I would like to join the fun, as well. I tend to put a colloquial face on
what I see as an information theory problem. That face being a special
context: conscious beings. As one of those beings (though some may argue
otherwise) I would like to use as a context, the almost 6 questions: Who,
What, When, Where, How, and sometimes Why. Here goes:
WHO is the information for? Does knowledge exist outside of a Human beings?
This is a somewhat religious issue. I recall a similar conversation in one
of the Artificial Intelligence tracks at the National Computer Conference in
Chicago, in 1979. There were some people who's definition of Intelligence
had to include a Human element. It didn't matter what sort of argument you
would make, they would always be steadfast. It seemed to me that the
definition really didn't matter. What mattered was: what are you going to DO
with the techniques that came out of AI, regardless of what you call it. For
the time being, I'm going to take a somewhat narrow view that information
outside of human beings, as the context, has little relevance. This is
because I've yet to meet a robot that I would be happy in marrying my
daughter. (Now, the fact that I don't have a daughter is beside the point!)
WHAT is knowledge? Or more specifically, what are the elements that we wish
to process? We seem to agree that email is a good thing to improve; we see
value in some of the conveyances. Is email knowledge? Perhaps yes. Perhaps
no. Regardless, supporting email is a part of managing knowledge. Do we need
to set specific boundaries around these elements of knowledge management by
formalizing their definitions? Perhaps some day. Particularly if you wish to
use a theorem prover to validate knowledge. But this problem eluded Russell
and Whitehead. I would propose that we start with something that is a bit
more crude and incomplete to bootstrap the process, and let is get refined
by the collective IQ over time.
WHEN & WHERE does this knowledge reside? This is a persistence problem. It
would be nice that all the information that I need is where I can see at
precisely the moment that I need it. Of course, What information is the
information that I need gets back to a religious question: Why. But that
shouldn't change the time and space dynamic -- except, perhaps, for some
belief systems that transcends our concept of time and space. Fortunately, I
am unable to help those people--thus, I can ignore them. By ignoring Why,
for the moment, When & Where becomes a distributed database problem.
HOW do I get that knowledge? What are the operations move What to the When &
Where for the proper Who. My favorite model for a crude how was written by
Richard Reiss in the '60s -- which appeared in an obscure book: "Readings in
Artificial Intelligence" which I checked out, as a young impressionable lad,
from the Chicago Institute of Technology library, in 1975 (if this reference
appears to be more of a scavenger hunt, my apologies--this is the best
detail that I can come up with at the moment). Reiss set up a model of
classical association psychology that consisted of: a repository of memory
tokens, a sensory register, an an attention register, and an effector
register. Each token could have an arc to another token with a certain
vivacity to it. The attention register could have a certain number of tokens
in it at the same time. After some time, old tokens would be thrown out of
the attention register, and new ones would be selected by, what Reiss would
call "an adduction function" which is a process that adds all the arcs of
tokens in the Attention to tokens in memory and choose the strongest
weighted token to enter next into the attention. Finally new tokens can be
added to the repository through the sensory register, which binds the new
token to tokens in the attention register. So, for instance, as a toddler, I
might bind the token "stove" with tokens "fire", "heat", and "ouch!". Crude?
Yes. But it was a starting place for me, which became refined over the
years. Another impressive point about this model was that, although it was
created to model Classical Association Psychology, it could also explain
Gestalt Psychology at the same time. Too opposite philosophical extremes,
joined by a data model! This is perhaps why I tend to take philosophical
discussions with a grain of salt--preferring to design with a machine model,
which is a bit more verifiable than the more ambiguous terms of human
language. So, I would propose the elements of HOW could be broken into
operators upon Sensory, Attention, Effector, Repository. Each person has
one of each. Each group has one of each ... plus a collection of persons who
have one of each.
WHY does it matter? This is the liturgical element of knowledge. Every
person has a different agenda. People aggregate around common agendas. Our
own bootstrap.org aggregation seems to be centered around the opportunity to
improve how people and their agendas aggregate, in the near future. No?
Perhaps it is something different but just as abstract. The problem with
bootstrapping an abstract form of self-improvement, is to attract a specific
agenda to the cause. Certainly, the software development agenda has a
synergy with the HOW of a DKR, by promoting a somewhat incestuous
relationship of tools that procreate better copies of themselves. However, I
think that this made more sense in the days of the original Augment, when
there were few tools to play with. Today, there are plenty of tools. The
noise level is pretty high; there isn't much of a vacuum to fill. My own
inclination is to solve a problem that is Global in scope. However, this is
probably too nebulous a task; it has way too much ambiguous language. So,
with geeks and politicians forming the two extremes of the knowledge domain,
perhaps a project management system would be the best point in between the
two. It has all the structures that can evolve into a future DKR: a
hierarchical Work Breakdown Structure, a set of nodes and arcs called
Activities and Constraints, an aggregation of people and things called
Resources and Materials, and a dialogue between people who are in progress
of doing something. Are there any open source project management systems?
Does it make sense to develop one? This is an well defined problem that
could use a more universal solution. It could work for the geek population,
thus attracting intellectual capital (i.e. talented people) to improving the
infrastructure. It could also serve the political agendas that are Global in
scope.
That being said, I would like propose my own definition of knowledge
management: the conveyance of surprise from sender to receiver, at the most
efficient time and place, such that the receiver can convey surprise more
efficiently. In short: making my entropy into our entropy, and vice versa.
But of course, my definition or your definition of knowledge management
doesn't really matter, if we both know what each other is really doing.
Hence, my attempt at subverting this philosophical discourse into a concrete
project proposal.
Warren
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@verticalnet.com]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 7:55 AM
To: unrev-II@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [unrev-II] 2020 Hindsight: A Fictional DKR Narrative (long
(sorry))
If I may jump in here, it occurs to me that what we have been calling
knowledge cannot exist outside the user. What exists in books, computers,
and so forth, it seems to me, is just a model, a map, whatever you want to
call a collection of triggers to the model that resides within the user.
I speak of "apparent IQ," while Doug speaks of "collective IQ." I believe
we are both speaking of the synergy that occurs when more than one mind
gets
together. Now, I am not speaking of the DKR as another mind; rather, I am
speaking of it as a model of a giant mind, one that has the capacity to
trigger mine to work better. Consider this: Al Einstein talking to a
5-year
old isn't going to get very far explaining general relativity. In fact,
the
Sayings of Chairman Peirce have a similar ring on me, given my lack of
depth
in philosophy. But then, should a computer harbor a relational network of
ideas related to Peirce, I do have the requisite variety in my own mind to
make use of that net, and, thus, appear a whole lot smarter than I am.
Cheers
Jack
From: Bill Bearden <BBearden@BCL.net>
> Rod,
>
> You bring up an interesting and valid point with which I am currently
> struggling. I have been reading (and trying to understand) some of
> Malhotra's extensions of Churchman, esp.
> http://www.brint.com/members/online/200603/kmhitech/kmhitech.html.
There,
> Malhotra quotes Churchman:
>
> "To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob
the
> concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in
the
> collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information
that
> matters."
>
> This sounds very much like what you say.
>
> But if knowledge can not exist outside of the mind, how can a DKR be
> possible? By this definition, neither book nor computer can contain
> knowledge. I believe in the concept of the DKR. Therefore, I can not
accept
> a definition which fundamentally prevents its existence.
>
> So, with your definition, my previous comment about knowledge being
> everywhere is not valid. But I would guess that your definition
invalidates
> lots of things that have been discussed.
>
> Bill
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