Curiouser and Curiouser! on research

Sharing the research we all paid for

Wed, 03 Jul 2002 22:27:24 +0100

The Chronicle of Higher Education: 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output. Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an easy-to-search online collection. [Tomalak's Realm]

» Interesting article. Here's a taster:

Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work.

Some imagine a day when every research university gives its research away through the Web, allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and information.

Institutional repositories could create an alternative to journals, fans of the archives say.

Journal publishers, meanwhile, say that such repositories are unlikely to supplant their publications.

Journals, they argue, are still the best means of distributing and preserving research.

And even some of those supporting the new archives recognize the difficulty of getting professors to change their habits.

"We've had pretty serious interest in the system from about 30 major institutions," Ms.

What: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's project to develop a superarchive, as well as software tools for creating and maintaining the repository.

The tools will be offered to other colleges that want to use them.

When: DSpace has been under development for two years.

The university is testing it this summer, and plans to make the software available free to anyone in the fall, when the university will invite all professors at MIT to contribute to its archive.

What: Free software developed at the University of Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars, departments, or universities create archives of research papers online.

An updated version was released this year.

What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out desired information.

Universities are funded out of taxation. The fruits of their research should be made available to all, for the benefit of all.

PageRank and topics

Sat, 10 Aug 2002 12:43:20 +0100

The blogging network. Here's a thought: Blogging is different from simple linking, directional or non-directional, for two reasons: firstly, whether one uses blogger and blogthis! or radio with its subscription list and blogrolls, or a personal directory, there is an inherent bias in the initial set, ie, following links is not random, rather its weighted by some initial set of sources. Haveliwala et.al. model topic specific PageRank using a basis set of topics, I wonder how one ought to characterize this bias in the case of the set of favorites, in the sense that links from favorites have a greater weight. Secondly, in blogging we have inclusion of full or part of a page or RSS item, and this can happen recursively in one of the loosely coupled conversations we see. Thus links already in the item reappear and get a larger weight. Such weights can be used to figure out authoritative sources, one would think, from the perspective of each blog.. [TIG's Corner]

» Good item (and thanks to John Robb for leading me to TIG's Corner). I'm following the Haveliwala reference to a set of papers on PageRanking algorithms. The math is way beyond me (did I really graduate math?) but hopefully I can make some sense of it all.

I have a strong interest in topics, and topic mapping as a way of structuring group knowledge. Haveliwala (a Stanford researcher) has a paper here on PageRanking mechansims that use a bias towards particular topics as a way of vectoring the PageRank toward results more relevant to those topics. Interesting stuff.

Seeds & notes

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:38:04 +0000

Improved Weblogging: Seeds and Notes.

Summary: In this entry I argue that a different position in a process of research/inquiry (thought development?) probably requires a different treatment in the weblogging, klogging process. I discuss a simple model of the thinking process and how each piece of the model might be treated differently by the weblogger. Bottom line is that Radio can be used to support such differentiation. See below for details. [Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]

» An enjoyable piece from Spike about the development and communication of ideas and how it relates to weblogs. I like the concept of seeds & notes and how they relate to socialized and unsocialized thoughts.
This is of particular interest to me now because I am trying to think of places where weblogging fits naturally into a business. It's been suggested that research (companies or departments) is a natural fit since people are already conditioned to write (seemingly a barrier to adoption so far). It also helps that people working with ideas are likely to abound with undeveloped micro-content. Weblogs are a great way to record, develop and ultimately communicate that.
Anyone working in research want to try help design and run a pilot knowledge-logging program?

3rd Gurteen Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:13:46 +0000

Spent today at David Gurteen's 3rd Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity. It was a great day and I took lots of notes and photos (to the extent that I annoyed most everyone!) Sadly Dave Snowden was not able to attend in person due to personal circumstances, however we got virtual Snowden which was still very good. Today certainly added a new layer to my thinking and i'm going to be percolating all this stuff for days and weeks to come.

Right now I'm up to my ears in a market research exercise for K-Collector so expect blogged notes & photos probably Friday.

Plus I got to meet Ian Glendinning of Psybertron which was cool.

Finally, a goal for the future

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:23:32 +0100

I've been thinking a little bit about my goals for the future and that, just maybe, having a goal is a good idea. Ok so let's say for the sake of argument that it is and that it won't hurt me to have one anyway. So what do I want to do?

I've already said that I would like to go back and further my studies in general psychology and cognitive science. I'm also interested in AI and Genetic Programming. I think there is a good ten years worth of time spent there already.

But I think what I would like to go further than just studying and playing with new ideas and create an institute to do research in these areas. That is, the wealth that I create independently I would use to build a research organisation to work at the intersections of psychology, ai, and genetic programming.

I'm not sure what the history of such organisations are and how they ensure their long term future, I guess that's my next step in thinking this through.

But anyway, this is me starting to think of the future.

Turbulence

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:37:45 +0100

In the language of “chaos” theory, America – if not all of Western civilization – is in a state of turbulence of such intensity that efforts to restore order by recourse to traditional systems and policies will be to no avail. On the contrary, it is our insistence upon established practices that has led us to our plight; and only a fundamental, creative change in our thinking and behavior can extricate us from the destructive consequences of our prior assumptions. -- Via Butler Shafer

I started getting interested in complex systems by listening to David Snowden describe his work. The first time was almost 3 years ago to the day. I heard him again almost a year later and it reinforced his ideas and concepts.

Dave introduced me to the idea that some spaces are complex and in such spaces cause & effect is a retrospective coincidence so that the tools and techniques that used to yield results may cause unpredictable future effects. The challenge of complex spaces is that, when you're in them, they don't necessarily look any different to the knowable spaces we are comfortable with. (Dave also introduced me to the exploits of the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin for which I am very grateful).

From that point onwards I got very interested in sense-making and, given my background and my fascination for blogging, I became very interested in topics and topic maps as a tool for understanding and representing things of interest. In a sense my topic map defines my world, or at least the subset of my world I choose to make public. What has always tripped me up is how poor are the tools we have to work with. My own efforts in addressing this situation, small as they were, have stumbled and failed.

Originally my interest in these things was purely theoretical but over the last 3 years my interest in politics and the nature of the world around me has blossomed and my interests in complexity, systems, sense-making, and reasoning have seemed more practical. I have gone from being an unthinking socialist to a thinking... for want of a better word libertarian. I hesitate when I use the term because I still understand so little of the philosophical underpinnings that define it.

What I do know is that many people who hear me talk about politics and life these days appear to think I am, at best, misguided and, at worst, delusional. I'm treating that as a good sign. For people who believe they are in an ordered space where the old answers remain true then anyone who acts like they believe they are in a complex space may appear to be out-of-step or irrational. Of course I cannot utterly dismiss the possibility that I am misguided or delusional but I see no way to address that other than to keep asking questions.

Recently (although not so recently as I would like) I started studying psychology. I found it to be a fascinating subject both from the perspective of personal discovery but also as a source of tools for thinking about human problems. Social psychology has many interesting things to teach us. From a political perspective one need only consider GroupThink and then look around.

Lately I have been thinking about my future and what I would like to do, if finances and personal situation permit. I am a generalist and aspire to be a PolyMath. I believe that much of interest lies at the interstices of the sciences and arts. I have expressed an interest in doing research and am looking for the right opportunity.

In the meantime I continue to self-educate as best I can. Right now I am honing up my logical argument skills and beginning to read about the very interesting area of Systems Theory. Systems Theory seems to be the ultimate polymath science that seeks always to unify, it's exciting.

The goal of all this effort, like most of my goal, is not yet directed to any specific purpose (not even a political one) but to providing myself, and hopefully others, with better tools to master life. In Gregory Benfords fantastic novels about human future (e.g. Great Sky River) he describes how humans have an enhanced sensorium and access to the aspects of the wisdom of their dead.

I see the shearing forces that act on our society, like the evolution of technology outstripping the pace of social change, and the increasing uncertainty and turbulence we face and cannot but believe that we need new and better tools if we are to survive. Right now I believe that my lifes work is in researching, developing, and using such tools.

Phew... This post went somwhere other than I where I was expecting and, despite being something of a ramble, wanted to be written. I think that reflects my growing uncertainties about my present and my future: my own personal turbulence.