KENEs

Knowledge Ecosystem Navigation Exploration System

This document provides a high-level description of an experimental system to allow users to interact with the structures of knowledge they find themselves connected to (conventional, shared, institutional and personal). The experimental system is code-named here as KENES (Knowledge-Ecosystem Navigation and Exploration System).

The questions and scenarios below are offered to help shape the design considerations of such a system, along with its key components: software, databases, technologies and methodologies. This is followed by a list of technical requirements.

In what ways do the real-world systems of knowledge resemble ecosystems?

How can we animate Knowledge-Ecosystems so that they can be navigated, compared, edited, authored and explored?

How can we enable individuals to build and interact with their own Knowledge-Ecosystems?

How can we enable individuals to change the rules, structures and hierarchies of knowledge and see the results?

How can we enable an individual to explore the connections between their internal knowledge and external knowledge structures (in the form of institutional structures and content, group, conventional or historic)?

What kinds of knowledge structures exist in the knowledge ecosystems?

System Requirements

·        Store one or more taxonomies

·        Ability to “read” natural language instances of contextualized knowledge

o   Identify topics already represented in the knowledge base

o   Identify topics which are not represented in the knowledge base

o   Interactively augment coding, mark-up and taxonomy building

o   Give feedback and visualizations representing how each action effects the network

·        Logic engine

o   Rules for the connecting of content via relations

o   Including: Hierarchical, inference based, analytical, exploratory analysis,

o   Editable, able to generate projected “implication” trees and resultant networks

·        Real-time network construction

·        Navigation of Knowledge Networks

o   Users may enter the system by visiting nodes, clusters of nodes or sub-networks

o   At random

o   Based on recent activity

o   Based on a personal profile of interests

o   Based on the current activity of other users of the system, events or ongoing automated “tours” or visits of from

o   Based on user interaction and/or distributed interactions within the multi-user systemd

·        Ability to map the connections between taxonomies

·        Ability to handle taxonomies that are (1) authored by groups or individuals, (2) imported or (3) combined authored and imported.

·        A mark-up language technology to allow the representation, capture or authoring knowledge structures within heterogenous content

·        Knowledge-Base

o   An interconnected set of databases, data-sources, taxonomies and content

o   Databases combining content, taxonomies and hierarchies

o   Shared and individual versions

·        Distributed

o   Server based support of multi-user system, distributed over multiple interfaces and locations.