On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 01:41:55PM -0800, Eric Armstrong wrote: (01)
> Mostly, though, I'm asking for a concrete use case -- an
> example of something that can be or has been done (in the
> context of Jack's proposal) using topic maps that wouldn't
> be (or have been) possible otherwise. (02)
Sorry to jump in so late to this discussion. Eric's asking for a
concrete use case for TopicMap-based categorization that other
categorization schemes can't handle. (03)
Here's one: Go to the TM4J web site (http://www.tm4j.org/). Click on
the various pages. Notice the sidebar on the right lists related
pages, including how they're related. The TM4J ontology is very
basic. Imagine extending that ontology just a bit. You do a search
on tools-yak and find some great posts written by Brian Lincoln. You
click on the Brian Lincoln topic, and discover that Brian Lincoln
IsSiblingOf Pat Lincoln. You click on Pat Lincoln, and discover he
heads up CSL at SRI. It just so happens that you've been wanting to
talk to someone at SRI. (04)
Earlier, Tom posted a really nice note about the chain of events that
was spawned by being a member of the Blue Oxen Collaboratories. (05)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-11/msg00005.html#nid02 (06)
(Thanks, btw, for that, Tom!) If you track the chain of events that
lead to interesting knowledge discovery, you'll find that great ideas
often come from unexpected places -- weak ties, if you will. That's
the value that an ontology brings to a categorization scheme. (07)
What's interesting to me about TopicMaps from a purely practical point
of view is that the ontology, strictly speaking, is optional. I can
create a bunch of topics and link occurrences to those topics, and
basically use it as any other category scheme, perhaps with a simple
hierarchical structure (using IsSubClassOf relationships). But, I
always have the option of adding new relationships to the TopicMap,
thus augmenting the information organization significantly. (08)
-Eugene (09)
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