Knowledge Cartography.
This article was first published on a site I had in June 2012. I've changed a couple of terms to reflect my thinking in 2014.
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In their book Knowledge Cartography, published by Springer in 2008, the authors, Alexandra Okada, Simon Buckingham Shum and Tony Sherborne defined Knowledge Cartography as "the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes." In the preface to Knowledge Cartography there are a number of genres discussed and Web Mapping is one of those.
In Web Mapping networks are constructed using Web- or Cloud-based tools (I have a post that discusses the difference between the two here).
Spicynodes is one and although not created online the public "brains" at TheBrain are another example of knowledge accessible through a Web browser. Cmaps and Compendium maps can be reached the same way. James Burke's K-Web promises to be an "interactive space" on the web "soon." But it looks, just to me, as though we are at the beginning of this journey into knowledge cartography. As of June 6 2012 there was no Wikipedia entry for either "knowledge mapping" or "knowledge cartography."
All of these are what I call 1st Generation systems. DebateGraph is a 2nd Generation system. Not only does it exhibit "flower and furl" behavior but the map actually moves in the Bubble views.
If it is a journey then where is the beginning? It starts where the sequence scroll, book, ebook/blog leaves off. All of these terms share a common characteristic. They are organized around time. You start reading or viewing at time 1 and finish at time 2. The key understanding to have about [egraphs] is that they are organized around space. Time may be an element but space is the foundation.
But why should we care? The answer is that we need to find answers. We need to find answers to the challenges we face as humans on a planet with finite resources, now living in the Anthropocene. We can only do that if we act fast and collectively, across national borders, if we network as people and with our resources. The best way to organize our response is with Cloud-based [egraphs] formed around community. All forms of time-dependent activity such newspaper articles, conferences, whether in person or on Skype, and books all fall onto a time-line which makes retrieval difficult and choreography of resources difficult. Space-oriented Cloud-based tools allow for movement of resources on the chessboard (which might allow the one idea that works to surface at the right time) and give us an ability to ignore time, so that ongoing, global conversations can be maintained as the time-line threads through them.
minor edits 2012-2013
updated November 2013
minor edits 2014
A further note on knowledge [and egraphs]
We already have the skill necessary to understand knowledge [egraphs]. We use that skill -- working with knowledge in space -- when we work with printed geographical maps.
It is applying that skill to our understanding of knowledge more generally which is difficult because it means we have centuries of learning to work with knowledge presented chronologically (start viewing at time 1, stop reading at time 2) to unlearn.
But, in fact, we already build knowledge [egraphs] in our mind-spaces when we work with a topic. We pluck from the stream of time knowledge as it flows past us and put it into sections of a network that we build in our heads. This is why people sometimes find knowledge maps at first overwhelming. They try to carry the whole [egraph] in their heads. The first trick is to let go of that desire and trust the [egraph]. When we open a printed geographical map of a city we do not attempt to memorize it. We simply use it to navigate to where we want to go. So with knowledge [egraphs].
The main benefit of knowledge [egraphs] is that with the requirement to build the [egraph] in our minds eliminated we can move onto a higher level of thinking -- systems thinking. The [egraphs] themselves become components of a higher order of system understanding. For more information on systems thinking please use this customized search engine I have created and search for "systems thinking": tinyurl.com/searchdso.
November 2013