Chris Dent's comment the other day got me thinking. (01)
He was describing his approach to summaries, and said
that he uses his Wiki to keep track of references so he
can aggregate them into new summaries he generates in a
variety of media. (02)
This approach reminded me of EugeneKim's approach to the
problem of knowledge management and collaboration,
because he uses his knowledge tools in pretty much the
same way -- for information retrieval and authoring.
(At least, that's my take on our past converstations.) (03)
It was also reminiscient of RodWelch, who had a
heavily linked knowledge management system of his own
from way back when, which he used to author messages
that were heavily sprinkled with links. (04)
What these approaches have in common is the concept
of the individual "knowledge island", where information
is shared using a variety of communication pathways,
but the essential tools for knowledge managment are
centered around a single user. (05)
Concepts like purple numbers are critical in that
context, because they make it possible for the "knowledge
island" to be more powerful. In essence, it is a
prescription for knowledge *output* that helps provide
better *input* to other knowledge management systems. (06)
The alternative approach is the one I have been
unconsciously adopting for the past several years.
In that "knowledge continent" approach, the whole
concept of knowledge is inextricably bound up with
the concept of "shared information". So a knowledge
base is necessarily one in which the contributions I
make are immediately available to you, the next time
you search for information. (07)
But that approach has severe difficulties, not the least
of which is the limitations of available tools, the
lack of a global ontology (or even translation facilities
among separate ontologies), the sheer difficulty of
doing anything on a large enough scale to produce actual
"knowledge", and the inevitability of conflicting views
and the problems of reconciling them in a single vehicle
for knowledge. (08)
So I have lately come to the opinion that EugeneKim, ChrisDent,
and others who have held this view were right all along. (09)
The breakthrough began when I started to conceive of a
plain text email -> blog -> Wiki system. That system
represents the authoring half of the equation -- making
it possible to "author at the speed of thought". (010)
The other half of the equation, I realized just recently,
is in information retrieval. And that basically comes
down to Wiki words, categories, and "indexing" (or text
based search). (011)
So now I'm interested in the problem of adding categories
to Wikis. Fortunately, BillSeitz recently gave us a collection
of links to review...
>
> ...discussions about categories, taxonomies, group vs
> single-person blogs, etc.:
> (also see backlinks at bottom of these pages)
> http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/TaxonOmy
> http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2003-12-13-MacManusWikilogOntology
> http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2003-11-10-RssCategories
> http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2003-10-20-BlogBoundaries
>
I'm looking forward to investigating these topics, so I
can begin to construct my own "knowledge island". (In particular,
I'm interested in how categories are managed -- are they
listable and selectable? Are they special Wiki words?) How
do you change one? How do you define synonyms? (012)
Although, come to think of it, the concept of an "island" is
a bit too static. A better image may be one of individual
"knowledge factories". Like the New England industries of
the 1700's, what we're after is better manufacturing
processes, and the sharing of the same with others. (013)
One of the key reasons for the Industrial Revolution, in
fact, was that craftsmen in New England would travel to
each other's factories, and learn about each other's
processes. (014)
After lengthy consideration (resulting mostly from the
"invisible blinders" I was wearing), it now seems that
this is precisely the idea and spirit of the Blue Oxen
Collaboratory -- to share techniques and technologies
that will make individual craftspeople more productive.
I suspect that the "knowledge continent" is more like
Henry Ford's automobile plant -- and that's a ways off
in the future. (015)
--
This message is archived at: (016)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=3FE631F6.4020807@sun.com (017)
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