Topic Maps, Douglas

Engelbart, and Everything

Jack Park

GivingSpace Meeting

September, 2002

© Jack Park, 2002 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Abstract

We look at Topic Maps in the context online community development. The talk intends to develop a context based on the evolution of tools capable of supporting and augmenting what Douglas Engelbart calls the Capabilities Infrastructure of Networked Improvement Communities.

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Plan

Motivational Stuff

Context, Scary stuff, etc…

Introduction to Topic Maps

Introduction to Douglas Engelbart

Augmented Story Telling

Towards an Architecture for Augmented Story Telling

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Reality Check“I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to

realise, neither do you!

You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.

You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead

stream.

You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct.

And you can't bring back forests that once grew where

there is now desert.

If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!”

– Severn Suzuki, age 12, in a talk presented to the Earth Summit in Brazil, 1992

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Motivation

“…what we know and need today may be insufficient to solve tomorrow's problems” –W3C[http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/]

“…We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” –Albert Einstein

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

About Topic Maps

Topic MapsAre like the index of a book

Reside outside of the information resource (book, documents)

Facilitate the construction of a relational knowledge base about information resources

Facilitate indexing into information resources

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Elements of a Topic Map: Topic

A Topic is a container for information that is related to a Subject

One Topic per Subject

Information related to a Topic includesNames

Occurrences

Roles played in Associations• Topics associated with other Topics

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Elements of a Topic Map:

AssociationsAssociations express relationships between Topics.

Associations are typed

instanceOf (Topics)

Associations point to members (Topics)

Members can have roles (Topics)

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Elements of a Topic Map:

OccurrencesOccurrences point to specific objects in information resources (documents)

Occurrences can be typed

instanceOf (Topics)

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Architecture of a Topic Map

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Segue numero uno

How do Topic Maps relate to Douglas Engelbart?

Roles they play in organizing his Networked Improvement Communities

Roles they play in story-telling activities within those (and other) communities

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Engelbart’s Capability

Infrastructure

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Engelbart’s A-B-C Context

B Activity - improves product cycle time and quality

A Activity - serves the customer

C Activity - improves improvement cycletime and quality

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Community A-B-C Activities

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Networked Improvement

Community

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Interlude: Knowledge and

AugmentationCapabilities Infrastructures

Depend on Individual Capabilities

• can be augmented with collaboration tools

Require Facilitation

• can be augmented with collaboration tools

Issues behind augmentation?

• a look at the knowledge context

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

What is Knowledge?Information relates to description, definition, or perspective (what, who, when, where).

Knowledge comprises strategy, practice, method, or approach (how).

Wisdom embodies principle, insight, moral, or archetype (why).

This page shamelessly copied (with kind permission) from:

“Knowledge Management – Emerging Perspectives”

By Gene Bellinger

http://www.outsights.com/systems/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Gowan’s Knowledge V –Building

Knowledge

After: Joseph D. Novak.

“The Pursuit of a Dream: Education Can be Improved”

In: [Mintzes, et al. 1998]

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Segue numero dos

We know a bit about Topic Maps

We know a bit about Improvement Communities

We have heard of a DKR

We know a bit about Knowledge

Let‟s look at a practical knowledge activity:

Story telling

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

“All social change begins with a

conversation”*“From a casual conversation between two friends, a medical relief effort for Vietnamese children emerged. And it all began when „some friends and I started talking‟ ”

Margaret J. Wheatley, “All Social Change begins with a conversation”, The Utne Reader: Society, found on the Web at http://www.utne.com, 28 July, 2002

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Towards a ManifestoThe reason our society must create a new language for

learning communities that transcends school and classroom

walls is that the dominance, attraction, and power of the

current machine-based language of schooling is not capable

of generating the organic patterns of the global learning

community we now require. The very nature of the

language, the potency of its field, and the meaning it

constructs preempt its capacity to generate living patterns;

only a living language can create living patterns and only

living patterns can create living environments. –Stephanie Pace Marshal, “Creating Sustainable Learning Communities for the Twenty-First Century”,

in F. Hesselbein, et al. (eds), 1997. The Organization of the Future. The Drucker Foundation.

http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_marshall.html

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Edna St. Vincent MillayUpon this gifted age, in its dark hour,

Rains from the sky a meteoric shower

Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned,

uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun; but there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Towards a Point of View

From the manifesto:

“...only a living language can create living patterns and only living patterns can create living environments”

From Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“...but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric”

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. –Edwin Schlossberg

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Augmented Story Telling rocks!

Ta daa! A Point of View

But, that‟s a lie (maybe)

We don‟t know that yet…

We must get busy and prove it…

Ok. Call it a working hypothesis and move on!

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Why Stories?

“…stories are a powerful means to understand what happened (the sequence of events) and why (the causes and effects of those events).” –

John Seely Brown[Brown, 2000] page 106

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Why Stories on the Web?

“With the proliferation of online interaction

and composing of various digital online

spaces for intercultural and global

communication, computer-mediated

communication and digital technologies have

come to play a significant role in the process

of globalization.” –Jilliana Enteen and Radhika Gajjala, 2002.”Teaching Globalization & Intercultural

Communication: A Virtual Exchange Project,” KAIROS: 7.2, available on the Web at http://129.118.38.138/kairos/7.2/binder.html?sectiontwo/enteen

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Why Stories on the Web?

“... emphasizing the analyses of culture and of meaning-making processes within such global technological environments allows the student to understand the contextual and situated nature of communication processes. This sensitizes the student to such encounters and, we hope, instills both

sensitivity and confidence.–Jilliana Enteen and Radhika Gajjala, 2002.”Teaching Globalization & Intercultural

Communication: A Virtual Exchange Project,” KAIROS: 7.2, available on the Web at http://129.118.38.138/kairos/7.2/binder.html?sectiontwo/enteen

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Focus QuestionIf we wish to create an augmented story space, a software system with which users will write stories…

Then, how do we structure that story space to serve as a context in which other people can think?

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Two Story Spaces are Needed*

Space where stories are toldPrimarily, statements of facts, observations, beliefs, “what I think”

Space where dialog about the story occurs

Arguments, additional findings

Seamless integration between the twohyperlinks

*[Bonk, 1998, p 58]

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

IBIS View of a Question

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Towards an Architecture

Documents

Knowledge Structures

User Interface & Topic Maps

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Important Markup Language

ExamplesTopic Maps

Weaving the fabric

http://www.topicmaps.org/

Human Markup Language

Enhance fidelity of human communications

http://www.humanmarkup.org/

Philanthropic Markup Language

Move from transactions to transformations

http://www.givingspace.org/

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Towards Augmented Story

TellingA working hypothesis

Chunk stories into AddressableInformationResources

• Sentences, paragraphs, etc.

Seamless integration of IBIS Discussion for each AddressableInformationResource

• Automatically generated link, ready to use

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

An Augmented Story Architecture

IBIS

Discussion

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

Where to go from here?

More development along the lines of the Open Hyperdocument System.

Let‟s Roll...

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

References[Alexander, 1977] Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, 1977. A Pattern Language, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

[Bonk, 1998] Bonk, Curtis Jay, and Kira S. King (Editors), 1998. Electronic Collaborators: Learner-Centered Technologies for Literacy, Apprenticeship, and Discourse, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

[Brown, 2000] Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid, 2000. The Social Life of Information.Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press

[Clancey, 1997] Clancey, William J. 1997. Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

[Engelbart, 1992] Engelbart, Douglas C. 1992. Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware”. Available on the Web at http://www.bootstrap.org/augment/AUGMENT/132811.html

[Engelbart, 2000] Engelbart, Doug, 2000. “Draft OHS-Project Plan”. Available on the Web at http://www.bootstrap.org/augment/BI/2120.html

[Lakoff, 1999] Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, 1999. Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind And Its Challenge To Western Thought. New York, NW: Basic Books

[Leuf & Cunningham, 2001] Leuf, Bo, and Ward Cunningham, 2001. The Wiki Way, Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley

[Maturana & Verala, 1987] Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Verala, 1987. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Boston, MA: New Science Library.

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

References continued

[Mintzes, et al. 1998] Mintzes, Joel J., James H. Wandersee, and Joseph D. Novak, Editors, 1998, Teaching Science for Understanding: A Human Constructivist View. Boston, MA: Academic Press.

[Ryan, 2001] Ryan, Marie-Laure, 2001. Narrative as Virtual Reality. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press

[Park, 2001] Park, Jack, 2001. “Bringing Knowledge Technologies to the Classroom,” Paper presented at Knowledge Technologies 2001, Austin Texas, March 4-2. Available on the web at http://www.thinkalong.com/JP/ParkKT2001.pdf

[Park, 2002] Park, Jack [Editor] and Sam Hunting [Technical Editor], 2002. XML Topic Maps. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.

20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

ColophonThis presentation would not exist without:

The XTM Authoring Group

Support from Adam Cheyer and Hugo Daley at VerticalNet

Valuable comments from Henry Van Eyken, Mei Lin Fung, Sam Hunting, Tom Munnecke, and Bill Leikam

Massive inspiration from Douglas Engelbart