[xtm-wg] Re: Wishlist for Thinkers

[Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@ms.lt>]

Thank you, Peter, for your reply:

***************************************************
Message: 6
   Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 12:20:01 +0100
   From: Peter Jones <peterj@wrox.com>
Subject: RE: Wishlist for Thinkers

Hi Andrius,

If I understand you correctly, you are looking to the XTM standard as a
possible way of storing a representation of a network of ideas (whatever
those ideas might be and however they are interrelated)?
So you are attempting to identify common characteristics of ideas and
the
way that they interrelate to see if the XTM standard could supply an
adequate storage format?

regards,
Peter
***************************************************

Yes.  
Our laboratory is working to develop an import/export standard for
aggregates - especially sequences, hierarchies, and networks - of
thoughts (notes, ideas, pictures, code, voice...). 
http://www.ms.lt/importexport.html   XTM may be useful for defining one
of several implementations.

The purpose is to allow an independent thinker-author to use a variety
of tools for thinking with which they are accumulating, organizing, and
reflecting on their own thoughts.

An independent thinker-author, in this scenario, is not interested in
semantic issues - such as semantic mark-up, or semantic associations. 
We, as authors, do not need to "re-record" what our thoughts mean, and
in fact, sometimes we ourselves are not quite sure what our thoughts
mean.  This is because we have already recorded what they mean as best
we can given the time we can spend. 

Instead, we are keenly interested in the structural constraints that we
are working within as authors.  For example, MindManager,
www.mindmanager.com, allows us to place our thoughts within a radial
tree with crosslinks.  TheBrain, www.thebrain.com, allows us to place
our thoughts within a combination of a directed network and a
nondirected network.  It is not obvious from the visualization itself
what is important, for example, whether a tree is meant to have ordered
or unordered branches.  For the author, it is very important that the
structural constraints they had in mind be noted upon
importing-exporting the thoughts into a new environment.  This is
critical when an author uses such structural constraints to shape their
writing and thinking.

For our standard, we want to focus on structural relations instead of
semantic relations.  Given a semantic relation, for example, X "IS PART
OF" Y, we would only be interested in knowing, what are the structural
constraints on X and Y that this relation imposes?  If we write this as
X "->" Y, then:

Is there a constraint that:
A "->" B  and B "->" C  require  A "->" C  ?

Is there a constraint that:
A "->" B and B "->" A  may not both be true?

Is there a constraint that:
A "->" A is not true?

For us, these constraints are what is interesting, not the semantic
value of "->".  This is because we would like to be able to abuse tools,
or rather to use them for purposes they were not necessarily intended. 
For example, it might be nice to organize one's thoughts with a tool
that was meant for product design.  The import/export standard makes
this feasible.

The work done to develop Topic Maps is very valuable for us because it
helps us see the kinds of structural constraints that come up.  It is
interesting that we apply such global structural constraints when we are
locally linking ideas.  We may not even be satisfying the constraints -
we may be intending to lay out our ideas in a sequence, and they
unexpectedly form a circle - but for an author it is important to be
able to note the global structural constraint they had in mind.  My
feeling is that the kinds of structural constraints that humans use is
much much smaller than the kinds of semantic constraints.  

I am very interested in the XTM work because it may offer a way (I think
there should be several) of implementing our standard (which will be
like a modeling language).  Our laboratory's sponsors include TheBrain,
www.thebrain.com, and MindJET, www.mindmanager.com, and our members also
include Multicentrix, www.multicentrix.com, and open source programs
Thoughtstream, http://thoughtstream.org and Lucid, www.memes.net  

I hope to learn from the Topic Maps work, and especially, to hear how
Topic Maps might be used with our members' products. 

Yours,

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas Laboratory
ms@ms.lt
http://www.ms.lt/importexport.html



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