[xtm-wg] the forum technology

["Paul Prueitt" <beadmaster@ontologyStream.com>]

I enclose to the xtm-wg group a message I have developed to other egroups
forums.

Let me suggest that the current now Yahoo forum continue, but that a new
forum be established at:

http://www.freelists.org

The new forum and the old one can be used in parallel until the old one is
no longer considered of value.

After all, the main value of a forum is the real time communication.

I am working with a private group to fund a import/export function for
freelists that produces topic maps.

This work will take a while, unless the private group pumps around $100K
into a two month development project.

And the import/export to topic maps make never occur if there is not a
private funder.  However, the import/export of freelist forum resources is
an issue that i am investigating.

I look forward to meeting everyone at the Knowledge Technologies 2001
conference in Austin.



******************************


*** message to other forums  ***

A clearly superior alternative to Yahoo is what keeps us from moving.  Yahoo
is ok, but not only is the commercialism distasteful to some, but there are
additional features that some of us know we want and that others would adopt
if made available.

Brad Cox's notion of Superdistribution is an existing technology that could
be build into existing forum technology in order to produce a very simple to
administrate pay by usage model.

www.superdistributed.com

The cost of use could be distributed to everyone based on a simple pass
through of only the real cost (no profiles and no wasted marketing of
services).  For a list server type service the real costs are likely less
than $20,000 per year - even for a system the size of egroups.  Average
costs per transaction might be in the pennies range.  A free service might
be to anyone using less than 100 transactions per month, and donations could
be accepted.  Simple business model, is this not?

However, I am also trying to advocate the development of an ontology based
indexing, routing and retrieval technology so that a number of new features
would exist within the system.

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/forms.htm

The kind of pull/pull of information that exists within a Autonomy-like
system could be enhanced so that there were dynamic topic map production in
visual form.  The notion of point to point ontology streaming in a
peer-2-peer environment is relative and may be well enabled by new XML Topic
Map (XTM) standards.

Dynamic topic map production and ontology streaming would provide:

1) notification of a theme occurring in any of many forums, and thus
enabling just in time cross forum dialog.
2) the creation of knowledge artifacts that allows for more systematic
knowledge validation by the community.

It is clear that either one of these features would make fundamental changes
in the way on-line communities function.  However, I feel that this type of
system is more in line with most people's inner vision of what they would
like to see in virtual collaborative technologies.

This vision is represented in one form in three short URL's that describe
how a Herman Hesse type glass bead game might be produced:

http://www.ontologystream.com/area1/primarybeads/bead1.htm
http://www.ontologystream.com/area1/primarybeads/bead2.htm
http://www.ontologystream.com/area1/primarybeads/bead3.htm

Let me just point out that the e-Business business model also needs this
type of technology in order to really push information to the market in a
way that is truly helpful to the consumers. Business 2 Business business
models also need the type of business ecosystem knowledge that is described
above.

A fundamental link analysis in a virtual graph space (cognitive  graph -
Frank Sowa like) could be overlaid by interpretant binding dispositions
(what ever that is) so that topic maps would in fact be formative within a
situational logic (supplied by human point judgments about semantic
linkage).

http://www.ontologystream.com/IRRTest/Evaluation/sl/bead1.htm

The Russian quasi axiomatic theory on Peircean knowledge atoms was designed
to do this, and perhaps would have evolved to a mature knowledge technology
had the Soviet Union not collapsed (my opinion).

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/kmbook/Chapter9.htm

Because of the value to business the technologies will be developed and
adopted.  The value to society from this same technology is far greater than
commercial interest can tap into, and thus we have the core of the problem
where business interests are actually inhibiting the development of
knowledge technologies because the business people can not figure out how to
gain all of the evaluation of themselves (again, my opinion).  This problem
is related to the IT dependency that I have conjectured about:

http://www.bcngroup.org/admin/TelArt/strategy.htm

The only real question in my mind is about how long it will take, and
whether the same technology will be ubiquitous as a social infrastructure
and thus readily available for purely intellectual and social interaction
that is not stained by simple and pure commercialism.




------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~>
eGroups is now Yahoo! Groups
Click here for more details
http://click.egroups.com/1/11231/0/_/337252/_/980697137/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->

To Post a message, send it to:   xtm-wg@eGroups.com

To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: xtm-wg-unsubscribe@eGroups.com