[topicmapmail] Re: contexts, attractors, authors and users

[Bob Parks]

Jack and Bernard,
I'm quite interested in this line of thought .... I've developed a 
similar position with my Lexipedia concept: 
http://www.wordsmyth.net/doc_lexipedia.shtml.  In developing a 
participatory knowledge acquisition environment, I have considered 
both concept mapping and the PCP (Personal Construct Psychology) 
approaches.  If you're considering the development of a tool for 
participatory topic map creation, I'd suggest taking a look at 
WebGrid II (http://gigi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/).   I'm interested in your 
reactions.
Bob Parks


>Nicely done, Bernard.  Just got back from London and the XTM working group.
>Got to think about this quite a bit (18 hours in the air, to be exact).  I
>wonder *what's in a topic*?  I have this notion that there must exist a
>semantic attractor, one which exists somewhere in a space defined by an
>author and a reader.  I wonder what that means.
>
>Reference to Principia Cybernetica http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/, and of course
>to Francis Heylighen's seminal paper on Gordon Pask's work really brings my
>thoughts into better focus.  Pask spoke of entailment meshes.  That fit
>closely with another thread I have been following (Robert Rosen, _Life
>Itself_ -- visit http://views.vcu.edu/complex/ for more) in which entailment
>is a key notion.  A colleague here at work is studying, from a category
>theoretic point of view, the ways in which individual ontologies can be
>viewed together.  My naive thought is that if a group of ontologies exists
>about a particular topic (various authors and readers), then that group can
>be considered as a category itself for the chosen topic.  That way, it may
>be possible to look for an algebra that ties the separate ontologies
>together, quite possibly with some experiential (probabilistic) central
>tendency emerging. The work of Geo Wiederhold in the algebra area is on my
>short list to examine. Probabilistic issues remain hot, but somewhat
>unstudied at this moment.
>
>For me, level of importance shifts according to context.  I am thinking that
>a student reader is liable to bring less semantic baggage to any read of an
>ontology authored by another individual, while an experienced reader may,
>indeed, see things differently, quite possibly contributing to a dialog that
>enhances the central tendency of the category.
>
>>From the perspective of watching browsing patterns, Heylighen and Joslyn
>have spoken at Principia Cybernetica of a kind of Hebbian learning
>associated with web links. Harry Klopf, in unrelated work, has managed to
>take Sutton and Barto work to a new level called differential hebbian
>learning, and there may be some value in looking at that work.  In any case,
>hebbian learning begins to relate to the *experiential* or probabilistic
>learning referred to above.  But, in my naive view, just following links
>does not make them either more valueable or reliable.  Something else is
>needed.
>
>I do not believe that topic maps need to be coherent in the ontological
>sense to be of great value in the community process of sharing ideas and
>building ontologies. Topic Maps follow a long history of work in
>constructivist learning research that resulted on Concept Maps, Mind Maps,
>and so forth.  What is clear, at least to me, is that topic maps hold a
>valuable place in the evolution of knowledge, even if for serving no other
>purpose than indexing.  For me, this discussion is about pushing TMs beyond
>indexing.
>
>I believe that a larger participation in discussions such as this will
>enable the emergence of a new understanding of knowledge, its growth and
>management.  I also believe that, to make that happen, a new kind of
>collaborative tool will be needed, one that promotes the online construction
>of real and useful ontologies as discussion occurs.  Part of that work can
>be automated, and part of it will require human dialog.  Following
>inspiration of Douglas Engelbart (http://www.bootstrap/org) and his OHS/DKR
>project, I have begun to build sketches of software that will support such a
>web site.
>
>Jack Park
>
>From: Bernard VATANT <b.vatant@wanadoo.fr>
>
>>  The debate over contexts seems quite in standby ... I'd like to merge two
>>  ideas posted lately.
>>  Martin pointed that in definition of a context, user viewpoint is as
>>  important as author's (even more)
>>  Jack "converged" to the idea that context is something like a semantic
>>  attractor.
>>  What shall we do with that ?
>>
>>  If we think of ontologies in terms of nodes and links (or topics and
>>  associations), the user viewpoint will be the way he browses the
>>  associations map. Let's take a set of topic maps, linked through
>>  associations, but not necessarily coherent from an ontologic viewpoint,
>but
>>  a priori relevant to a community of users. Let users browse this set of
>>  maps freely, following or not proposed associations. It should be
>>  interesting to analyse this browsing in terms of trajectories in the
>graph.
>>  The result of such an analysis should lead to attractors, from which
>>  authors could refine their previous conception.
>>
>>  Such exchange between authors and users - in fact involving of users in
>the
>>  authoring process, even if they don't know it - seems a way to make
>>  converge authors' and users' ontology, and hence defining contexts, not
>>  from dogmatic viewpoint, but pragmatic one.
>>
>>  Does anybody knows about precise works in that direction, other than too
>>  much confidential-strategic information ? I found some 3 years old work at
>>  http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/BootstrappingPask.html
>>  dealing with that sort of idea, but not with the topic maps standard.
>>
>>  Bernard VATANT
>>  b.vatant@wanadoo.fr
>>  www.universimmedia.com
>>
>
>
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Robert Parks - mailto:bobp@clarityconnect.com
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