[topicmaps-comment] RE: on the development of the notion of knowledgemanagement

[paul <beadmaster@ontologystream.com>]

Yahoo groups is off line till Monday.  Please excuse the additional e-mail
volume.

Please note that I have copied a note from the Polish logician and computer
scientist, W. M. Jaworski.  This note is technical.

****

Professor W. M. Jaworski,

The notation that you use remains a mystery to me.  I think that in order to
get my understanding perfected I must go through an intensely listening
process and a structured approach towards teaching.  Being in Poland at your
university lab would be preferred.  However, a virtual conference might be
established at the right time to work through the various deep issues.  I
would suggest that this type of set-up requires not travel but some economic
support for the preparation of the presentations.  This is an economic
issue.

But first, I need to ask if there are other economic obstacles to learning
the perception that you apply to analysis of text?  Are some parts if the
method not public. etc?  It has been my impression, over the 2 years I have
followed your work, that there is not a great deal that is private
unsharable knowledge about how your automated system works.  However, there
is some extensive background (even quite reference-able to scholarly
literature) that is required to see the formal notation.

I do not know what 3P stands for, to start with.

You say

"'ConceptMaps' is structurally quite simple construct in contrast to
n-aries"

and I know this to be intuitively true.  However, a formal notation allows
this truth to be judged implicitly and then (given that our group ever finds
funding) the logicians and computer scientists can work together to
implement some automation of the creation, and use of visualAbstraction
derived machine readable knowledge artifacts.

The ultimate goal is formative ontology that is situated, and you are the
only other leading scholar who I know implicitly understands the issue of
emergence in this context.  It is part of how you see what it is that you
are doing, of this I am certain.  There is great economic benefit to a
formative machine readable ontology that is derived from data (such as a
text document) and that has LATE BINDING OF SCOPE (situatedness).  I know
that you agree, and I feel that Dick Ballard agrees also.

In the new medical knowledge base work that I am developing with Van Warren
and others, we are considering the question of 'similarity' by looking at
the similarity of the co-occurrence derived functional load.

Van said recently:

"I represent a consortium working on
systematically extracting knowledge from the biotechnology literature.
We are creating visual representations of knowledge so that we can query
along directed lines of reasoning. Our motive is to help researchers
completely understand cancer and to create sophisticated computer
animations of living cells."



The identification of and the visualization and computational use of
structural/functional load  is a difficult subject to talk about as there
are so many ways to make mistakes in communication.

W.M., I realize that your group in Poland should be involved in a project
with the BCNGroup given that we ever establish the institution of the
BCNGroup with sufficient means to support International collaboration.  We
wait for some random event to establish this means, while we continue to
work on the underlying technologies.

One of the objectives of visual Abstraction (vA) is to show the relationship
between categories.  It would seem to me that 3P, what ever that is, is
largely category theory.  I even assume that it has some rough sets (also
category theory) at the core?

Thus the vA might actually show the process involved in producing 3P, as
well as in visualizing the results of 3P.  Since the vA is real, in the
sense of having a real drill down into the data that "causes" the vA, then
acts on this reality can be used to cause data transformations.  This was
Inmentia's notion of data tensors, but that group seems to have vanished
also.  Technology adoption is random, in other words.

Something like a Mind Map (Fisher's work and others) does not have these
ontological properties - except artificially - BECAUSE the Mind Maps are
constructed via human tacit knowledge.  In topic maps language, the Mind
Maps are machine representations of non-addressable contents of human
perception; whereas the vA is a machine addressable artifact that stands in
for a categorization (or variable type) derived computationally from machine
addressable subjects (the data source itself.)

This make the vA-systems a generalization of a data base, since there are
data structures and a query language.  Everything is machine addressable
(surprise!!!).  Human interpretation is NOT used to build constructs (Human
interpretation, if represented as in a Mind Map (Fisher) causes the cause of
a structure to be outside of the computer).  IN SLIP human interpretation is
used as a control mechanism, where the control is always lawful algorithmic
process (often seen in the use of stochastic process - evolutionary
programming etc.)  There are some other surprises related to the *non*
emergent nature of the stochastic process (this appears to the a
contradiction - but is not.  We use a Rosen derived argument on complexity
here.)

Don Mitchell and I are developing both the root_KOS operating system for vA
and an In memory Referential Information Base that replaces data tables with
set theory.

http://www.ontologystream.com/SLIP/files/TheRootKOS.htm

This makes the conversion between sets and lines; and lines and sets, fast
and SIMPLE.

I hope that the topic maps community will consider having a discussion on
this in the eventChemistry forum next week.

Paul Prueitt
paul@ontologystream.com


-----Original Message-----
From: W.M. Jaworski [mailto:wmj@gen-strategies.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 5:38 AM
To: psp
Cc: Richard Ballard
Subject: RE: on the development of the notion of knowledge management


My apology for late reply. Only today I was able to allocate few hours.
I 'decomposed' your project/research into 3 areas:
(1) content/domain/application
(2) content/knowledge representation
(3) content visualization.

I specialize in content/knowledge representation therefore - to understand
better 'the idea' - I re-wrote the ConceptMaps from "Citation Indexing of
Text Archives" [http://www.ontologystream.com/bSLIP/citationIndex.htm] into
3P format and uploaded to
http://www.gen-strategies.com/prueitt/fables.htm. It seems that the
'ConceptMaps' is structurally quite simple construct in contrast to n-aries
(Richard Ballard) required for the comprehensive applications. Review - for
comparison - a model of RUP at
http://www.gen-strategies.com/rupmodel/Process.htm.

Regards
WMJ

-----Original Message-----
From: psp [mailto:beadmaster@ontologystream.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 10:01 AM
To: W.M. Jaworski
Subject: RE: on the development of the notion of knowledge management




Things have developed rapidly since I first contacted you.


Two White Hats (senior military hackers) are developing a private
presentation on CDKB

http://www.ontologystream.com/administration/toOSTP.htm

for Richard Clarke (within two weeks).   The idea is that the end points of
the Internet..  databases and etc are being covered by lots of commerical
processes.  The cyber war there is simply a economic stimulus - lots of
comapnies making lots of money protecting.

However, the intrumentation

http://www.ontologystream.com/bSLIP/pre-CDKB.htm

of the Internet for a Vader System

http://www.ontologystream.com/journal/vader.htm


is what can be deployed within two months.  Are you, and colleagues, able to
think about the issues with us?

703-981-2676

****

In addition to two introductory tutorials, a new advanced tutorial

http://www.ontologystream.com/journal/ACTutorial.htm

Please call me if you wish to have me on the phone while you work though
this tutorial  (15mins)


We have a new Journal at:

http://www.ontologystream.com/journal/JournaleventChemistry.htm

Please consider looking at this link analysis type research tool and
developing a contribution to the Journal.

What we are in particularly interested in is the development of a markup
language that corresponds to the human side of the state - gesture
interaction and that can be used to reduce the variability of a voice
command interpreter.  What grammar elements are needed to allow a human
voice to completely control the development and use of visual abstractions.

Of course such a theory of state-gesture (as a controller of the SLIP
produced visual abstractions) will also work in context not related to voice
control.


-----Original Message-----
From: W.M. Jaworski [mailto:wmj@gen-strategies.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 8:04 PM
To: Richard Ballard; Douglas Weidner
Cc: Paul Prueitt
Subject: RE: on the development of the notion of knowledge management


Dear Mr. Weidner,

Dick, by cc his comments, implies that my insights (and hard learned
lessons) could be relevant. Please review
http://www.gen-strategies.com/Lectures/Learning.htm and ask pointed, brutal
questions. The draft is almost 2 years old but the style was developed over
many years and is used (with improvements) until now.

Fundamental (labor intensive and costly) problem in knowledge transfer
(learning in academic and industrial environment) is
(1) development of schemata/templates/forms (aka data models) for knowledge
representation
(2) application (illustration!) of (1) to 'common' (popular | useful)
knowledge
(3) manufacturing of the knowledge bases - using (1) and (2) - in P3
compliant format where
   P3::= Process-, Plug-, Pattern-able.

Subject content specialists and M3 type technology are needed for (1) and
(2).
Manufacturing of the knowledge bases (supported by M3 type technology) could
be decomposed into:
  	(a) assessment of learners (students) is based on tangible deliverables
i.e. expansion of knowledge bases in P3 format - in a sense 'free labor'.
See relevant point in my draft.
	(b) outsourcing to sites (countries) with low labor cost. Most of my
students in a small class of 6 are Chinese. They could be in Beijing not in
Montreal.

It would be more healthy to replace 'knowledge management' by 'design,
manufacturing, maintenance and use of knowledge bases'.
Most valuable products are developed in (1) and (2). Mass production is in
(3).

BTW Where is "this business model" mentioned in your e-mail?

Regards
WMJ



-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Ballard [mailto:rlballard@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 6:15 PM
To: Douglas Weidner
Cc: Wojciech M. Jaworski; Paul Prueitt
Subject: RE: on the development of the notion of knowledge management


Doug:

These are not new business problems. Training organizations of every kind
from schools to corporate training offices have the same problems. Look at
the systems used by your personal and corporate training providers in any
locality. The originals may be on PDF, but materials distributed in this way
become free and worthless to their developers. The originators almost always
make arrangements to have them converted into hard (paper) copies before
being given to student users. The same industry that produces lab manuals
and syllabi to college classes has been doing this profitably for ages. You
should think of doing the same, this is a very well tested business model.
We founded the first micro-based (training) software publishing company in
1976 for William C. Brown, a then medium sized College text-book company
that had built itself up from a lab manual printing shop in Dubuque, Iowa.

The national copy companies, like Kinko's have a business service called Doc
Store. You can put your training documents on-line in PDF form with them and
continue editing and upgrading them. Have you students pay you (by credit
card) for access (royalty, overhead, etc.) and give authorization code.
Student goes to any Kinko's and pays them normal rates for download and cost
of reproduction. It costs you maybe $5000 to set up all accounts and
arrangements with Kinko's, they work at any Kinko's worldwide. [My wife is a
corporate software trainer and my son-in-law a Kinko's manager.] In L.A.
Kinko's Doc Store Representative is Dex Ostling, Digital Solutions
Consultant. (818) 567-7392 or dexo@kinkos.com. By night this same son-in-law
is a punk rock composer and singing lead for PROP-13. And a great son and
father to my grandkids! This is L.A. and LARGE, remember.

Usually the IP comes in on a royalty basis, maybe 2-5% tops if name has
marketing value. IP's main concern, will you generate any volume. Honestly,
probably not. Publisher goes for exclusive, may get it for period of time 6
mos-1 year (the period in which publisher expects full expense payback). May
settle for exclusive goes to non-exclusive, if performance less than some
expectation.

Instructional design arrangements can be explored with organizations that
sponsor traveling seminar groups. Usually first teacher is assumed to
provide first teaching sequence and materials in exchange for royalty on
subsequent use of same materials by other seminar teachers. Usually heavy
post class evaluation of teacher and materials and markets starts
evolutionary path to half a dozen standards, particularly in "killer
application" desktop training markets. Your timing problem is in being
pre-killer app. We hope to have a Mark 3 beta by summer of next year, but
killer app marketing and training would follow by several years. If you are
going to bootstrap from "academic / Knowledge Management" the journey is
problematical. Find half a dozen companies that plausibly built themselves
up from such offerings.

My best friends of old for running down such questions were Christine
Donavan, formerly a Marketing VP for IDC now on her own at (cd22979@aol.com)
in New York. She is straight and no nonsense and will tell you the way it
is, nicely. The other is Ann Wujcik, my educational software market
researcher for many years. She is working now with another good friend,
Nelson Heller, who publishes a regular research newsletter. Ann is in the
Washington DC Area and can be reached at AnneWujcik@aol.com. She is very
teacher oriented, but remains connected. I have tried to tip her into more
involvement in the KM world, but her steps in that direction have been small
so far. She will always insist she really doesn't know anything. Don't
believe that. She can pass you on to people who work these publishing deals
constantly.

Dick







-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Weidner [mailto:dweidner@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 10:13 AM
To: Richard Ballard
Subject: Re: on the development of the notion of knowledge management


Richard,

Thank you for your input.

We have two extra complications in this business model, though one (reuse)
is an efficiency with long-term positive impact:

*    Virtual Content has high reuse at low cost once initial investment
made.  How to apportion return to IP vs instructional design when not done
by IP holder, is the issue.

*    Fee to accrediting body is unknown to me.

Douglas


----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Ballard" <rlballard@earthlink.net>
To: "Douglas Weidner" <dweidner@worldnet.att.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 8:29 PM
Subject: RE: on the development of the notion of knowledge management


> Doug:
>
> I think you are suggesting a wise course. Take your first cut at this
thing
> and don't get discouraged. Look for an existing business model. Go ahead
and
> look at Entrepreneur Magazines store-bought business models for Seminars,
> Technical meetings and the like. No matter what the technologies,
> enthusiasms, or value propositions you are embarking on a journey that
> should not be taken lightly. There are models that work, that are
economic,
> and fitted to what is most unique about knowledge industry formation. You
> are involving yourself in nothing less and, if anything, you are early by
> 2-5 years. But, hell! Someone has to be out in front, if you have the grit
> and perseverance you can be starting something monumental. Don't assume a'
> priori that anyone knows what this field is all about.
>
> To get some hint yourself, you need to do some solid market research and
> come to an exceptionally important statement of purpose and mission
> objectives. You need to know why Knowledge Management Magazine declared
the
> field dead in 2000 and why we sell Knowledge Engineering and Sciences
> AGAINST Knowledge Management. Talk to Steve Barth
(stevebarth@earthlink.net)
> or George Lawton (glawton@best.com) or Geoff Petch (formerly KM Magazines
> founding editor). They are all solid writers and observers of the KM scene
> with years of covering it. You can mention my name. All of them have
written
> important stories of our work, but have their own independent points of
> view.
>
> I am convinced that there is a strong position that can and must be taken
> and that many of us who have no professional home can and will rally to
the
> flags we have championed for 20-30 years. You need to find out just what
> flags these are and develop a much larger picture of these next two
decades
> of industry formation. Out of this you can form you own vision and
rallying
> cry, don't look to anyone else right now define it for you. Put your
> questions to these fellows and to everyone else on this list.
>
> From the perspective of market research you need to know and understand
the
> questions first and get them right. If you are asking the right questions,
> then your response rate will surprise you. People will work hard on
> answering questions, just to know how others responded. "Killer Questions"
> and a great mailing list is enough to get companies and individuals to pay
> to see the answers. I ran such a business, from 1979-84 for IDC and that
> proved an invaluable professional position for starting new
entrepreneurial
> companies and upwards to 44 software publishing divisions for all the
> traditional publishers and microcomputer hardware companies. That
> opportunity will happen again within these next few years.
>
> Good Luck
>
> Dick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Weidner [mailto:dweidner@worldnet.att.net]
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 11:25 AM
> To: psp
> Cc: Dennis Wisnosky; Robert Shaw; Peter Kugler; Cameron Jones; Art
> Murray; Richard Ballard
> Subject: Re: on the development of the notion of knowledge management
>
>
> Paul,
>
> The bad news.  I don't have a PhD, just two Masters (MBA and
MSIE-Operations
> Research).  In the second one, I was working toward the PhD, but got a job
> offer I couldn't refuse after completing the academic requirements, but
not
> the thesis.
>
> The good news. As a founder of KMPro and its CKO and Executive Director of
> the KMPro Learning Center (I was one of the KMCI founders in Jan 1998, but
> left in 2001 to form KMPro, after no longer being able to tolerate Joe
> Firestone's methods), I can assure you all fair treatment and an
opportunity
> to both teach and benefit financially from such contributions in KMPro's
> Learning Center.
>
> Paul mentions KMPro has much content below the level summarized by Paul.
> That is true, but I believe the final solution will be evolutionary as we
> learn more about the total KM discipline and match needs with available
> expertise.  My starting point was the US Gov'ts 14 KM Learning Objectives,
> but they are just a start.
>
> KMPro has been able to gather some state-of-the-art technology to support
> our plans.
>
> Finally, my MBA-type thinking, some may say bias or anal-retentiveness,
> inclines me toward building a financial model of the 'University' before
we
> establish unrealistic expectations.  Does anyone have a problem with that
> logic that you would like to discuss?
>
> By Monday, I'll lay out a Pro Forma for all to review and critique.  It
may
> be premature, but I've included some obvious cost elements, but not the
> amounts in the attached.
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated and included in the model.
>
> Douglas
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "psp" <beadmaster@ontologystream.com>
> To: "Douglas Weidner" <dweidner@worldnet.att.net>
> Cc: "Dennis Wisnosky" <dwiz@wizdomsystems.com>; "Robert Shaw"
> <roberteshaw@aol.com>; "Peter Kugler" <pkugler@capecod.net>; "Cameron
Jones"
> <cajones@swin.edu.au>; "Art Murray" <Amurray101@cs.com>; "Richard Ballard"
> <rlballard@earthlink.net>
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 12:11 PM
> Subject: on the development of the notion of knowledge management
>
>
> > CC:  Drs.  Weidner, Shaw, Kugler, Jones, Murray, Wisnosky, and Ballard
> >
> > This is a note that is directed at this small group of PhDs...  it is a
> > personal note to those that I admire and trust.  (If I could awarded
PhDs
> > for a life time of service in systems theory and knowledge management
the
> > first award would be to Dennis Wisnosky for his original contributions
to
> > business process methodology.)
> >
> >
> > The personal part of this note is regarding my giving up the effort on
> > identifying the need for a National Defense System against Cyber War.
> >
> > http://www.ontologystream.com/administration/toOSTP.htm
> >
> > If there is a positive response then I can respond.  But I have recently
> > brought this issue to the attention to the Director of OSTP after some
> > discussions with individuals who report to him.
> >
> > So the matter is in his hands and in the hands of others.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > I have had no income for two months, and can make it only for 30 more
> days.
> > In watching a conference on eLearning; I realized that the difference
> > between eLearning and Cyber war is the secrecy issue, and the fact that
I
> am
> > not cleared to work on matters related to national security.  So even if
I
> > am successful in bringing the issues of our vulnerability to the mind of
> the
> > President, I would not benefit financially.
> >
> > I so deeply wish to be only a philosopher and teacher....  so I see a
life
> > change.    Reality sets in.  I had thought that the change would be the
> > funding of a national Manhattan Project for Knowledge Science... but I
see
> > now, particularly due to conversations with Dick, that this is unlikely.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > So I wish to focus on getting a job or an OSI contract to work on
> eLearning
> > systems.  As I work to focus my efforts in this area, I may be able to
> make
> > a primary contribution to Doug's new organization.  I hope that such a
> > contribution may occur.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > Well so, here is what I am proposing as the high level description of
the
> KM
> > curriculum...  outside of the KM Core - where Doug and others already
have
> > most everything worked out.
> >
> >
> > http://www.ontologystream.com/distanceLearning/whatIsKM.htm
> >
> >
> > The proposal is a real proposal that I have worked on for several years.
> My
> > deep resentment regarding the KMCI was that there was a repeated and
> > deceptive promise that I could participate in teaching curriculum of
this
> > type.
> >
> > I do hope that the market forces can be managed so that I can teach this
> > curriculum and make available a KMPro technology infrastructure that
> allows
> > Art and Peter and others a platform to bring knowledge to those in the
> > government and in the cottage industries surrounding the government.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>