[ba-ohs-talk] OHS/DKR Design for KM and Licensing
Jack, (01)
Hearty congratulations on completing your book, and more so for facing
serious medical issues with courage, will and energy to carry on
important work. All of us on this list and doubtless many others whom
you have helped with your strong determination and expertise are
grateful for the miracle of medicine that has seen you through. (02)
Your story of personal triumph inspires renewed efforts to realize the
sweeping vision you describe of a future where OHS has taken root in
the soil of young minds and hearts. I am sure Doug is greatly pleased
to have his life's work aided by a good and wise shepherd for the
journey yet ahead. (03)
Rod (04)
************** (05)
Jack Park wrote:
>
> Rod,
>
> The web site cited below is not part of any particular project. Rather, it
> was created as a kind of hyperlinked space where I could collect my
> thoughts using the editor that comes with the Mozilla browser. Now,
> however, I have a new system that is awfully close to finding its way to
> the web, and that system is essentially a Java Wiki on steroids. I hope to
> have much more to say about it soon.
>
> I ought to say something about the relationships between various thought
> streams and the visible project Nexist. Nexist is about to get its own
> home page at http://www.nexist.org (don't go there any time soon, the
> server is sitting on the desk next to me right now). Nexist was, is, and
> will always be an engineering prototype with which various strategies for
> wiring up communicating agents can be developed. The goal there is to find
> an API that allows this to happen; I have said here many times in the past
> that what a proper OHS needs is some sort of API (or maybe collection of
> them) such that developers have something to develop against as they add
> value to the project. I'm not quite sure on this but I think that
> r-objects.com either has such an API or is close to one for Pepper. I
> think that to be a valuable notion for the onset of any OHS evolutionary
> process.
>
> My more recent projects set the agent technology aside in favor, but not
> abandoned to, a search for user interface technology. I've recently come
> to the idea that exploring how far one can push Wiki technology seems a
> worthy pursuit. In the end, I think this work will then get married to the
> Nexist API (or whatever evolves along those lines) and the Wiki project
> will become one of the many agents in a mix that couples users to
> cooperative knowledge building activities and infrastructures, as would be
> an OHS.
>
> I should also point out that Nexist, the project, is about to go prime time
> as my book _XML Topic Maps_ is now at the printers. I've seen it at Amazon
> and Barnes & Noble. Nexist is one of four open source topic map-related
> projects discussed in the book.
>
> If I might expand on the quest, let me say that I think that a proper OHS
> project (make that projects) will involve creativity and evolution on
> several fronts, including:
> user interface (frontside)
> knowledge representation
> information transport
> knowledge accretion (middleware)
> search, mining, concept formation, etc
> back side support
> persistence, reliability, security, authentication, etc
>
> In my view, information transport, which couples all agents operating in an
> OHS environment, is the proper place to be looking for publishable APIs.
>
> I do not think user interface is going to be easy. First, that's because
> no two individuals on the planet are liable to necessarily be happy with
> precisely the same user experience. Doug's call for user control of view is
> of great importance here, and I would add navigation and other factors into
> that. Second, that's because the range of use cases an OHS might need to
> support could mount to something enormous. Consider the idea that, as Ted
> Nelson has always said, there should be no difference between the browsing
> and the editing experiences. Early Macintosh junkees wore t-shirts that
> said "Don't Mode Me In." That one's a devil, particularly if you are using
> HTTP protocols, as my Wiki presently does. Look closely at r-objects
> Pepper and you may find evidence that this particular problem is on its way
> to being solved. There really is hope out there for useable interface
> concepts that can be adapted to an OHS. And, then there is the issue of
> just how users want to approach the Web. There's blogs, outliners, Wikis
> of all kinds, forums, email forums, and so forth. Strikes me that you
> essentially must satisfy all those needs if you're going to get sufficient
> buy in to OHS technology.
>
> From my perspective, I will not be happy with anything less than a
> full-monty emanuensis, one that can help me to keep track of all of my
> hair-brained ideas, do Web searches on key words and phrases it finds that
> I use, and can take parts of my personal knowledge base to the Web to synch
> up with others, either through a Portal, or by way of P2P. The KnownSpace
> project http://knownspace.sf.net
> is a great experiment in cooperative agents, security and a variety of
> other issues. Murray Altheim is making progress on a tool that will do a
> chunk of what I want, perhaps a big chunk. Lee Iverson is progressing on
> his backside system NODAL. That's going to help. Toss my Wiki into that
> mix and I tend to think I'm coming awfully close to having the tools that I
> want. Come to think about it, SDS represents concrete steps in the same
> direction.
>
> While on the notion of my perspective, let me point out that there are no
> doubt several (dozens?) of individuals reading/lurking/contributing on this
> list that share with me some visitation with a life-threatening disease. In
> my case, the Leukemia is in really deep remission. I beat it by applying
> massive intellectual horsepower to the problem (all my physicians, etc),
> biotechnology, and so forth. But, realistically thinking, it's not beat.
> It's sitting there now evolving, maybe into something worse. Others on this
> list no doubt face the same "clonal evolution" as well. My strategy: get
> started using an emanuensis, team up with others, and try like hell to stay
> ahead of the game. In almost every sense of the words, I think that is
> what Doug is calling for on a much larger scale.
>
> Cheers
> Jack
>
> At 07:01 PM 6/5/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >Jack,
> >
> >Thanks for sharing progress on your system for a collective learning
> >machine (CLM), cited in your letter on May 17. As you add content to
> >links on your web site, please share examples of work product showing
> >how learning is improved through the collective model being
> >developed. Is this part of Nexist or a separate project?
> >
> >Thanks.
> >
> >Rod
> >
> >*************
> >
> >Jack Park wrote:
> > >
> > > A while back, I began to collect my thoughts. Far from complete, and, in
> > > fact, I haven't touched those pages for a while now. However, perhaps it's
> > > time to reveal them and see what might come of that.
> > >
> > > http://www.thinkalong.com/JP/cpc/
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Jack (06)