Representation, discourse, logic and truth: Situating knowledge technology

Gaines, Brian R.

doi:10.1007/3-540-56979-0_2

“…Figure 7 shows the number of items, number of different contributors, numThese distinctions are summarized in Figure 6, and it ber of contributors with five or more mailings, and the and often acts as a team, whereas it has only intensional awareness of the types of background of other members group of authors who account for 50% of the total mailings to the list for the conceptual graphs list server on the list. There are strategies which allow facilitators to ensure that those posting discussion items have the (Gaines, 1993b). This list, commenced in August 1989, serves a community of some 220 researchers concerned satisfaction of seeing responses, yet attempt to reduce the dominance of the facilitators, for example by deliberately with knowledge representation based on Sowa's (1984) work, and Sowa was himself a major contributor during introducing a delay of a few days in their own responses to encourage others to respond instead of them.…”

Section: World Wide Webmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The community structure of discourse through list servers may be studied through statistical analysis of the server archives, and shows that a small group of members generally dominate the discourse. Figure 7 shows the number of items, number of different contributors, number of contributors with 5 or more mailings, and the group of authors who account for 50% of the total mailings to the list for the conceptual graphs list server (Gaines, 1993b). This list commenced in August 1989 serves a community of some 220 researchers concerned with knowledge representation based on Sowa's (1984) work, and Sowa was himself a major contributor during its formative years.…”

Section: Teammentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the human factors of scholarly communities supported through the Internet and World Wide Web

Gaines

¹

,

Chen

²

,

Shaw

³

1997

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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The Internet (the net) and World Wide Web (the web) have grown rapidly in the past decade and have come to play a major role in supporting discourse and publication in scholarly communities. The development and application of new services has been very rapid with little central planning, and, despite the widespread use, there is little information as yet on the human factors of the use of the net and web. In particular, models of the human factors of individuals interacting with workstations have to be extended to take into account the essential social aspects of computer-mediated discourse and publication. This article provides a framework for analyzing the utility, usability and likeability of net and web services, and illustrates its application to significant aspects of supporting scholarly communities. The utility of the net and web are measured in terms of the growth of usage, and the different services involved are distinguished in terms of their specific utilities. A layered protocol model is used to model discourse through the net, and is extended to encompass interaction in communities. An operational criterion for distinguishing different communities is defined in terms of the types of awareness that resource providers and users have of one another. A temporal model of discourse processes is developed that enables the spectrum of services ranging from real-time discourse to long-term publication to be analyzed in a unified framework. The dimensions of awareness and time are used to characterize and compare the full range of net services, and model their unification through the next generation of web browsers.

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“…As mentioned by Gaines [2], conceptual graphs can be considered as a basis for an operational knowledge science and technology encompassing natural language, formal language, visual language, and a range of reasoning processes that may be based on them. As will be shown in this paper, conceptual graphs consist in a convivial graphical representation of logic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Graphs and First Order Logic

Amati¹,

Ounis²

2000

The Computer Journal

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We study Sowa's conceptual graphs (CGs) with both existential and universal quantifiers. We explore in detail the existential fragment. We extend and modify Sowa's original graph derivation system with new rules and prove the soundness and completeness theorem with respect to Sowa's standard interpretation of CGs into first order logic (FOL). The proof is obtained by reducing the graph derivation to a question-answering problem. The graph derivation can be equivalently obtained by querying a Definite Horn Clauses program by a conjunction of positive atoms. Moreover, the proof provides an algorithm for graph derivation in a pure proof-theoretic fashion, namely by means of a slight enhancement of the standard PROLOG interpreter. The graph derivation can be rebuilt step-by-step and constructively from the resolution-based proof. We provide a notion of CGs in normal form (the table of the conceptual graph) and show that the PROLOG interpreter also gives a projection algorithm between normal CGs. The normal forms are obtained by extending the FOL language by witnesses (new constants) and extending the graph derivation system. By applying iteratively a set of rules the reduction process terminates with the normal form of a conceptual graph. We also show that graph derivation can be reduced to a question-answering problem in propositional datalog for a subclass of simple CGs. The embedding into propositional datalog makes the complexity of the derivation polynomial.

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Modeling the human factors of scholarly communities supported through the Internet and World Wide Web

Gaines¹,

Chen²,

Shaw³

1997

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Internet (the net) and World Wide Web (the web) have grown rapidly in the past decade and have come to play a major role in supporting discourse and publication in scholarly communities. The development and application of new services has been very rapid with little central planning, and, despite the widespread use, there is little information as yet on the human factors of the use of the net and web. In particular, models of the human factors of individuals interacting with workstations have to be extended to take into account the essential social aspects of computer-mediated discourse and publication. This article provides a framework for analyzing the utility, usability and likeability of net and web services, and illustrates its application to significant aspects of supporting scholarly communities. The utility of the net and web are measured in terms of the growth of usage, and the different services involved are distinguished in terms of their specific utilities. A layered protocol model is used to model discourse through the net, and is extended to encompass interaction in communities. An operational criterion for distinguishing different communities is defined in terms of the types of awareness that resource providers and users have of one another. A temporal model of discourse processes is developed that enables the spectrum of services ranging from real-time discourse to long-term publication to be analyzed in a unified framework. The dimensions of awareness and time are used to characterize and compare the full range of net services, and model their unification through the next generation of web browsers.

show abstract

Representation, discourse, logic and truth: Situating knowledge technology

Cited by 5 publications

References 55 publications

Modeling the human factors of scholarly communities supported through the Internet and World Wide Web

Modeling the human factors of scholarly communities supported through the Internet and World Wide Web

Conceptual Graphs and First Order Logic

Modeling the human factors of scholarly communities supported through the Internet and World Wide Web

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