From: John J. Deneen <JJDeneen@ricochet.net>
> Jack, your applied QP theory about 'envisionment' with process rules
firing,
> etc., has an interesting correlation with a paper about "Collective Mental
Maps
> (CMM) with weighted links algorithms from our friends at the Principia
> Cybernetica Project:
>
> "Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web: algorithms to
> develop a collective mental map", Computational and Mathematical Theory of
> Organizations
> <http://pcp.lanl.gov/Papers/CollectiveWebIntelligence.pdf>
>
>
> "Collective intelligence is defined as the ability of a group to solve
more
> problems than its individual members. It is argued that the obstacles
created by
> individual cognitive limits and the difficulty of coordination can be
overcome
> by using a collective mental map (CMM). A CMM is defined as an external
memory
> with shared read/write access, that represents problem states, actions and
> preferences for actions. It can be formalized as a weighted, directed
graph. The
> creation of a network of pheromone trails by ant colonies points us to
some
> basic mechanisms of CMM development: averaging of individual preferences,
> amplification of weak links by positive feedback, and integration of
specialised
> subnetworks through division of labor. Similar mechanisms can be used to
> transform the World-Wide Web into a CMM, by supplementing it with weighted
> links. Two types of algorithms are explored: 1) the co-occurrence of links
in
> web pages or user selections can be used to compute a matrix of link
strengths,
> thus generalizing the technique of "collaborative filtering"; 2) learning
web
> rules extract information from a user's sequential path through the web in
order
> to change link strengths and create new links. The resulting weighted web
can be
> used to facilitate problem-solving by suggesting related links to the
user, or,
> more powerfully, by supporting a software agent that discovers relevant
> documents through spreading activation."
>
> <refers to http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/2154.html>
John,
This is a marvelous paper! Thanks much for pointing it out. Here is what I
get from it.
It seems to me that we construct Concept Maps (CMs) at an individual level.
This fits in with constructivist epistemology (Piaget, etc), and CMs are
directly linkable to an ontology. It also seems to me that, when you
construct Topic Maps (TMs) which are really CMs with an underlying XML
representation, you bring knowledge sharing and merging to the table. At
that point, you have moved along an imaginary continuum from *individual
behaviors* in a direction towards *collaborative behaviors*. Just imagine
applying constructivist epistemology to collective organisms rather than
individual organisms. Heyligen's paper clearly suggests an approach to
implementation of such an activity.
In the context of this thread, the collective behavior captured in weighted
links strongly suggests a means by which a concensus or collaborative
ontology can emerge. The main gotcha, however, is compute power needed to
pull this off. The paper points out that computational resources will grow
rapidly as the region of spreading activation is expanded.
I would intuit that we have a double-edged sword here. On the one hand,
expanding the range of concept activation in a weighted graph will cost
compute cycles, but, on the other hand, it may open activations that suggest
analogies or relations not otherwise articulated in the dialog. It is
considered one of the 'platinum rings' of computer science to find ways to
enhance the efficiency of such computations. Indeed, it may be that
cycle-sharing through P2P may enable some wildly exciting projects.
At the individual end of the continuum, there are the Concept Mapping
projects, as for example, Kathleen Fisher's paper at
http://public.sdsu.edu/CRMSE/Fisher_aaas2000.html. Toward the other end,
there are the collective projects such as PCP, as represented in the paper
you cite. My hunch is this:
OHS will likely (read: more easily) start by developing use cases that
lie towards the individual behaviors end
OHS will certainly evolve use cases and technology that lie towards the
collective end.
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