learning process is required by the different learning needs, of the different aptitudes and attitudes toward learning. For many people learning could be regarded as an unpleasant endeavor, I think that some effort must be spent in order to make learning pleasant, to make things "attractive to learn" – games work well for small and mature alltogether. In addition many students don't see the necessity of learning so many things, there should be a trade between theory, utility and applicability. For example in Mathematics behind each theory there is a problem that the respective theory attempts to solve, graduating in Math, I found the applicability of many of the theories learned only many years later. 

Talking about University, I've seen that the professors were often avoiding, most probably from lack of time, to explain people the grounds of theories, but expecting people to understand the grounds even if they are not so simple to see. From time to time I was hearing a professor asking himself how is it possible that the students don't understand the grounds behind the theories, how they can't perceive such basic stuff. Of course, the true is somewhere in between, what I'm trying to point here is that not for everybody all the facts are evident. Especially in Mathematics we are talking about several hundred/thousands years of evolution in mathematical thought, in teaching of Mathematics being avoided subjects like: why, when, where, how, by what means, questions essential in acquiring of knowledge.  There were also professors who preferred that students learn less material, that they understood the principles behind each theory, that they can make use of the knowledge they have. I think is important to invest effort in making knowledge, implicitly also knowledge resources, available at the level required by a student.

 Looking into the future, at the impact technologies have in our life, I expect that the role of a teacher changes from knowledge provider to enabler/facilitator of the learning process, of course this most probably can't be done starting from the first grade but introduced gradually. This doesn't mean that there will be no more need for skilled teachers, only the roles will change, and I feel that will be a win-win outcome.

🔖Knowledge Representation: DIKW (Part I: An Introduction)

Collocations like “Web of data”, “Web of Information” “Web of Knowledge” “Data Management”, “Information Management”, “Knowledge Management”, “Data Technologies”, “Information Technologies”, “Knowledge Technologies” and other similar such compounds involving Data, Information and Knowledge (DIK) are increasingly and interchangeably used in various contexts by vendors, customers, researchers and bloggers, sometimes being misused from confusion or exaggeration. On the other side it is true that the border between data, information and knowledge can be shallow, and from here rise up divergent opinions and theories, and as always people like to fight about their ideas and believes. To the three adds wisdom forming what is known as DIKW, the Knowledge Pyramid, however wisdom is less met in the technical landscape presumptively because it’s harder to express and quantify.

DIKW reveals the layered evolution of information from data to knowledge and further to wisdom; it’s just a wide accepted model, a pyramidal representation to which there were attempts of including proto-facts and facts [2], understanding [1] [6], transaction and intuition [7], vision and “One Mindness” [6], and probably other similar attempts might be there in the deep web. Sometimes such theories are pure philosophy apparently without applicability and quite far away from the work of scientists who are used to juggle with data, information and knowledge, relatively easy to quantify and grasp compared to wisdom, intuition, meaning, creativity, vision, consciousness, awareness or any other similar terms that made, since ancient times, philosophers’ delight. 

On the other side the scientific work is built upon the philosophic work, and seemingly as new advancements are made the “New Age” philosophies tend to be integrated in scientific work. From the concepts from the second group, only meaning has started to stir up researcher’s attention, and this mainly in AI domain, which attempts to bridge the gap between humans and machines. I suppose there are attempts also in the area of creativity, vision, intuition or wisdom, though it will be difficult to do concludent steps until the barriers of meaning are not broken.

Data is considered to be “simple isolated facts” [4], a combination of "symbols or isolated and non-interpreted facts" [5], symbols, raw that “simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence” [10], quantified or qualified symbol sets, signals or sensory stimuli perceived [3], etc. Be it facts, symbols, events, signals or sensory stimuli, it is highlighted their isolated and not-interpretable characteristics. When we think of data we refer mainly to the written symbols, independent on whether they have or not meaning for us – a digit or set of digits, a letter and the words they form, an image or any combination of them. In a apparently collection of signs, each sign could be regarded as a data chunk, though it happens that we decipher patterns of signs that we know, for example words, phone numbers, addresses, coordinates, time, etc. In database terminology data refers to a matrix structure (columns vs. records) in which each cells of the matrix contains a data chunk that nowadays could be any aggregation of signs and data types a database system supports. 

 As we can see interpretations of data could have different granularity dependent on the form of aggregation and purpose, thus a natural question: when could we discuss about information? For sure a collection of data is not information, then what ingredient(s) is/are essential in having a chunk of information? I believe that there are two magic words – relation and meaning, actually meaningful relation. Using various algorithms, and even from a simple review of the data, researchers could establish various relations between two data chunks, for example that they always occur together, that one causes the other, that XYZ is the address of John Smith, and so on. 

To make it even more complicated, for an IT professional, a structure, and I’m referring here mainly to databases, supposes already the existence of relations between data, thus statements like XYZ is the address of John Smith who was born on 1st of July and works for ABC are already available. Of course, only few relations are useful, just because two chunks of data occur together, in one or several locations, this doesn’t mean that such a relation is meaningful, while in other situations that might be quite important. 

When we discuss about a meaningful relation we actually imply a context, a multidimensional (mental) frame in which meaning is formed and derived from. Thus a relation could be meaningful in one context and irrelevant in another, and that’s why many say that data don’t equate with information. Discovering that the evolution from data to information is context dependent could maybe solve some of the philosophical disagreements, though this aspect makes it difficult to find a common accepted definition for information. Basically information is just chunks of data found in (meaningful) relation(s).

 In what concerns knowledge things are not less complex, the just formulated definition for information could be adapted from my point of view also to knowledge, advancing the idea that knowledge is information found in meaningful relation. Establishing meaningful relations between information implies a certain level of understanding, conscious or unconscious processing and systematization of information, their integration in the existing mental structures - contexts. Mental structures apply here not only to individuals but also to communities, in the past years the later gaining considerable importance. 

Communities equate with networks, and networked is also the structure of the knowledge, this involving a dynamic (evolutional) nature, with multiple values of truth, levels of organization and granularity. The systematization and integration of knowledge relies on existing or new formed patterns based on characteristics of knowledge. There were written many books about knowledge, trying to depict its characteristics, and there are so many facets that it’s difficult to find a definition that accommodates all the types of knowledge – tacit vs. explicit knowledge, personal vs. networked knowledge, declarative vs. procedural, practical vs. theoretical knowledge, personal vs. collective knowledge, contextual, situational or definitional knowledge, and so on. I find it quite important to understand the various types of characteristics because each of them comes with their own characteristics and uses.

Wisdom is skillful use of knowledge, knowledge put into use, transcended knowledge, understanding the patterns and principles of knowledge, knowing when, where, how, why and by what means to apply the knowledge. Wisdom involves also keeping the balance between the various aspects of situations, strengths and weaknesses altogether, minimizing or totally overcoming biases. In spiritual literature and tradition, wisdom plays a fundamental role, the many books on this topic attempting to reveal the qualities (dimensions) and implications of wisdom. I will limit myself only to give two quotes, namely one from A. Einstein who was remarking that "wisdom is not a product of schooling of the lifelong attempt to acquire it", and B. Russel was remarking that “although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom” [8].

The new added scales to the DIKW pyramid are questionable, it’s kind of a gray area, based maybe on deeper considerations not so easy to grasp, while the lack of definitions and argumentation makes the understanding process even more difficult.  The best example regarding the lack of definitions is the proto-fact, in such situations we could eventually call into help the possible etymological formation. The prefix proto-, from Greek protos, when used in compounds has the meaning of “first” or “before”, thus that proto-facts could be considered as basic/primary facts, maybe axioms, idea that matches also [5]’s view, who’s considering them as assumptions that are used to extract new facts from the world. Following this definition or assumption, proto-facts and facts are rather information, data describing them at most so I really don’t see why the facts and proto-facts are considered as the lower layer on which data layer is based, this because I see data as describing facts, mainly as quantitative or qualitative associations.

From a creationist point of view, everything is vibration, what we perceive is nothing but grossier vibrations taking various forms, some of them recepted and processed by our senses. The layer that comes into contact with the medium (environment) is called by [7] the transaction layer, where the “packets” of sensations are put onto or taken off of the medium, and before any data can exist, the packets have to be received, unpacked and assembled into data. Even if the denomination of transaction layer is not maybe the best, and the description is quite simplistic, this should be at high level the process in which the stimuli from the outside and inside world are transformed by our senses and brain in the so called “data”, forming our continuous reality. [7] believes that somewhere at this level the intuition occurs, though it could be also at higher level as long everything happens within the unconscious mind. Without going to deep into philosophical debate I would limit myself to say that I find well-founded the adding of intuition into DIKW scale, and I could put it on the same level with creativity, innovation, and vision, all three dimensions transcend knowledge and have their important role in understanding and further in wisdom’s attainment. The role of intuition and creative is reinforced also within Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, red hat representing the intuition, while the green hat, the creativity.

 Vision and “one mindness” seem to come from the New Age vocabulary though they are not so far away from modern science, vision in technical terms is reflected in forecasting, approximating the future based on past trends, while “one mindness” is the principle or the state of art behind Noosphere. It’s true, in what concerns the human being and the actual stage of development, such terms sound to be inapplicable, on the other side when we consider that everything is in continuous evolution/involution, everything is possible. From the point of view of machines (computers), given their interconnectedness and processing power everything is possible.

When we look from a relational point of view, data are symbols with no explicit relation between them, information are data with an explicit relation, knowledge is relational patterns of information, wisdom is patterns of knowledge, intuition is the comprehension of patterns without sensing the patterns consciously, creativity is the discovery or transmutation of new patterns, and maybe it worth to mention also innovation, seen by [9] as the rearranging of relations. More difficult to define from the perspective of relations are the “one mindness” and symbols. The “one mindness” could be eventually regarded as a reflection of the interconnectedness and comprehensions of all existing patterns, including the divine patterns in case of humans. Symbols are at their turn a pattern but of a lower refinement, at form-energetic level. The complexity or relations or patterns denotes the overall complexity, though our senses already hide a higher level of complexity, and most probably here are the barriers of our spiritual and scientific worlds.

In what concerns the meaning, symbols can have or not meaning, or different meanings in different contexts, same could be said about data, information and eventually knowledge, but I would expect that at wisdom and upper levels meaning is fundamental, even conscious or unconscious. With the evolution from data to wisdom and further, the meaning and the relations become richer and more complex. And we can’t discuss about meaning without discussing about context. I tend to believe data have an extrinsic context given by the medium in which they occur, though that’s not necessarily relevant. As per my above given definition, information supposes the existence of a meaningful relation and thus the placement in one or more contexts, while with the integration within a context we could talk already about knowledge.  Probably wisdom acts like a bridge point between contexts, visions extrapolates contexts while in “one mindness” everything becomes one context.

Most of the resources I’ve seen focus mainly on the evolution from data to wisdom, though there is also a feedback mechanism, for example the more high quality data we collect the more are the chances to validate current theories or discover more generalized theories, enriching thus our luggage of information, possibly further evolved to upper layers. It’s interesting also to study the interaction between the various layers, for that having to take into account also the existing theories of learning, of dynamic systems, etc. 

Note:
    I left out understanding from this post because is a complex (philosophical) concept even if everybody has an idea what is about. Please note that I haven’t tried to review the existing DIKW models, but just to write down my thoughts, to create a basis for further posts.

References:
[1] Wikipedia. (2009). DIKW. [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW (Accessed: 7 May 2009)
[2]  Visual Concept. (1998). Making Meaning. [Online] Available from: http://www.visual-concept.co.uk/makingmeaning.htm (Accessed: 10 February 2009)
[3] Zins, C. (2007). Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(4): 279-293, 2007. Wiley InterScience. [Online] Available from: http://www.success.co.il/is/zins_definitions_dik.pdf (Accessed: 16 May 2009)
[4] (Ken) McLennan, K. J.. "Chapter 20 - Knowledge". The Virtual World of Work: How to Gain Competitive
[5] M. J. Coombs ,  H. D. Pfeiffer ,  R. T. Hartley (). e-MGR: an architecture for symbolic plasticity. Int. J. Man-Machine Studies http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~hdp/PDF/plastic.pdf
[6] OneMind. (2009). Seven Levels of Interaction [Online] Available from: http://onemind.com/2009/12/19/ (Accessed: 7 June 2010)
[7] G. Czerepak. (2007) TIDIKW. [Online] Available from: http://relationary.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/dikw (Accessed: 8 June 2010)
[8] B. Russel. Knowledge and Wisdom
[9] [Online] Available from:  http://thingamy.typepad.com/sigs_blog/2010/01/information-knowledge-wisdom-and-innovation.html (Accessed: 14 June 2010)
[10] G. Bellinger, D. Castro, A. Mills (2004) Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom. [Online] Available from: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm (Accessed: 14 June 2010)

🕸️Web x.0: How Secure is Your Identity on Web?

Among the benefits they bring, social or professional networks like Facebook or LinkedIn bring also some considerable issues, the most important of them being the identity theft. Defined by Wikipedia as a “form of fraud in which someone pretends to be someone else in order to steal money or obtain other benefits” [2], the identity theft extended naturally also to the internet. Given the fact that each person from such an online network provides personal information, photos and day-to-day activity statuses, it becomes thus exposed to the online identity theft, being easier for a person infiltrated in the circle of friends or professionals to misuse the respective information.

I wanted to write about this issue several weeks ago though I preferred to wait for later, when I was supposed to have more time in order to do some research on this topic, especially from the point of view of the social networking platforms and how they fight against identity theft. I haven’t had the time to do that until now, however today I received an email from a friend asking for help, though the story from the email was questionable. Scammers and identity thefts might have a really good story, though no story is perfect. It might look as the below email story I received today though it might be even more elaborated (I hope I won’t be sued for copy rights by its creator):

“How you doing? We made a trip to London (United Kingdom) unannounced some days back,Unfortunately we got mugged at gun point last night! All cash, Credit card and phone were stolen, we got messed up in another country, stranded in London, fortunately passport was back in my hotel room. It was a bitter experience and i was hurt on my right hand, but would be fine. I am sending you this message because i don't want anyone to panic, we want you to keep it that way for now!
Our return flight leaves in a few hours but I’m having troubles sorting out the hotel bills, wondering if you could loan me some money to sort out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport about ($2000). I have been to the police and embassy here, but they aren't helping issues, I have limited means of getting out of here,  we canceled our cards already and made a police report, I won’t get a new card number till I get back home! So I really need your help.
You could wire whatever you can spare to my name and hotel address via Western union”

This was not the first message of this type I received in the past, though it was the first time I received such a message from a friend. Given various circumstances I suspected that the story can’t be right, in addition the formulation from the email was raising additional doubts. Knowing that my friend is using one of the social networks, I sent a message, and surprise, some minutes later I’m contacted back by the person certifying the validity of the email message, in plus having a nice discussion. While discussing with the respective person, I finally decided to give a call to a close relative of the respective friend, certifying me that I’m dealing with an identity theft.

 Many people think: “no, that won’t happen to me, who will spend so much time longing for my few bucks I saved in my bank account?!”. The internet is the perfect environment for faking an identity, and that’s quite easy to do. Is enough to save some photos from the sites you visit, collect some information about some people and you’re ready to pursuit your criminal goals. For example Facebook allows you to see the photos of the friends of your friends, now it depends also on the privacy options they have chosen, however for many people is possible to see their date of birth, city, children, education, employer, etc. In a recent study made by Sophos was found that 46% of Facebook users accepted friends requests from strangers, 89% of users in their 20s divulged their full birthday, nearly 100% of users post their email address and between 30-40% of users list data about their family and friends [1]. The numbers might not be that high, though there is an issue even when we talk about 1% of the users.

A fact is that your personal information could be further used to collect other details about you, for example by crosschecking the profile against other sites. Some of the users even provide the links to the other social networks they belong to. Of course, that could be useful not only for friends but also for thieves to follow them, and it’s so easy to build such a profile. A courageous thief might even contact the persons and find out thus more information about them, and in theory it’s so easy to do that, it depends also on credulity of the people. 2-3 weeks ago I was watching in the news  how a couple discovered they were robbed by one of their new acquaintances from one of the social networks they were using. 

On the other side direct contact might not be necessary, a psychological social profile could be built upon the information provided by the people on their hobbies and other interests, preferences, things they are looking for on the web, etc. Of course, for this are need some skills and eventually a good story to sell, though people nowadays become more and more inventive and anything is possible. Sure is that each time you are making public information about you on the internet you should think also how the respective information could be used against you, on whether they could be used to guess any of your passwords or as a start to access other information. The users shouldn’t forget that there are many people who got fired because of the information posted on social networks.

Even if social networks and professional networks are based in general on the principle of friendship, collegiality and professional collaboration, in theory such networks could be easily penetrated by a skilled criminal by creating an adequate profile and interacting eventually with people. In networks of thousands of people catching such criminal could become quite difficult. Who’s responsible for protecting us against online criminality?! Is it the site owners? In many cases site owners run from responsibility or just do something to save their image. It would be great if there would be some governmental or global organizations responsible for that, attempting to monitor and protect users/people’s rights in the virtual world. On the other side even if there are a few organizations of this type (e.g. Identity Theft Resource Center), given the huge amount of virtual users and issues, it’s almost impossible to handle all the issues and be proactive. In the end it’s in users’ interest to minimize the risks! For more information on identity theft and how to protect yourself you could check also www.Combat-Identity-Theft.com or www.justice.gov.

References:
[1] Sohpos. (2009). Facebook: The privacy challenge. [Online] Available from: http://www.sophos.com/security/topic/facebook.html (Accessed: 16 April 2010)
[2] Wikipedia (2010) Identity Theft. [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft (Accessed: 16 April 2010)

🔖Knowledge Representation: Knowledge Maps (Part VII: Knowledge Mapping in Action)

Sometimes in order to easier/better understand a text, be it a chapter from a book or an article, online or offline source, I prefer to highlight the most meaningful concepts (the primary concepts) related to the topic(s) the text is approaching, and bring the concepts together in a digital knowledge map. It depends on the text material, sometimes when the subject is too vast and too many concepts are introduced, I prefer to consider the concepts and the relations between them, while other times, when the author tries to treat a topic from various angles I prefer to use techniques like 5W1H and its variations, typically trying to answer to the following questions: who, what, why, where, when, how, in what way and by what means. 

In between the identified concepts it might happen to add other concepts that come into my mind or combine two or more sources on the same topic. Thus it happens to arrive to a map like the below one, draw using CMapTools and based initially on an article on Project Management written by C. Roan. The map isn’t by far perfect, this being just its current state, in time following to add more concepts as I get deeper in the subject or new associations are triggered.

The labels I used to represent the concepts might not be the same as the ones used in the source, mainly because I prefer to use the labels that allow me trigger easier memories, sometimes trying to identify a concept that could replace or stand for a whole sentence. The target is actually to find the concept with the smallest unit of meaning that reflects what is said in the text from my perception. I even might choose to represent concepts that have similar meaning, or general and particular meaning with respect to the same scale of meaning, for example the “email” and “voicemail” could be regarded as a “messaging system” but given its importance I feel they need to be shown separately; actually I could have grouped the “email” and “voicemail” as a subgroup of “messaging system”, as I did in case of the “project drivers” case, and usually I prefer to do that, though it depends also on map’s focus, on whether I intent to highlight only the primary concepts or to built the whole range of associations.

There should be a methodology for creating such maps, actually almost each type of map used (e.g. Concept Maps, Mind Maps) come with their own philosophies/methodologies, though the human nature in general and the learning process in particular should not be necessarily bound by that, being important to have the flexibility of representing concepts with the labels we consider as appropriate, alternate representation techniques or unit of meaning.

Once the map is built it helps to read again the text but this time from the perspective of the map, most probably that this step would help you to find new meaning, conceptual differences and approaches, helping to ground the new knowledge. Each time I’m reviewing such a map, I remember sections from the text, associations, how I arrived to the given associations, in the end each concept in the map is telling a story of its own. In parallel with the source texts and their associated maps, is built also an alternative map, the itinerary and evolution of acquired knowledge and its implication with respect to further knowledge acquisition, retention, retrieval or reuse. In addition this process helps to make the hidden existing knowledge explicit, to ground knowledge into existing structures and derive new meaning and possible areas of exploration.

Each concept from such a map could be taken separately and create a similar map for it, eventually create a map for each of the concepts from the respective maps, and repeat the process over and over again, this allowing to built the whole picture. That’s quite an endeavor, isn’t it? Many of such maps will have common concepts or when put together there could be added other associations. Putting all these maps together is not an easy task, and I feel that more has to be done from this perspective, because are needed powerful tools that allow users to represent knowledge in various forms and patterns, navigate inside of a map or between maps, share the map with others, collaborate, do comparisons and assessments, validate input from a semantical point of view because multiple labels (e.g. synonym family, acronyms) could be used for the same concepts.

 Such a map could be used to share knowledge, as starting point for other types of explorations, for example the above map could be used to discuss the issues related to communication, each such concepts coming with its own causes, some of them could have even common root causes, so it would be helpful to identify such situations in order to understand the complexity of causation.

It helps creating such a map also before writing an article, because the map allows identifying the overall coverage of the article, the topics that remain to be approached, the conceptual intersection between the articles. Such a map or text’s projection in such a map could be used as navigation tool for the text, much like book’s indexes but in a hierarchical manner, the association between concepts allowing, at least from my point of view, an easier and better coverage of the text than indexes. Of course, there are still steps to be done in order to directly integrate the text with the built map in order to facilitate text’s navigation, though many of the applications that allow rendering text have built-in search capabilities that could be used by the users to identify the actual location of the concept. On the other side the fact the existence of multiple labels for naming the same concept could raise several problems that could be in theory solved by using powerful semantic search.

🔖Knowledge Representation: The Semantic Web (Part II: On RDF Triples)

W3C (WWW Consortium) created RDF (Resource Description Framework) as an extensible XML-based simple data model with formal semantics capabilities in order to define web metadata, allowing machines to "understand", create, exchange and process information. At the heart of RDF stands the triple, referred also as RDF triple, representing a subject-predicate-object relation indicating that a relationship represented by predicate exists between subject and object. It sounds like it’s possible to describe relationships between concepts, allowing thus to represent the information in (web) documents, resulting a nice set of triples, in which subjects, objects and predicates might be repeated several times. 

Even nicer, RDFs can be represented visually, the resulting structure having the form of a graph, also referred as RDF graph, in which subjects and objects are represented as nodes and predicates as arcs, arcs’ direction always pointing towards objects. The graph-like structures allow RDF to take advantage of a whole set of algorithms and models developed over ages in Theory of Graphs, including searching, comparisons, representation and data mining, a nice asset isn’t it?

Having the possibility to describe documents in triple-like fashion is an important step of W3C, though, on the other side, using a syntagma I heard some time ago in OOP (Object Oriented Programming), how many triples it takes to describe the world, with all its beauty and knowledge accumulated over the years? How about expressing complex mathematical relations like the ones defined in algebra. Imagine a relation between a set of m elements and another one of n elements, how would you express that using triples, how about if there are a set of p relations?! How about defining more complex algebra structures? How would you express multidimensionality or hyper-relations using triples? Of course, for the current needs triples suffice, anyway we still ramble in acquiring simple relations in the clouds, no need to go so far away.

Coming to more simplistic representation models, I wonder if it’s possible to model all types of knowledge maps with RDF triples, models that make use of additional attributes like weight, cost, rules, sequencing, time delays, etc. Why am I launching such questions in the dark? We have developed a huge collection of mathematical models, how are we putting them into use?! It’s also possible that I’m missing the overall point over triples, even if I actually used them during schools in Algebra and Graph Theory, it’s true, at basic level compared with the current state of art, though I hope I have an idea of what all it’s about.

🔖Knowledge Representation: Cities, Trees and Imagination at Work, a sketch on Mind Maps

From all the definitions of a Mind Map rooted in common experience I find representative the one based on the similarities to a city given by [3]. A city is generally built around a centre (the central idea in Mind Maps) with boulevards (key ideas) branching in radial manner out of it, with secondary streets (secondary ideas) branching out of them, and gradually smaller and smaller streets (less correlated ideas to the central idea), and with cross streets (crossing ideas) connecting them. For a foreigner in a city it’s easier to memorize the boulevards and the streets toward the points of interest or relevance together with landmarks and images (e.g. buildings). 

Same as a tourist can manage in the territory with a mental map of the city, same a simple but well formed Mind Map can depict the essential structure of knowledge related to a certain subject. Actually a Mind Map could be compared with the Map of a city rather than the city itself, because both type of Maps represent the territory up to a certain level of detail, they are not the territory itself. On the other side the city like the Mind Map has a dynamic nature, while a Map is more static.

The example of a city has its flows – most of the cities have a networked rather than a radial structure, the number of dead ends could be significantly less than the streets ending in another street. In contrast a typical Mind Map has few crossing ideas, the dead ends governing its structure, for this reason the comparison between a Mind Map and a tree seems to be more natural. On the other side, the comparison with a city has other aspects – for example a city can grow forming a metropolis, same thing could be achieved by adding small Mind Maps to a central Mind Map. Two or more metropolis can form a megalopolis, each with its own centre or in contrast by developing their own centre or just gravitating around one of the already existing centres; the Mind Maps formed by the aggregation or two or more 

Maps are seldom, but not impossible to realize. Another example with small probability to happen is the one in which a city changes in time its centre, the old historical centre being replaced for example by a new business centre, reflecting city’s development; in the same way a Mind Map could shift in theory its centre, though this could happen more because of inconsistencies in Map’s building or because of changes supervened in Map’s detail. These characteristics of a city add a plus to this example versus the one of a tree, in which the trunk represents the central idea, the main branches the key ideas, and the decreasing in thickness branches the less correlated ideas. Unlike a city, a tree doesn’t include crossing ideas unless its 3-dimensionality is ignored or we deal with a curiosity of nature, the same applying to trees’ merging.

Trees have been used from Antiquity in order to represent knowledge - Trees of Life, Trees of Love, Trees of Knowledge, genealogic, kinship or blood relation trees have resisted the time on artefacts dated before B.C., or in printed manuscripts and documents especially from 10th century on, the richness of design and content increasing with the advancement in printing technology. The “Tree of blood relations” (fr: Arbre de consanguinité) appearing in Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s book, L’ombre des Ancêtres is dated as belonging to the 9th century [4], several others similar trees are dated between 10th and 14th century and available online through Enluminures [1], or in the works of Joachim of Fiore [2], Ramon Lull [5] and others. Usually in such tree-like representations, the branches are just connectors between the various islands of text often represented as leaves, having the characteristics of archaic Mind Maps, resembling more to the graph-like representations. It is impressive the richness of styles and representations, the mixture between text and images, the use of colour and symmetric arrangement.

The city or tree syntagmas are just helpers in understanding the Mind Map, for a deeper apprehension of the subject is maybe more indicated to check Tony Buzan’s books.

References:
[1] Enluminures. [Online] Available from: www.enluminures.culture.fr (Accessed: 1 October 2009)
[2] International Center for Joachimist Studies. (????). Joachim of Fiore. [Online] Available from: http://www.centrostudigioachimiti.it/Gioacchino/GF_Tavoleeng.asp (Accessed: 13 February 2009)
[3] MindMapping.com. (2008) Theory behind Mind Maps [Online] Available from: http://www.mindmapping.com/Theory_Behind_Mind_Maps.htm (Accessed: 1 October 2009)
[4] Weigel. S. (2002) Genealogy: On the iconography and rhetorics of an epistemological topos. [Online] Available from: (Accessed: 1 October 2009)
[5] Wikipedia. 2009. Ramon Llull. [Online] Available from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ramon_Llull (Accessed: 1 October 2009)