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Mapping the Territory for a Knowledge-Based System

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Computational Collective Intelligence (ICCCI 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10448))

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Abstract

Although many powerful applications are able to locate vast amounts of digital information, effective tools for selecting, structuring, personalizing, and making sense of the digital resources available to us are lacking. As a result, the opportunities to connect and empower knowledge workers are severely limited.

In recognizing these constraints, predictions of the ‘Next Knowledge Management (KM) Generation’ focus on nurturing personal and social settings and on utilizing existing and creating new knowledge. Levy even envisages a decentralizing KM revolution that gives more power and autonomy to individuals and self-organized groups. But, such promising scenarios have not materialized yet. It might be time to follow Pollard’s suggestion of going back to the original premise and promise of KM and start again - but this time from the bottom up by developing processes, programs, and tools to improve knowledge workers’ effectiveness and sense-making. As part of an ongoing design science research (DSR) project, this paper contributes to prior publications by synthesizing renowned computer-based methods of collective intelligence to provide a visual meta-perspective of a novel personal knowledge management (PKM) concept and prototype application. In focusing on time, space, and causality, the bottom-up approach taken, pictures the relevant personal and organizational knowledge spaces as a substitute for the intangible KM territory and provides a guiding map for knowledge workers and KM education.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 1945, Vannevar Bush (then President Truman's Scientific Research Director) imagined the ‘Memex’, a hypothetical sort of mechanized private file/desk/library-device. It is supposed to act as an enlarged intimate supplement to one’s memory, and enables an individual to store, recall, study, and share the “inherited knowledge of the ages”. It would have facilitated the addition of personal records, communications, annotations, and contributions, but, above all, the recording of non-fading trails of one’s individual “interests through the maze of materials available” - all easily accessible and sharable with the ‘Memexes’ of acquaintances [3].

  2. 2.

    Prior publications have elaborated on the scope of anticipated PKM outcomes and the appealing opportunities they provide for stakeholders engaged in the context of curation [7, 8], education [9,10,11], research [12, 13], development [14, 15], experience management [16], business and entrepreneurship [17,18,19]. Further papers assessed the PKMS potential against established criteria as a disruptive innovation [20] and as a general-purpose-technology [13] and pointed out missing capabilities and the PKM affordances in need of being conferred [21].

  3. 3.

    DSR guidelines and methodologies are meant to supplement the reactive behavioral (natural) science paradigm with the proactive design science paradigm in order to support researchers in creating innovative IT artefacts that extend human and social capabilities and meet desired outcomes [22].

  4. 4.

    In parallel to the prototype development, the PKMS design process and its methodological design elements have been validated against the systems thinking techniques of the transdiscipline of Informing Science (IS) [29] and the accepted general DSR research guidelines alluded to [22]. Rather than to justify the research paradigm of the PKMS project in an ad hoc and fragmented manner with each new paper, the dedicated articles present the IS and DSR perspectives comprehensively as evidence of their relevance, utility, rigor, and publishability.

    Their conclusions emphasize PKM’s status as a ‘wicked’ problem (ill-defined; incomplete, contradictory, changing requirements; complex interdependencies) where the information needed to understand the challenges depends upon one’s idea for solving them. Accordingly, a chain of meta-arguments addressed the central ideas of the PKMS concept (incorporating notions of complexity and Popper’s three worlds) leading to the development of a PKM framework made up of six Digital Ecosystems referring to the particular spaces of technology, extelligence. knowledge workers, institutions, society, and the ideosphere.

  5. 5.

    Memes were originally described by Dawkins [40] as units of cultural transmission or imitation (e.g. ideas, tunes, catch-phrases, skills, technologies). They are (cognitive) information-structures that evolve over time through a Darwinian process of variation, selection and transmission with their longevity being determined by their environment.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Stellenbosch Business School, PO Box 610, Bellville, 7535, South Africa

    Ulrich Schmitt

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  1. Ulrich Schmitt
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Correspondence to Ulrich Schmitt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science and Management , Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    George A. Papadopoulos

  3. Department of Information Systems, Gdynia Maritime University, Gdynia, Poland

    Piotr Jędrzejowicz

  4. Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Bogdan Trawiński

  5. Department of Information Systems, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Gottfried Vossen

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Schmitt, U. (2017). Mapping the Territory for a Knowledge-Based System. In: Nguyen, N., Papadopoulos, G., Jędrzejowicz, P., Trawiński, B., Vossen, G. (eds) Computational Collective Intelligence. ICCCI 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10448. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67074-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67074-4_1

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