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Steven R. Newcomb Edited by Jongnam Kim

Chapter3: A Perspective on the Quest for Global Knowledge Interchange. Steven R. Newcomb Edited by Jongnam Kim. Table of Contents. Information Is Interesting Stuff Information and structure Are Inseparable

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Steven R. Newcomb Edited by Jongnam Kim

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  1. Chapter3:A Perspective on the Quest for Global Knowledge Interchange Steven R. Newcomb Edited by Jongnam Kim

  2. Table of Contents • Information Is Interesting Stuff • Information and structure Are Inseparable • Formal Languages Are Easier to Compute Than Natural Languages • Generic Markup Makes Natural Languages More Formal • A Brief History of the Topic Maps Paradigm • Data and Metadata: The Resource-Centric View • Subjects and Data:The Subject-Centric View • Understanding Sophisticated Markup Vocabularies • The Topic Maps Attitude • Summary

  3. Information Is Interesting Stuff (1/2) • Relationship • Between information and the material universe (reality) • Mineral-ness <--> Mineral • Influenced the design of the topic maps paradigm ?

  4. Information Is Interesting Stuff (2/2) • The topic maps paradigm recognizes, adapts itself to, and exploits this chasm chasm Universe of Information Universe of Subjects Human Intuition

  5. Information and structure Are Inseparable • Natural languages == “unstructured”? • Even the simplest kind of information has a sequence • Beginning, middle, end • Concept of Unit, hierarchical levels • No such thing as “unstructured information”

  6. Formal Languages Are Easier to Compute Than Natural Languages • Formal Language • Expressively impoverished language • Involving everything that computers do • You are unfamiliar with formal languages? • Dialing a telephone number • Web addresses

  7. Generic Markup Makes Natural Languages More Formal (1/3) • XML, like SGML, allows users to define their own markup vocabularies • “How can global knowledge interchange be supported?” • interchangeable info = sequence of char • Key: standard and user-specifiable • Predominance of SGML and XML • Notion of generic markup, as opposed to procedural markup

  8. Generic Markup Makes Natural Languages More Formal (2/3) • Procedural markup <italics>Command Center</italics> • Helpful for a rendering application • But, useless for supporting applications that are looking for occurrences of the names of building

  9. Generic Markup Makes Natural Languages More Formal (3/3) • Generic markup <building-name>bunker</building-name> • Says, “The next characters are the name of a building,” • Generic tag can support many more kinds of applications • Information-oriented, not application-oriented

  10. A Brief History of the Topic Maps Paradigm (1/2) • Began in 1991 by Davenport Group • Need to be able to merge indexes • ISO/IEC 13250 • Topics and relationships between topics • Relationship -> association • Facet, scope (key feature of TM) • Biezunski’s Principle • “There is no point in creating a standard that nobody can understand” • <topic> element type – totally unnecessary, but got a popularity

  11. A Brief History of the Topic Maps Paradigm (2/2) • ISO 13250 standard • Finalized in 1999 • Published in January 2000 • TopicMaps.Org • creating & publishing an XTM 1.0 spec • Core of the XTM 1.0 spec • XML 2000 conference in Washington, DC, on December 4, 2000, • Final version of XTM 1.0 on March 2, 2001

  12. Data and Metadata: The Resource-Centric View • Metadata • Being “in orbit” around the data • Ironically more and more information inaccessible • Sheer quantity of it (“infoglut”) • Search engines • Metadata web sites • Categorization of information resources • Metametadata, Metametametadata…

  13. Subjects and Data:The Subject-Centric View • Platonic forms • Underlying layer • Subject • Hub around which data resources can orbit • Resource-centric view • Metadata orbits data resources • Subject-centric view • Data orbits subjects • Problem • Computers cannot access subjects unless those subjects happen to be information resources themselves • Communicate symbolically

  14. Example • ‘Starcraft’ Information Space Mineral 400 scan 50 “Additional Supply Depot is required.” love Medic

  15. Understanding Sophisticated Markup Vocabularies • In 1986, SGML had just adopted as the one-and –only markup language for everything • Problem of representing music abstractly • Musical works are multidimensional • Currently, regard XML as an opportunity to represent relational databases as interchangeable documents • Document Object Model (DOM) • Only provide direct access to the syntactic components of how a document is represented for interchange

  16. The Topic Maps Attitude • A step along the road to global knowledge interchange • Will owe much of its success to • the fact that it is responsive to current technological, economic, and anthropological conditions, • and just as responsive to certain philosophical values and attitudes • Comparatively young traditions of the markup languages community

  17. Summary • Topic maps provide us with two different and important views into an information space • Resource-centric view • Use metadata to describe the resources we reference with topics • Subject-centric view • Topic maps provide the tools necessary to represent, to “talk about” subjects

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