[topicmapmail] Contextualized Topic Maps.

[Murray Altheim]

Thomas Schwotzer wrote:
[...]
> What is knowledge? I'm afraid that would be out of scope
> of this mailing list. Just some short statements about it:
[...]

Short? You're almost heading into my territory of long-windedness... :-)

[...]
> Thus, information resources of TM could be intepreted as explicit
> knowledge.
[...]
> I think, topics and associations can be interpreted as
> (semantical) context.
[...]

These are the only two places where the word "interpret" is included
in your analysis. I would suggest that any discussion of knowledge
include the context of interpretation. I.e., a common flow definition
of information is "that which causes a change in its receiver". For
information to be received by a person is one thing, but for it to
become knowledge, it must be interpreted. Context is certainly
important, but the most important context is that of the interpretation
itself.

> I'm convinced that the current scope concept isn't sufficient
> to cover all types of context. E.g. topics and associations cannot
> be scoped. It would be useful, e.g. if a want to get a Topic Map
> that only contains concepts regarding to dedicated place.
> With scopes I cannot delete any topic. I can invalidate any
> topic characteristic. But the topic itself remains in the
> map. Scopes, in the current version, can be used to create
> a view on a topic map but not to contextualize it which would
> include removing topic map items. I think topic map fragmentation
> can be technical means to contextualize topic maps.

I think the idea of scoping topics is a bit of a non-sequitor, and
is perhaps a mistaken understanding of the Topic Maps paradigm.
In the real world as well as in Topic Maps, topics simply *exist*
(in TM, Topics are proxies for their subjects). I believe what
you really want is the ability to provide a context in which those
Topics play a role in an Association. And actually, Associations in
Topic Maps can be scoped. As to the rest of the analysis in the
above paragraph, these are not deficiencies in the Topic Map
paradigm, and are all the kinds of things that can be done (and are
done) in Topic Map applications. Other statements are again mistaken
on the basis of Topic scoping, such as the idea that

 > Scopes, in the current version, can be used to create
 > a view on a topic map but not to contextualize it which would
 > include removing topic map items.

To "contextualize" a Topic in relation (association) to a given
subject, you'd scope those associations. You can then perform
any operations, such as removal, that you like. For example,
locating all Topics that are about "19th century battles", this
would be any Topics that are either instances of "19th century
battles" (since <instanceOf> is a shorthand for a class-instance
association), or for any topics playing the role of being such
a thing in an association so identifying that subject.

For a helpful primer on some of these issues, check out Leo Obrst
and Howard Liu, "Knowledge Representation, Ontological Engineering,
and Topic Maps" (p.104-148) in "XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using
Topic Maps for the Web", ed. Jack Park, Addison-Wesley 2003.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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