The document discusses the role of topic maps in online community development, emphasizing their importance in organizing knowledge and supporting networked improvement communities as envisioned by Douglas Engelbart. It explores how augmented storytelling and effective communication through these maps can foster deeper understanding and collaboration. Furthermore, it advocates for the creation of a new language for learning that transcends traditional educational boundaries to cultivate a global learning community.

1. Topic Maps, Douglas
Engelbart, and Everything
Jack Park
GivingSpace Meeting
September, 2002
© Jack Park, 2002 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

2. Abstract
We look at Topic Maps in the context online
community development. The talk intends to
develop a context based on the evolution of
tools capable of supporting and augmenting
what Douglas Engelbart calls the Capabilities
Infrastructure of Networked Improvement
Communities.
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

3. Plan
Motivational Stuff
Context, Scary stuff, etc…
Introduction to Topic Maps
Introduction to Douglas Engelbart
Augmented Story Telling
Towards an Architecture for Augmented
Story Telling
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

4. 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
20020915 ©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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

6. About Topic Maps
Topic Maps
Are like the index of a book
Reside outside of the information resource
(book, documents)
Facilitate the construction of a relational
knowledge base about information
resources
Facilitate indexing into information
resources
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

7. Elements of a Topic Map: Topic
A Topic is a container for information
that is related to a Subject
One Topic per Subject
Information related to a Topic includes
Names
Occurrences
Roles played in Associations
• Topics associated with other Topics
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

8. Elements of a Topic Map:
Associations
Associations express relationships
between Topics.
Associations are typed
instanceOf (Topics)
Associations point to members (Topics)
Members can have roles (Topics)
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

9. Elements of a Topic Map:
Occurrences
Occurrences point to specific objects in
information resources (documents)
Occurrences can be typed
instanceOf (Topics)
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

10. Architecture of a Topic Map
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

11. Segue numero uno
How do Topic Maps relate to Douglas
Engelbart?
Roles they play in organizing his
Networked Improvement Communities
Roles they play in story-telling activities
within those (and other) communities
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

12. Engelbart’s Capability
Infrastructure
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

13. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

14. Community A-B-C Activities
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

15. Networked Improvement
Community
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

16. Interlude: Knowledge and
Augmentation
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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

17. 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).
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

18. Gowan’s Knowledge V –Building
Knowledge
After: Joseph D. Novak.
“The Pursuit of a Dream: Education Can be Improved”
In: [Mintzes, et al. 1998]
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

19. Segue numero dos
We know a bit about Topic Maps
We know a bit about Improvement
Communities
We have heard of a DKR
We know a bit about Knowledge
Let‟s look at a practical knowledge
activity:
Story telling
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

20. “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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

21. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

22. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

23. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

24. 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!
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

25. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

26. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

27. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

28. 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?
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

29. Two Story Spaces are Needed*
Space where stories are told
Primarily, statements of facts,
observations, beliefs, “what I think”
Space where dialog about the story
occurs
Arguments, additional findings
Seamless integration between the two
hyperlinks
*[Bonk, 1998, p 58]
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

30. IBIS View of a Question
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

31. Towards an Architecture
User Interface & Topic Maps
Knowledge Structures
Documents
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

32. 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/
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

33. Towards Augmented Story
Telling
A working hypothesis
Chunk stories into
AddressableInformationResources
• Sentences, paragraphs, etc.
Seamless integration of IBIS Discussion for
each AddressableInformationResource
• Automatically generated link, ready to use
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

34. An Augmented Story Architecture
IBIS
Discussion
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

35. Where to go from here?
More development along the lines of
the Open Hyperdocument System.
Let‟s Roll...
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

36. References
[Alexander, 1977] Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, 1977. A
Pattern Language, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
[Bonk, 1998] Bonk, Curtis Jay, and Kira S. King (Editors), 1998. Electronic Collaborators:
Learner-Centered Technologies for Literacy, Apprenticeship, and Discourse, Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
[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.
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

37. 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.
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002

38. 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
20020915 ©Jack Park 2002