Keynote talk given at Extreme Markup Languages, Montreal, 2002

1. Thinking about Markup
Languages in the Context of
Complex, Urgent Problems
Jack Park
Extreme Markup Languages
August 2002
http://www.nexist.org/em2002/index.htm

2. Abstract
We look at markup languages in the context of
complex, urgent problems facing humanity. The talk
intends to develop a context in which the evolution of
markup languages is seen as crucial to the evolution
of tools capable of supporting and augmenting what
Douglas Engelbart calls the Capabilities Infrastructure
of Networked Improvement Communities. If time
permits, a demonstration of an engineering prototype
of a system aimed in that direction will take place.
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

3. Reality Check
“I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to
realise, neither do you!
You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.
You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead
stream.
You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct.
And you can't bring back forests that once grew where
there is now desert.
If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!”
– Severn Suzuki, age 12, in a talk presented to the Earth Summit in Brazil, 1992
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

4. Plan
My Views (MV)
My Interpretation of Douglas Engelbart‟s
Views (MIE)
My Views (again) (MV)
The World According to Park (TWAP)
Towards an implementation
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

5. Motivation
“…what we know and need today may
be insufficient to solve tomorrow's
problems” –W3C[http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/]
“…We shall require a substantially new
manner of thinking if mankind is to
survive.” –Albert Einstein
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

6. MV: The Problem Space/Context
Personal Collective/Global
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

7. MV: Collective/Global Context
Examples are legion
Climate
• global warming
Population
• health
• nutrition
• clean water
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

8. MV: Personal Context
Examples are legion
Individual
• Health
• Welfare
Family
• Health
• Welfare
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

9. MV: A Personal Example Part 1
January 1989
DX: Leukemia
“Current mindset”
• Bone marrow transplant
“Emerging mindset”
• Biotechnology
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

10. MV: A Personal Example Part 2
August 2002
Outcomes
• Folks I know who then chose BMT are dead
• I chose biotechnology
– I‟m not dead yet
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

11. MV: A Personal Example Part 3
Analyzing those outcomes
Recall
• “what we know and need today may be
insufficient to solve tomorrow's problems”
• BMT was (then) the therapy of choice
• Interferon (Immune Response Enhancement)
was an emerging therapy
Realize
• Research uncovered dots which got connected
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

12. MV: My Personal View
Observations
Connecting dots can be very rewarding
Finding dots to connect in the first place is
an enormous chore
Claim
Evolving infrastructures which enhance
human abilities in finding and connecting
dots is a profoundly important goal.
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

13. MV: Expanding on my Claim
My claim motivates the evolution of a
“Let‟s Find and Connect The Dots
Together” computational infrastructure.
I believe that my claim is, itself, an
interpretation of Douglas Engelbart‟s
Collective IQ and Capabilities
Infrastructure
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

14. MIE: Engelbart’s Capability
Infrastructure
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

15. MIE: Engelbart’s A-B-C Context
A Activity - serves
the customer
B Activity - improves
product cycle time
and quality
C Activity - improves
improvement cycle
time and quality
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

16. MIE: Community A-B-C
Activities
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

17. MIE: Networked Improvement
Community
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

18. MV: My Views Again
“The only sustainable advantage an
organism can have is the ability to learn
faster than its competitors”
– http://smile.jcon.org/soft/ba/gen2/TechnologyGrid.html
How do you deal with the realization
that our competitor is us ?
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

19. MV: Maturana & Verala
“What biology shows us is that the uniqueness of
being human lies exclusively in a social structural
coupling that occurs through languaging, generating
the regularities proper to the human social
dynamics, for example, individual identity and self-
consciousness, and
the recursive social human dynamics that entails a
reflection enabling us to see that as human beings
we have only the world which we create with
others – whether we like them or not.”
–[Maturana & Verala, 1987, p. 246]
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

20. MV: Towards an Implementation
Capabilities Infrastructures
Depend on Individual Capabilities
• can be augmented with collaboration tools
Require Facilitation
• can be augmented with collaboration tools
Issues behind augmentation?
• a look at the knowledge context
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

21. MV: What is Knowledge?
Information relates to
description, definition,
or perspective (what,
who, when, where).
Knowledge comprises
strategy, practice,
method, or approach
(how).
This page shamelessly copied (with kind permission) from:
Wisdom embodies “Knowledge Management – Emerging Perspectives”
principle, insight, moral, http://www.outsights.com/systems/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm
By Gene Bellinger
or archetype (why).
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

22. MV: Personal Knowledge
Contexts
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

23. MV: Gowan’s Knowledge V
After: Joseph D. Novak.
“The Pursuit of a Dream: Education Can be Improved”
In: [Mintzes, et al. 1998]
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

24. MV: The Individual Context is
not enough
Complex, urgent problems affect the
welfare of large populations
Complex, urgent problems call for
enhanced capabilities
Enhanced capabilities implies collective
behaviors
The Individual Context must be part
of a Collective Context
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

25. MV: Individual Processes
After: William Clancey, in “Situated Cognition:
How representations are created and given meaning”
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/clancey-publications.html
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

26. MV: Collective Knowledge
Contexts
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

27. MV: “All social change begins
with a conversation”*
“From a casual conversation between
two friends, a medical relief effort for
Vietnamese children emerged. And it all
began when „some friends and I started
talking‟ ”
Margaret J. Wheatley, “All Social Change begins with a conversation”,
The Utne Reader: Society, found on the Web at http://www.utne.com,
28 July, 2002
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

28. TWAP: Towards a Manifesto
The reason our society must create a new language for
learning communities that transcends school and classroom
walls is that the dominance, attraction, and power of the
current machine-based language of schooling is not capable
of generating the organic patterns of the global learning
community we now require. The very nature of the
language, the potency of its field, and the meaning it
constructs preempt its capacity to generate living patterns;
only a living language can create living patterns and only
living patterns can create living environments.
–Stephanie Pace Marshal, “Creating Sustainable Learning Communities for the Twenty-First Century”,
in F. Hesselbein, et al. (eds), 1997. The Organization of the Future. The Drucker Foundation.
http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_marshall.html
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

29. TWAP: Edna St. Vincent Millay
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned,
uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

30. TWAP: Towards a Point of View
From the manifesto:
“...only a living language can create living
patterns and only living patterns can create
living environments”
From Edna St. Vincent Millay:
“...but there exists no loom to weave it into
fabric”
The skill of writing is to create a context in
which other people can think. –Edwin Schlossberg
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

31. TWAP: Augmented Story Telling
rocks!
Ta daa! A Point of View
But, that‟s a lie (maybe)
We don‟t know that yet…
We must get busy and prove it…
Ok. Call it a working hypothesis and
move on!
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

32. TWAP: Why Stories?
“…stories are a powerful means to
understand what happened (the
sequence of events) and why (the
causes and effects of those events).” –
John Seely Brown[Brown, 2000] page 106
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

33. TWAP: Why Stories on the Web?
“With the proliferation of online interaction
and composing of various digital online
spaces for intercultural and global
communication, computer-mediated
communication and digital technologies have
come to play a significant role in the process
of globalization.”
–Jilliana Enteen and Radhika Gajjala, 2002.”Teaching Globalization & Intercultural
Communication: A Virtual Exchange Project,” KAIROS: 7.2, available on the Web
at http://129.118.38.138/kairos/7.2/binder.html?sectiontwo/enteen
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

34. TWAP: Why Stories on the Web?
“... emphasizing the analyses of culture and
of meaning-making processes within such
global technological environments allows the
student to understand the contextual and
situated nature of communication processes.
This sensitizes the student to such
encounters and, we hope, instills both
sensitivity and confidence.
–Jilliana Enteen and Radhika Gajjala, 2002.”Teaching Globalization & Intercultural
Communication: A Virtual Exchange Project,” KAIROS: 7.2, available on the Web
at http://129.118.38.138/kairos/7.2/binder.html?sectiontwo/enteen
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

35. TWAP: Focus Question
If we wish to create an
augmented story space, a
software system with which
users will write stories…
Then, how do we structure that
story space to serve as a
context in which other people
can think?
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

36. TWAP: IBIS View of a Question
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

37. TWAP: Towards an Architecture
User Interface & Topic Maps
Knowledge Structures
Documents
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

38. TWAP: Markup Languages
Will Markup Languages be important in
this quest?
Markup Languages will be part of that
loom to weave…into fabric.
Without a doubt: Yes!
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

39. TWAP: Important Markup
Language Examples
Topic Maps
Weaving the fabric
http://www.topicmaps.org/
Human Markup Language
Enhance fidelity of human communications
http://www.humanmarkup.org/
Philanthropic Markup Language
Move from transactions to transformations
http://www.givingspace.org/
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

40. Towards an Implementation
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

41. NexistWiki Architecture
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

42. NexistWiki Graph
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

43. What’s on a NexistWiki Page?
Addressable
Information
Resource
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

44. Towards Augmented Story
Telling
The NexistWiki hypothesis
WikiWiki architecture for easy page
construction
Chunk stories into
AddressableInformationResources
Seamless integration of IBIS Discussion for
each AddressableInformationResource
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

45. NexistWiki Story Architecture
IBIS
Discussion
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

46. A Resource Homepage
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

47. An IBIS Discussion
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

48. NexistWiki and Publishing
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

49. NexistWiki and Software Dev.
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

50. Where to go from here?
More development along the lines of
the Open Hyperdocument System.
Let‟s Roll...
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

51. References
[Alexander, 1977] Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, 1977. A
Pattern Language, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
[Brown, 2000] Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid, 2000. The Social Life of Information.
Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
[Clancey, 1997] Clancey, William J. 1997. Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and
Computer Representations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
[Engelbart, 1992] Engelbart, Douglas C. 1992. Toward High-Performance Organizations: A
Strategic Role for Groupware”. Available on the Web at
http://www.bootstrap.org/augment/AUGMENT/132811.html
[Engelbart, 2000] Engelbart, Doug, 2000. “Draft OHS-Project Plan”. Available on the Web at
http://www.bootstrap.org/augment/BI/2120.html
[Lakoff, 1999] Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, 1999. Philosophy In The Flesh: The
Embodied Mind And Its Challenge To Western Thought. New York, NW: Basic Books
[Leuf & Cunningham, 2001] Leuf, Bo, and Ward Cunningham, 2001. The Wiki Way, Boston,
MA: Addison-Wesley
[Maturana & Verala, 1987] Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Verala, 1987. The Tree
of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Boston, MA: New Science
Library.
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

52. References continued
[Mintzes, et al. 1998] Mintzes, Joel J., James H. Wandersee, and Joseph D. Novak, Editors,
1998, Teaching Science for Understanding: A Human Constructivist View. Boston, MA:
Academic Press.
[Ryan, 2001] Ryan, Marie-Laure, 2001. Narrative as Virtual Reality. Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press
[Park, 2001] Park, Jack, 2001. “Bringing Knowledge Technologies to the Classroom,” Paper
presented at Knowledge Technologies 2001, Austin Texas, March 4-2. Available on the web
at http://www.thinkalong.com/JP/ParkKT2001.pdf
[Park, 2002] Park, Jack [Editor] and Sam Hunting [Technical Editor], 2002. XML Topic
Maps. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

53. Colophon
This presentation would not exist
without:
The XTM Authoring Group
Support from Adam Cheyer and Hugo
Daley at VerticalNet
Valuable comments from Henry Van Eyken,
Mei Lin Fung, Sam Hunting, Tom
Munnecke, and Bill Leikam
Massive inspiration from Douglas Engelbart
20020803 ©Jack Park 2002