Knowledge Federation as Hypermedia Discourse

The motivation behind the concept of Knowledge Federation resonates closely with the orientation of the Hypermedia Discourse project and the Knowledge Cartography focus of a forthcoming book. We are concerned with the co-evolution of new tools and practices for “bringing together” ideas, sharing the KF orientation that meaning is always contextualised, that truth is often contested, and that social processes are central to the task of meaning-making in non-trivial domains. We try to add a sharper focus to what is meant by “social processes” by focusing specifically on the form of discourse by which problems are framed, and meaning is constructed in teams of analysts, e.g. deliberation over alternatives, dialogue seeking common ground, or rational debate and argumentation. Our work thus draws on the conceptual foundations offered by fields such as argumentation, cognitive coherence relations and organisational sensemaking. Hypermedia points to the engineering and aesthetics of managing webs of meaningful connections as visualizable networks of claims, issues, potential solutions, evidence, and so forth. One of our Hypermedia Discourse tools is Compendium which has an established user community whom we support online and with an annual workshop, and around which has developed a relatively well developed set of practices for effective use in sensemaking. A recently launched tool is Cohere which is a Web 2.0 platform for making connections between ideas, including argumentation. We are designing Cohere to be as open as possible, interoperable and extensible via REST services and web feeds. These tools are finding application in a wide ranging contexts, with sensemaking around climate change being a particular focus of our current efforts. The remainder of this paper introduces KF participants to our orientation to our shared concerns. It opens with a recent keynote address which motivated the concept of Hypermedia Discourse, followed by a more detailed description of the rationale behind the design of the Cohere web application. 1 Hypermedia Discourse project: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/hyperdiscourse 2 Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. (Eds.) Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. Springer: Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series (2008, in press). http://kmi.open.ac.uk/books/knowledge-cartography 3 Compendium Institute: http://CompendiumInstitute.org 4 Conklin, J. (2006) Dialogue Mapping. Wiley: http://cognexus.org/dm_book.htm 5 Cohere: http://cohereweb.net 6 ESSENCE: http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/essence 7 Buckingham Shum, S. (2007). Hypermedia Discourse: Contesting Networks of Ideas and Arguments. Keynote Address, 15th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Sheffield, July 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 4604/2007, pp.29-44. Springer: Berlin. http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/hyperdiscourse/docs/SBS.ICCS2007.pdf 8 Buckingham Shum, S. (2008). Cohere: Towards Web 2.0 Argumentation. 2nd International Conference on Computational Models of Argument, 28-30 May 2008, Toulouse. IOS Press: Amsterdam. http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/osc/docs/Cohere.COMMA2008.pdf U. Priss, S. Polovina, and R. Hill (Eds.): ICCS 2007, LNAI 4604, pp. 29–44, 2007. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007 Hypermedia Discourse: Contesting Networks of Ideas and Arguments Simon Buckingham Shum Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK www.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs Abstract. This invited contribution motivates the Hypermedia Discourse This invited contribution motivates the Hypermedia Discourse research programme, investigating the reading, writing and contesting of ideas as hypermedia networks grounded in discourse schemes. We are striving for cognitively and computationally tractable conceptual structures: fluid enough to serve as augmentations to group working memory, yet structured enough to support long term memory. I will describe how such networks can be (i) mapped by multiple analysts to visualize and interrogate the claims and arguments in a literature, and (ii) mapped in real time to manage a team's information sources, competing interpretations, arguments and decisions, particularly in timepressured scenarios where harnessing collective intelligence is a priority. Given the current geo-political and environmental context, the growth in distributed teamwork, and the need for multidisciplinary approaches to wicked problems, there has never been a greater need for sensemaking tools to help diverse stakeholders build common ground.