Jack Park

1. Towards An Improvement
Community Platform for Service
Innovation
A Brief Opportunities Sketch
ISSIP Conference Call
10 September, 2014
Jack Park
Software in the service of
improvement communities is a
component of Douglas Engelbart’s
Dynamic Knowledge Repository
architecture

2. Outline
• A scenario to illustrate
stigmergy and discovery
• Fast and Slow Thinking
• A multi-space model
where services abound
• Resources
Discovery consists of
seeing what everybody
has seen and thinking
what nobody has thought.
–Albert Szent-Györgyi
Stigmergy* is a
mechanism of indirect
coordination between
agents or actions, a form
of self-organization.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy

3. A Scenario—Discoveries in Disparate
Conversations?
Discovery?

4. Immune Response
Bacterial Infection
Macrophage
Free Radical
Reactive Oxygen
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bookmark page with
these tags
Annotate page with
this idea
A Scenario—1
Joe is a med student doing research:
He annotates and tags a web document

5. Antioxidant
Free Radical
Bookmark page with
these tags
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Annotate page with
this idea
A Scenario—2
Sarah lives a healthy lifestyle:
She is researching cancer
prevention; she annotates and
tags a web document

6. Ben makes a discovery
What’s this all
about?
Ben, a cancer patient,
becomes curious about
free radicals—a new
concept to him
A Scenario—3
Free Radical
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
The Free Radical tag formed a trail
that connects these annotations,
stigmergy in action

7. antioxidants
kill
free radicals
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Ben adds a new
Connection between
the two ideas
Must Avoid
A Scenario—4
Ben makes a decision Sounds like I should
not take any more
antioxidant pills!

8. Create a new set of
representations by
connecting the two
core concepts and
explaining the
connection
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Contraindicates
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bacterial Infection Antioxidants
Because
A Scenario—5
Olivia, a Medical Doctor, begins
to create new information to
better explain what Ben said.

9. ContraindicatesBacterial Infection Antioxidants
A Scenario—6
A Challenge is posed
to the primary
assertion

10. “Compromised host” as a new
concept to be represented in the
knowledge base
A Scenario—7
Structured conversation
responds to the question, an
instance of a Bohmian Dialogue*
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue

11. antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Contraindicates
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bacterial Infection Antioxidants
Because
Appropriate For
Compromised Host
A Scenario—8
Co-created resource in
the knowledge base

12. Fast and Slow Thinking
• Fast thinking
– Frontal-cortex chatter
• Ideas floating around
– Face2Face
– Chat rooms
– Twitter
• Slower thinking
– Working memory
• Ideas that stick
– Blogs
– Wikis
– Conference papers
• Slow thinking
– Long-term memory
• Ideas that need to be
» Remembered,
» Organized
» Processed in the
background
– Topic maps
Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking
Fast and Slow

13. Multi-space Framework
• Just for me
– Personal topic map
• Just for us
– Slow Thinking
• Digital Library
– Topic Map
• Public memory
• Just in case
– Fast thinking
– Slower thinking
http://knowledgegardens.wordpress.com/augmenting-cognition-a-multi-space-model/

14. Knowledge Mapping Tools
• Mindmaps
– Very simple
– Unlabeled arcs as Relations
• Concept Maps
– Simple
– Labeled arcs for Relations
• Topic Maps
– Less simple
– Topics as Relations
• Can model a relation’s
biography
• Can use relation as
argument in other relations
• Mindmap
– [A] _ [B]
• Concept Map
– [A] “cause” [B]
• Topic Map
– [A] [cause] B
• Where [cause] really
means:
– [A cause B]
• Which can be an argument:
– [X] [refutes] [A cause B]
Note: the term mindmap is frequently
used when concept map is meant,
and vice versa. “mindmap” is the
most common term for knowledge
maps.

15. Some Resources
• Mindmaps
– Tony Buzan’s original
• http://thinkbuzan.com/
– Freemind (open source)
• http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Ma
in_Page
– Mindmup (open source)
• https://www.mindmup.com/
– Docear (open source)
• http://www.docear.org/
– bubble.us
• https://bubbl.us/
• Concept Maps
– Mohiomap
• https://www.moh.io/mohiomap/welcome.php
– Compendium (open source)
• http://compendium.open.ac.uk/
– Cmap
• http://cmap.ihmc.us/
– DebateGraph
• http://debategraph.org/
• Topic Maps
– Ontopia (also open source)
• http://www.ontopia.net/
– Topincs
• http://www.topincs.com/home
– TQTopicMap (open source)
• https://github.com/KnowledgeGarden/TQTopicMap
– JSONTopicMap (open source)
• https://github.com/SolrSherlock/JSONTopicMap
– Wandora (open source)
• http://wandora.org/www/
• Other
– Truthmapping
• http://truthmapping.com/
– ClimateColab
• http://climatecolab.org/
See also:
http://ltlatnd.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/ten-popular-
concept-mapping-tools/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-
mapping_software

16. A Multi-space Framework
• Just for me
• Just for us
• Just in case
Let us co-create our future
jackpark@topicquests.org