Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

"I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects.
 
This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”.
 
I will show how we can use this “metadata” to find key persons involved in terrorist groups operating within the Colonies at the present time. I shall also endeavour to show how these methods work in what might be called a relational manner." 

Google Knowledge Map

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html

AI in 13-th Century

Read about his Ars Magna book/tool for generating new knowledge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull

http://lullianarts.net/Ars-Magna/ars-magna.htm

Desktop Ontology Management

The Sentient Suite of software integrates data, applications, databases, and instruments into one secure and compliant interoperable environment. The Sentient Knowledge Explorer module is a desktop application for ontology management, semantic data integration and knowledge visualisation.

It includes a proprietary RDF-based Knowledge Base, tools for Cross-Ontology Mapping and for mapping of data to ontologies, SPARQL Query, an integrated Thesaurus Manager for data classes and relationships and other features, such as network complexity reduction tools and the ability to handle and merge data from different semantic standards from files or directly via URIs into a common ontology.

Check it out @ http://www.io-informatics.com/

SparkIP

The online company, founded in October 2007, has launched a Beta version of an intellectual property network that presents information on some 3.5 million patents and 3,800 licensable technologies. These are displayed graphically in “SparkClusters,” akin to subway maps of connected areas of research with hubs and interchanges.

The company’s dataset includes information from the United States Patent Office (USPTO) dating back to the 1960s.

I like the way it displays the information using Web technologies and enables navigation among "similar ideas".

Check it out @ http://www.sparkip.com/#1%3B0

2 From IEEE Intelligent Systems

Two articles from the IEEE Intelligent Systems:

On Social Computing @ http://www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_intelligent/intelligent/homepage/2007/X507/x5058.pdf

And on the semantic web services @ http://www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_intelligent/intelligent/homepage/2007/X507/x5012.pdf

Visualization News

First an interesting new book by Leland Wilkinson called "The Grammar of Graphics".

And 3 visulaization software tools:

1. DyNet - Useful for analyzing and mining of heterogeneous knowledge bases.
2. nVIZn - Useful for analytical graphics.
3. RadViz - A graphics tool that lays out teh data around a dcircle using color.

Saint Isidore of Seville & Semantic Networks

Saint Isidore of Seville was the first Christian writer to compile for his co-coreligionists a summa of universal knowledge, in the form of his most important work, the Etymologiae with 448 chapters in 20 volumes.

The text was structured on the principle that the meaning of everything could be traced to the source of its name. These etymologies took the form of a series of "trees" (semantic networks in our contemporary parlance), rather like modern "branched learning" techniques, whereby from one one source, or word, the reader could follow the various extensions of what the root word implied, through all its "factual" meanings.

Visualizing the Semantic Web

EXHIBIT is a tool for visualizing semantic data. It does not require any back-end databases (relational or RDF triple-store) and enables anyone to render RDF data using HTML and a Web browser.

EXHIBIT is developed as part of the Simile Project and uses JavaScript.

A companion tool, BABEL converts your data (including spreadsheet files) into authentic RDF.

There is also an effort to develop visualization standards called Fresnel (named after Augustin-Jean Fresnel) @ http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/fsl/.

HipBone Tools and HipBone Analytics

Charles Cameron has come up with a set of tools and techniques for mapping of concepts and knowledge presentation. Learn more @

http://home.earthlink.net/~hipbone/

and

http://www.beadgaming.com/Project.html

and

http://www.beadgaming.com/hipdocs/02mapping.pdf

and

http://www.beadgaming.com/hipdocs/07analytics.pdf

and

http://www.beadgaming.com/hipdocs/08Hawali.pdf


Although he seems to be mostly interested in conflict resolution, I am struck by his approach that invokes the "Glass Bead Game" by Hermann Hesse.

Science Knowledge Map

This is a map of relationships among scientific paradigms by sorting 80,000 published scientific papers into 776 scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by author of other papers.

Find it @ http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/uploads/scimaplarge.jpg

Links (curved black lines) were made between the paradigms that shared papers, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms nearer one another when a physical simulation forced every paradigm to repel every other; thus the layout derives directly from the data.

Larger paradigms have more papers; node proximity and darker links indicate how many papers are shared between two paradigms. Flowing labels list common words unique to each paradigm, large labels general areas of scientific inquiry.

Information Esthetics, an organization founded by map co-creator W. Bradford Paley, is giving away 25" x 24" prints of the Map of Science. Visit the Information Esthetics site to order a free print. (Shipping and handling are not included.)


I should think that our conceptual world is something like this but on steroids.