Dear Booters:
This message outlines the great news from the
Knowledge Technologies conference held in Austin
last week.
Note:
In honor of the Hooters restaurant that my conference
lodgings were close to, and the name I continue to
cherish for the project ("Bootstrap Project"),
I hereby declare you to be appropriately
christened "Booters".
Outline
-------
Major Observations
--Lee was right (as Eugene observed): Groves!
--Jack was right: Topic Maps!
--Adam was right: Agents!
Major Conclusions:
--Together, groves, topic maps, and agents define
the underpinnings for the "Semantic Web". That
prospect is real, tangible, and immediate, and
will forever change the world we live in. In
fact, that combination pretty much completely
defines the solution for the problem Doug has
spent his life on -- creating the technology that
will let mankind solve complex problems.
--There is still a lot of work to be done to make
everything play together, and to sort out the
details of the interactions with the system. But
the system, at least in principle, can now be
clearly outlined, imo.
Technology Overview
--Groves
--granular, multi-level addressing
--any structure: audio, video, any document type
--each grove is homegeneous
--one type of source data
--one addressing model
(result of the "grove plan" used
when constructing the grove)
--(the big one)
WITH GROVES, TOPIC MAPS CAN BE ADDED TO ANY
PART OF ANY DOCUMENT OR MULTIMEDIA FILE.
--Topic Maps
--"categories on steroids"
--categories = keywords + related links
--topics = categories +
--typed targets (ex: tutorial)
--related topics
--multiple, scoped names
--Agents
--persistent processes that interact
--community, personal, parasitic (symbiotic?)
--24x7 search
--Note:
A "server" can be defined as a machine that
can support, and on which you are willing
to support (within security constraints, multiple
agents. A "client" can be defined as a
machine on which only your agents are allowed
to run. [That strikes me as useful, but I
can't say why.]
Open issues
--directional links in Topic Maps
--versioning in Grove systems
Available Technologies
--Uche: Virtual Communities
--filterable, orderable, threaded discussions
--never saw the demo, but heard great things!
--GroveMinder
--Steve Newcomb, Michel B.
--Elliot Kimber's system
--hyperdocs built on groves
--adds node versioning
--SemanText
--Eric Freese.
--Treats a topic map as a semantic network.
--Adds inferencing
--VRML topic city
--Micheal Jordan and Magic Johnson were neighbors
--Venus Williams was "in the neighborhood"
--another demo I missed, that got GREAT reviews
Conversations with Jeff Conklin
--his observations & conclusions
--IBIS conversations *require* a moderator
--the process continues to fail when it is
brought online, so he now works as a consultant
to facilitate such discussions
--reawakened his dream
--thanks to Doug, I knew how powerful it is to have
one's original dream reawakened.
--so I mentioned to him the need for "reduction"
in such systems, and the need to find *some* way
to make the process work online.
--Bottom line: he wants to work with us!
Jack's amazing success:
--he knows his audience
(I would position things much differently for a
business audience, but he *clearly* knew how to
reach these people.)
--his continuing references to Douglas Englebart,
and the concept of an OHS, as he explained it,
resulted in *several* serious funding prospects,
all of whom are committed to open source
--In addition, there is also a strong liklihood
of collaboration:
--Elliot Kimber's hyperdoc system
--Eric Freese's SemanText system
Note:
I continue to prefer "Bootstrap Project" because
I know what that is. For a variety of reasons,
"OHS" is still not my preferred term. But Jack
was having a hell of a lot of success "selling"
it, whatever the heck it is.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 12 2001 - 15:19:46 PST