Traditional classification systems, like that devised by Melvil Dewey in 1876, have served us well. Nevertheless, it is time to reconsider the value of an approach that requires that a document be categorized in a single uniform way in order that it can be returned to a single place in a library somewhere. In today's cyber library people are not concerned with how a document is named (categorized) or where it is located. They only need to know what they need to know.
Formal classification systems require a trained professional to do the classifying in a consistent manner - over time. Once classified, the document is then moved to the physical location that corresponds to its code. To find the document, one need only know the code or ask the professional librarian for assistance. This process was further simplified by creating card indices according to Subject, Author and Title. This additional level of abstraction actually made it easier to live within the system of codification.
As we move further into cyberspace, the establishment is contending that a formal system of document classification is still needed. I describe these people as “establishment” because when probed, they maintain that a document can only be correctly classified or tagged in one specific way. When asked why this should be the case, the establishment has no answer. They don’t know why at document could not be coded more than one way.
In the old world, a book could only appear in one location. The code was used to locate the document and the rule stated that multiple copies of a book could not exist in more than one location. Every time you walked into the library you could be sure to find the document in its defined place. Not only that, if knew the code, you could walk into any library and quickly locate the document.
Cyberspace, would not be what it is today is it adhered to a rule that said a document could not exist of it was not first classified according to a unified codification system. It wouldn’t work. First, it would take too long to reach consensus on a universal system of codification. Next, organizations would need to create hundreds of thousands of new librarian positions to ensure that codifications were applied in a consistent manner. Finally, over time, the codification system will need to be modified and updated. What a horrendous task that would be. The Dewey Decimal System has been modified greatly since its inception – most recently in 2004. Imagine keeping an internet-based classification system updated.
The problem with traditional classification (control) systems is that they require constant maintenance. They require centralization in order to maintain control required to ensure that the document is returned to the same location every time in order that you and the librarian can be assured of retrieving it easily. The internet however works on a far different premise. It acknowledges that a single document can appear to be in several locations at the same time. In reality the document never leaves the shelf upon which it is stored and the need to have it diligently returned to its original location removed.
It’s probably too early to determine how collaborative tagging , also referred to as 'open tagging', 'faceted hierarchy', 'social tagging' and 'folksonomies', will be received. The Red Queen will help determine this. (So much for a controlled vocabulary.)
How about an intranet that provides an opportunity for you to tag a document at whenever you go to book mark it. Imaging what it would be like if your tag (categorization) was taken into account by the search engine along with the tags of all the others who took the time to contribute their two cents. Would it lead to meaningful search results? The jury is still out.
Also See Collaborative Tagging Sites Like:
- Del.icio.us
- Flickr
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Cluetrain & the Semantic Web
People of the world.
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
So starts http://www.cluetrain.com/ probably the first web site after which, in 1999, a book was written. The book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, can be read for free - click here if you're interested. It consists of 95 theses organized into a call to action for a newly organized community - the Internet (common unity or communal unity).
Now this notion of the internet may seem a a little old to us after the past 10 of 15 years but in 1999, the concepts presented therein laid forth the basis of what is now being called Web 2.0 or what will probably be remembered as the semantic web. The place the great conversation took place.
The internet, cyberspace or world-wide-web has shifted from the electronic bulletin board filled with messages to a dynamic environment rich in conversations and other unstructured transactions. The internet has become a place where people go to act, interact and transact. It is the new agora. The world is in the process of an enormous reorganization. The definition of community is being expanded to include virtual or fully abstacted and highly configurable groupings of people.
Today, March 12, 2008, the term Web 2.0 is is wide use - more. The term Web 2.0 is credited back to Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media. The term however relates more properly to the web as a place of the great semantic conversation - or semantic web.
So the web, is the place where people go to converse, but with whom? People in their own community of course. But who are these people?
First, THESE PEOPLE, though they exist in reality have been virtualized. Separated from their mortal coils. By this I mean, my web page will exist for 1000 years. I have instructed by son to instruct his progeny - and so on, to continue paying $67 per annum, or whatever the falling rate is by then, for the service which hosts my site. This will represent a relatively insignificant compounded cost for the service if managed reasonably. I've also provided Darren with approximately 450 entries which should be included into this blog at a rate of 10 per annum. This will ensure that my personal entries will be continued for at least 40 or 50 years after my death and that is assuming I don't have time to compose at least another 4 or 500 entries before I say good by. As such, I am and will continue to be, in cyberspace, a virtual persona held to my mortal thread by perhaps only a very thin thread.
So what is a virtual community? it is one that can assemble and unassemble with little or almost no energy/efforts and can then reassemble without leaving much of a trace of it's previous footprint or existence. It is science fiction in action.
The virtual community represents the next level in social organization. An agile, mobile, highly adaptable organism equipped to respond to the measure of the day. It is relevant to an unstable or rapidly changing environment because is is an assemblage of many with little or no investment in current reality. Virtual communities are ready to move on.
Now this notion of the internet may seem a a little old to us after the past 10 of 15 years but in 1999, the concepts presented therein laid forth the basis of what is now being called Web 2.0 or what will probably be remembered as the semantic web. The place the great conversation took place.
The internet, cyberspace or world-wide-web has shifted from the electronic bulletin board filled with messages to a dynamic environment rich in conversations and other unstructured transactions. The internet has become a place where people go to act, interact and transact. It is the new agora. The world is in the process of an enormous reorganization. The definition of community is being expanded to include virtual or fully abstacted and highly configurable groupings of people.
. . .In ancient Roman cities, the public market was located
on or adjacent to the forum and varied somewhat in shape.
on or adjacent to the forum and varied somewhat in shape.
Today, March 12, 2008, the term Web 2.0 is is wide use - more. The term Web 2.0 is credited back to Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media. The term however relates more properly to the web as a place of the great semantic conversation - or semantic web.
So the web, is the place where people go to converse, but with whom? People in their own community of course. But who are these people?
First, THESE PEOPLE, though they exist in reality have been virtualized. Separated from their mortal coils. By this I mean, my web page will exist for 1000 years. I have instructed by son to instruct his progeny - and so on, to continue paying $67 per annum, or whatever the falling rate is by then, for the service which hosts my site. This will represent a relatively insignificant compounded cost for the service if managed reasonably. I've also provided Darren with approximately 450 entries which should be included into this blog at a rate of 10 per annum. This will ensure that my personal entries will be continued for at least 40 or 50 years after my death and that is assuming I don't have time to compose at least another 4 or 500 entries before I say good by. As such, I am and will continue to be, in cyberspace, a virtual persona held to my mortal thread by perhaps only a very thin thread.
So what is a virtual community? it is one that can assemble and unassemble with little or almost no energy/efforts and can then reassemble without leaving much of a trace of it's previous footprint or existence. It is science fiction in action.
The virtual community represents the next level in social organization. An agile, mobile, highly adaptable organism equipped to respond to the measure of the day. It is relevant to an unstable or rapidly changing environment because is is an assemblage of many with little or no investment in current reality. Virtual communities are ready to move on.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Re-Organizing the World
According to David Wienberger the old ways of organizing things don't apply in cyberspace as they do in the real material world. But more on Weinberger and his book Everything is Miscellaneous, later.
Progress seems to be based on our ability to move to increasing levels of abstraction.
The process of abstraction is at the root of progress itself. Let me try to explain.
From bare hands to tools and instruments, we constantly organize and reorganize our ability to do things better. A spear is an abstract projection (pardon the pun) of that which came before it - hurling a rock to bring down wild game. Before that, we probably needed to form in groups of collectives to chase down and corner wild game then with bare hands and objects, kill the beast for food and, at times, even lodging .
Beating the animal senseless with a rock was good but throwing a projectile was even better. The discovery of abstract concepts like projecting a rock (with bare hand, sling, or arrow) was simply a refinement over killing the beast with bare hand. Our minds, probably through accident, learned to create abstract extensions - extension of our selves out into what we recognized as reality.
We create and re-create at increased levels of abstraction our recipe for survival through progress and advancement.
For example, numbers are a form of abstraction. I can count the number of fingers on my hand by showing them to you one at a time or I can abstractly illustrate that number by having 10 pebbles represent that number. The pebbles are not that number, they are an abstract representation of that number. In a sense, the pebbles are data about the data - otherwise referred to as metadata.
Money is another example of abstraction. Exchanging 12 bushels of grain for a goat worked well. but what happened if I needed a goat but was not carrying any grain? Would you accept from me a promissory note as a symbolic abstraction of my commitment to pay you later... or better yet how if I gave you some tokens or coins of equal value to the goat? These are all abstract representations. When we take things to increasing levels of abstraction we stand a chance of advancement. But how to we do this, how does this work.
The nice thing about moving to increasing levels of abstraction is that material or physical limits get transcended. For example how could I use the number of fingers on my hand to represent the number 20? I know this sounds silly but look what happens once pebbles are used to abstractly represent fingers. Now I can easily gather 20 stones to abstractly represent or symbolize the number of digits on the hands of 2 people.
If we went to move to yet higher levels of abstraction, we'd probably end up inventing numbers as we know them today. Abstraction allows us to symbolically represent things in a non-material fashion and this is good because it is much easier to manipulate the symbols than it is the physical objects they represent.
We are really good at organizing the physical world at increasing levels of abstration. As a matter of fact, we call most important institutions ORGANIZATIONS.
Look, for example, at the way we have combine some simple rules to organize to create, for example, a library system. First a guy named Melvin Dewey came up with an abstract, rather arbitrary, library classification system. Next a rule was created that said a book needed to be classified and placed in a location that corresponded with its classification. The next rule specified that a book could be found in only one location in the library.
What we have in the example above is an abstract classification or codification system which when combined with simple rules forms a knowledge management system which revolutionized information access through the public library system. It even goes further than this. If we take each book and create an abstract representation of the library according to author on a 3 by 5 inch card, we can go to the card index and see a list of all the books or articles in that library written by a particular author. As many of us remember, a similar card index was organized by subject.
The interesting thing is that to make the system work, the consumer didn't need to know anything about the classification system or the associated business rules to make the library work for us. The same holds true of whenever we perform a web-search. We don't need to know how the internet is organized or the search algorithms (rules) used to locate content. By creating increasing levels of abstraction, our ability to locate information that is seemingly disorganized is actually increased. Most libraries are are organized around the Dewey Decimal System of categorization. By comparison the internet organizes or indexes almost every word on every web page. Next, companies look at which web pages get the most usage.
Think of the internet as a vast global library of information that is attaining new levels of virtualization or abstraction never thought possible before. Truly a remarkable feat. . . and all this is being done without a tidy decimal-based classification system like that developed by Dewey. By comparison the internet is an organizational mess but because it is organized at a higher level of abstraction it works very well. On the internet there is no need to know where, for example, a document is physically located or what it is physically called. When you think of it, this is a breakthrough.
Here are some video references you might find interesting. . . or better yet, go to the library and get Weinberger's book - Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the new Digital Disorder.
Progress seems to be based on our ability to move to increasing levels of abstraction.
The process of abstraction is at the root of progress itself. Let me try to explain.
From bare hands to tools and instruments, we constantly organize and reorganize our ability to do things better. A spear is an abstract projection (pardon the pun) of that which came before it - hurling a rock to bring down wild game. Before that, we probably needed to form in groups of collectives to chase down and corner wild game then with bare hands and objects, kill the beast for food and, at times, even lodging .
Beating the animal senseless with a rock was good but throwing a projectile was even better. The discovery of abstract concepts like projecting a rock (with bare hand, sling, or arrow) was simply a refinement over killing the beast with bare hand. Our minds, probably through accident, learned to create abstract extensions - extension of our selves out into what we recognized as reality.
We create and re-create at increased levels of abstraction our recipe for survival through progress and advancement.
For example, numbers are a form of abstraction. I can count the number of fingers on my hand by showing them to you one at a time or I can abstractly illustrate that number by having 10 pebbles represent that number. The pebbles are not that number, they are an abstract representation of that number. In a sense, the pebbles are data about the data - otherwise referred to as metadata.
Money is another example of abstraction. Exchanging 12 bushels of grain for a goat worked well. but what happened if I needed a goat but was not carrying any grain? Would you accept from me a promissory note as a symbolic abstraction of my commitment to pay you later... or better yet how if I gave you some tokens or coins of equal value to the goat? These are all abstract representations. When we take things to increasing levels of abstraction we stand a chance of advancement. But how to we do this, how does this work.
The nice thing about moving to increasing levels of abstraction is that material or physical limits get transcended. For example how could I use the number of fingers on my hand to represent the number 20? I know this sounds silly but look what happens once pebbles are used to abstractly represent fingers. Now I can easily gather 20 stones to abstractly represent or symbolize the number of digits on the hands of 2 people.
If we went to move to yet higher levels of abstraction, we'd probably end up inventing numbers as we know them today. Abstraction allows us to symbolically represent things in a non-material fashion and this is good because it is much easier to manipulate the symbols than it is the physical objects they represent.
We are really good at organizing the physical world at increasing levels of abstration. As a matter of fact, we call most important institutions ORGANIZATIONS.
Look, for example, at the way we have combine some simple rules to organize to create, for example, a library system. First a guy named Melvin Dewey came up with an abstract, rather arbitrary, library classification system. Next a rule was created that said a book needed to be classified and placed in a location that corresponded with its classification. The next rule specified that a book could be found in only one location in the library.
What we have in the example above is an abstract classification or codification system which when combined with simple rules forms a knowledge management system which revolutionized information access through the public library system. It even goes further than this. If we take each book and create an abstract representation of the library according to author on a 3 by 5 inch card, we can go to the card index and see a list of all the books or articles in that library written by a particular author. As many of us remember, a similar card index was organized by subject.
The interesting thing is that to make the system work, the consumer didn't need to know anything about the classification system or the associated business rules to make the library work for us. The same holds true of whenever we perform a web-search. We don't need to know how the internet is organized or the search algorithms (rules) used to locate content. By creating increasing levels of abstraction, our ability to locate information that is seemingly disorganized is actually increased. Most libraries are are organized around the Dewey Decimal System of categorization. By comparison the internet organizes or indexes almost every word on every web page. Next, companies look at which web pages get the most usage.
Think of the internet as a vast global library of information that is attaining new levels of virtualization or abstraction never thought possible before. Truly a remarkable feat. . . and all this is being done without a tidy decimal-based classification system like that developed by Dewey. By comparison the internet is an organizational mess but because it is organized at a higher level of abstraction it works very well. On the internet there is no need to know where, for example, a document is physically located or what it is physically called. When you think of it, this is a breakthrough.
Here are some video references you might find interesting. . . or better yet, go to the library and get Weinberger's book - Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the new Digital Disorder.
- David Weinberger (Library of Congress) 2004
- A Conversation with David Weinberger (with Yahoo)
- David Weinberger and Andrew Keen (SuperNova)
- David Weinberger and Andrew Keen (FORA.TV) - Reflections and Debate with David Weinberger and Andrew Keen.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
OLPC - One Laptop Per Child - 2
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an educational project not a laptop project according to founder — Nicholas Negroponte.Nicholas Negroponte was the talk of Davos Switzerland when he unveiled his plan for a $100 Laptop - more.
This project has been highly controversial. Many people have argued with its choice of technologies (Open Source), business model (partnering with the United Nations and with national govern
ments, rather than with private companies) was off target. Some people have questioned whether the computer itself is the critical resource bottleneck, citing Internet access as being an equally important and more difficult to solve problem. There is still a way to go.There are still a few minor obstacles associated with a project attempting to ensure that every child on the planet not only has a computer but that it is connected to the World Wide Web of opportunities, information and possibility. Nevertheless the endeavour seems to be off to a good start and maybe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might lend a hand. Bob are you listening?
For Nicholas Negroponte podcast - click here.
For technical discussion video (35min) - click here.
Friday, February 22, 2008
OLPC - One Laptop Per Child - I
The world is going through hyper-change mode, transforming before our eyes on a variety of fronts - largely enables by advances in telecommunication technology. As a result, we are entering a new phase of information management - one where personal productivity tools that recognized the power of the individual to one where information is recognized a something groups of people either utilize of produce in some kind of supply chain. Seldom is corporate information handled by a lone individual. It is the consequence of an as yet usually ill defined production cycle. First let me explain.
I'm referring to what is typically called unstructured information - documents and messages of one kind or another. Merrill Lynch estimates that more than 85% of all business information is unstructured data – commonly appearing in e-mails, memos, notes from call centres and support operations, news, user groups, chats, reports, letters, surveys, white papers, marketing material,research, presentations and Web pages.
This unstructured content or what is being called UGC (User Generated Content) is beginning to move from enterprise drives behind the fire wall to domains that are accessible via the internet. . .
But what does this all have to do with OLPC? As the knowledge of the world gets better reorganized and becomes more accessible and therefore made accessible to anyone on the planet with broadband access, one has to wonder what would happen if every child were given computer access to the knowledge of the world?
Did you know that less than half of the content contained in Wikipedia is in English. Did you know that the Google Boys are excited about advances in automated translation technologies. The world is shifting - if we could but perceive. Information is leaking from the hands of the few to the hands of the many - at exponential rates.
If this leakage is actually taking place, what would happen if OLPC took place. Most probably, concepts of Intellectual Property (IP) would attempt to limit who gets to learn and know what. That seems to be what IP rights do.
I'm referring to what is typically called unstructured information - documents and messages of one kind or another. Merrill Lynch estimates that more than 85% of all business information is unstructured data – commonly appearing in e-mails, memos, notes from call centres and support operations, news, user groups, chats, reports, letters, surveys, white papers, marketing material,research, presentations and Web pages.
This unstructured content or what is being called UGC (User Generated Content) is beginning to move from enterprise drives behind the fire wall to domains that are accessible via the internet. . .
But what does this all have to do with OLPC? As the knowledge of the world gets better reorganized and becomes more accessible and therefore made accessible to anyone on the planet with broadband access, one has to wonder what would happen if every child were given computer access to the knowledge of the world?
Did you know that less than half of the content contained in Wikipedia is in English. Did you know that the Google Boys are excited about advances in automated translation technologies. The world is shifting - if we could but perceive. Information is leaking from the hands of the few to the hands of the many - at exponential rates.
If this leakage is actually taking place, what would happen if OLPC took place. Most probably, concepts of Intellectual Property (IP) would attempt to limit who gets to learn and know what. That seems to be what IP rights do.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Two Views of Information
The traditional view holds that information or its derivative knowledge is power. Therefore it has value and needs to be protected against loss, corruption and misuse by others. Historically we have protected information because it was scarce or conversely, perhaps scarcity itself was created as a means of increasing value and associated power.
The traditional view, however, is giving way to the modern notion that information actually derives value through use and reuse. This decentralized view holds that substantial community benefit can be realized through the free flow of information from the hands of the few to the hands of the many. The more information is used by the community, the greater the return on the community investment. But who actually owns the information? What is the notion of intellectual property? If I invent a good idea, like the alphabet, should I be allowed to own it - forever? What would the world be like if numbers were intellectual property owned by a corporation, would I go to a distributer and have them fill up my spreadsheet to I can perform the next set of tasks? Consider the american company that received a US Paten on Bismati Rice - ref1, ref2.
In September 1997, a Texas company called RiceTec won a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,663,484) on "basmati rice lines and grains." The patent secures lines of basmati and basmati-like rice and ways of analyzing that rice. RiceTec, owned by Prince Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein, faced international outrage over allegations of biopiracy. Both voluntarily and due to review decisions by the United States Patent Office, RiceTec has lost most of the claims of the patent, including, most importantly, the right to call their rice lines "basmati." This was a huge victory for India, whose farmers faced enormous economic losses from the patent - source, Wikipedia.
The view that information was the source of some power that can best be handled inside protective vaults or silos could be described as a contributing for vertical organizational designs intended to support differentiation and control balances based on who gets to see and do what with the information. The emerging view that as information becomes more readily available through the creation of horizontal structures like the internet or its variant the intranet, a natural consequence will be the discovery of new opportunities and possibilities. The basic idea is that as more information are given access to access or discover relevant information and the knowledge or literacy levels increase, the organization will be better able to make better plans and decisions. This premise was presented in 1945 by economist Friedrich Hayek in The Use of Knowledge in Society. In it, Hayek proposes that information sharing, which arises when diverse individuals interacting for their own varying goals, results serendipitously in order and universal benefit. He suggested that cooperation is an inevitable outcome of social interaction because of the benefits of distributed knowledge.
Modernization III
An environment required to support innovation is fundamentally different from one need to implement and sustain the innovation. In like innovation which benefits for participation and collaboration which can to some extent be self-organized and regulated, the implementation of the innovation must systematic – capable of being consistently repeated in a variety of situations and locations - over time. The notion of assembly line replication, though mechanistic in nature, appears to be a key ingredient to future success.
To accomplish this success, “systems” must be codified or thoroughly described before consistent implemented can occur. Without this codification, system replication is made difficult or impossible. Codification [1] could, for example, be expressed in several ways or at various levels of abstraction. That’s what codification is, a form of abstraction or virtualization or simulation. Written language is an abstraction of the spoken word and the alphabet is its codification. Written laws, business process definitions, computer programming scripts are abstract codifications intended to define, govern and regulate system behaviour. Codification is a critical component of the ongoing reformation or modernization process – including the way information is managed.
_____
[1] here codification refers to the identification and restating of a business rule or process in an organized and logical in order that it can be more easily interpreted.
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