thinking about markup languages in the context of complex, urgent problems

Thinking about Markup

Languages in the Context of

Complex, Urgent Problems

Jack Park

Extreme Markup Languages

August 2002http://www.nexist.org/em2002/index.htm

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

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

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

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

MV: The Problem Space/Context

Personal Collective/Global

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MV: Collective/Global Context

Examples are legion

Climate

• global warming

Population

• health

• nutrition

• clean water

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

MV: Personal Context

Examples are legion

Individual

• Health

• Welfare

Family

• Health

• Welfare

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

MV: A Personal Example Part 1

January 1989

DX: Leukemia

“Current mindset”

• Bone marrow transplant

“Emerging mindset”

• Biotechnology

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002


August 2002

Outcomes

• Folks I know who then chose BMT are dead

• I chose biotechnology

– I‟m not dead yet

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002


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

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

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

MIE: Engelbart’s Capability

Infrastructure

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MIE: Engelbart’s A-B-C Context

B Activity - improves product cycle time and quality

A Activity - serves the customer

C Activity - improves improvement cycletime and quality

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

MIE: Community A-B-C

Activities

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MIE: Networked Improvement

Community

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

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

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

MV: What is Knowledge?Information relates to description, definition, or perspective (what, who, when, where).

Knowledge comprises strategy, practice, method, or approach (how).

Wisdom embodies principle, insight, moral, or archetype (why).

This page shamelessly copied (with kind permission) from:

“Knowledge Management – Emerging Perspectives”

By Gene Bellinger

http://www.outsights.com/systems/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

MV: Personal Knowledge

Contexts

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

MV: The Individual Context is

not enoughComplex, 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

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

MV: Collective Knowledge

Contexts

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

TWAP: Towards a ManifestoThe 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

TWAP: Edna St. Vincent MillayUpon 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

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

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

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

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

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

TWAP: Focus QuestionIf 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?

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TWAP: IBIS View of a Question

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

TWAP: Important Markup

Language ExamplesTopic 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

Towards Augmented Story

TellingThe NexistWiki hypothesis

WikiWiki architecture for easy page construction

Chunk stories into AddressableInformationResources

Seamless integration of IBIS Discussion for each AddressableInformationResource

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

Where to go from here?

More development along the lines of the Open Hyperdocument System.

Let‟s Roll...

20020803 ©Jack Park 2002

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

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

ColophonThis 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