2. A Personal Journey
Built airplane
Undergrad study: aero eng.
Built windmills/solar homes
Built wind/solar sensors
AI to analyze data
Collective intelligence
Knowledge gardens
It’s a waterfall life…
3. Towards a Big Data Rosetta Stone
• The term Rosetta stone has been
used idiomatically to represent a
crucial key to the process of
decryption of encoded
information, especially when a
small but representative sample
is recognized as the clue to
understanding a larger whole.*
• Let us explore that idea with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rosetta_Stone.JPG
open source socio-technological
infrastructures
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
5. Big Data Gardening
• Apply ongoing organic
(capable of generative
self-organization)
processes to large and
continually growing
datasets
– Tended from the point of
view of individuals, of
groups and topic-oriented
projects, and of globally
connected gardens in the
jungle of knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Thinker,_Rodin.jpg
6. What is a Knowledge Garden?
A Knowledge Garden fuses Social with Technical and Political
Condo Condo
(Topic (Topic
Garden) Garden)
Federated
Information
Resources
Collections of participants Condo
at topic-centric portals (Topic
(condos) with all Garden)
information resources
federated
7. What is a Condo
• A Social Contract
Federation*
– Sensemaking
• Collaboration
• Collective Intelligence
– Discovery Games
– Learning
• User Experience Topic
– Epistemic games Other Map
– Structured conversations
– Social gardening
• Tagging Research
Tools
• Annotating Conversation
• Connecting Tools
* http://www.knowledgefederation.org
8. Garden Workflow Big Picture
Encyclopedia
World of
Information Workbench
Sources
Topic Map
•Collect and curate information resources
•Transfer them to a Workbench
•Annotate, Tag, Connect ideas at the Workbench
•Create summary topics in the Encyclopedia
•Blogs, Reports, Journalism, …
•Organize Workbench resources in Topic Map
•Federate, share,…
9. Topic Maps
• A Topic Map is like a library*
– A Topic Map is indexical
• Like a card catalog
– Each topic has its own representation
• Improving on a card catalog, a topic can be identified many
different ways
– A Topic Map is relational
• Like a good road map
– Topics are connected by associations
– Topics point to their occurrences in the territory
– A Topic Map is organized
• Multiple records on the same topic are co-located in the
map
*A library without all the books: a map is not its territory
10. Why Garden?
From the perspective of
complexity theory, emergence
arises from complex systems
that create new properties
from “autonomous unities
coming together into larger,
more powerful unities”
Olen Gunnlaugson (2011). A Complexity Perspective on Presencing. Complicity, Vol 9, No 1
(2012). Online at:
http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity/article/view/9624/8561
11. A Scenario—Federating Disparate
Conversations and Discovery
Discovery?
Similar conversations can
occur across disciplines
with Big Data
12. Scenario: Meet Joe
Joe is in Medical
School studying to be a
physician
Joe is preparing for a
test on Bacterial
Infections
13. Scenario: Joe’s Gardening
Bookmark page with
these tags
Web page discovered by Joe Immune Response
Bacterial Infection
macrophages use
free radicals to Macrophage
kill bacteria
Free Radical
Reactive Oxygen
Annotate page with
this idea Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
14.
15. Scenario: Meet Sarah
Sarah lives a healthy
lifestyle
Sarah reads that
free radicals
can cause cancer
16. Scenario: Sarah’s Gardening
Bookmark page with
these tags
Web page discovered by Sarah
antioxidants Antioxidant
kill
free radicals Free Radical
Annotate page with
this idea Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
17.
18. Scenario: Meet Ben
Ben is a cancer patient
with recurring
bacterial infections
Ben visits a garden
condo to research
bacterial infections
19. Scenario: Ben’s Garden Research
Ben becomes curious
about free radicals—a Ben makes a discovery
new concept to him
Free Radical
macrophages use antioxidants
free radicals to kill
kill bacteria free radicals
The Free Radical tag has created a kind of
wormhole (tunnel) that links ideas together.
The opportunity is to recognize the importance
of those connections.
20.
21. Scenario: Ben’s Gardening
Ben has an epiphany Sounds like I should
not take any more
antioxidant pills!
macrophages use antioxidants
free radicals to Must Avoid kill
kill bacteria free radicals
Emergence:
Ben adds a new
In philosophy, systems theory, science,
Connection between
and art, emergence is the way complex
the two ideas
systems and patterns arise out of a
multiplicity of relatively simple
interactions.*
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
22. Scenario: Meet Olivia
Olivia is a Medical
Doctor interested in
immune system
subjects
23. Scenario: Olivia’s Garden Research
macrophages use antioxidants
free radicals to Must Avoid kill
kill bacteria free radicals
“Must Avoid” Need to restate this
doesn’t really information
convey a proper
sense of reality
Olivia visits the garden
24. Scenario: Olivia’s Gardening
Bacterial Infection Contraindicates Antioxidants
Because
macrophages use antioxidants
free radicals to kill
kill bacteria free radicals
Olivia gets bonus
points for justifying Create a new set of
her assertion. representations by
connecting the two
core concepts and
explaining the
connection Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
25. Scenario: Starting a Conversation
Bacterial Infection Contraindicates Antioxidants
A Challenge is posed
to Olivia’s primary
assertion
26. Scenario: The Conversation
Structured conversation
responses to the question
“Compromised host” as a new
concept to be represented in the
garden’s topic map
Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
27. Scenario: Garden Results
Co-created resource in
Compromised Host the garden
Appropriate For
Bacterial Infection Contraindicates Antioxidants
Because
macrophages use antioxidants
free radicals to kill
kill bacteria free radicals
Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
29. Use Cases for a Big Data Garden
• Resource Collection
– Federation
• bring together and organize without filters
• Resource Augmentation
– Tagging
– Annotating Condo
– Debate (Topic
• Knowledge Cartography Garden)
– Connecting resources Federated
– Map maintenance Information
– More Debate Resources
• Research Augmentation
– Crowd-sourced discovery
– Automated inferences /reasoning
– Knowledge sharing
30. A View of Big Data Computing
• Solr + Hadoop = Big Data Love*
– Article gives a hint at an approach to using off-the-
shelf open source software to support Big Data
– We consider it as a baseline for design
*(concept and image)http://architects.dzone.com/articles/solr-hadoop-big-data-love
32. TopicQuests Garden Topology
Medical Topic
Other Topic Other Topic
Add-On Agents New Condo New Condo
Garden
Gardens
New Condo Garden
Gardens
New Condo
New Condo New Condo
New Condo New Condo
New Condo New Condo
IdentiMe
API
Personal
Microblog PoliticalTopic
Other Topic Education
Other Topic
New Condo New Condo
Garden
Gardens
New Condo Topic Garden
Gardens
New Condo
New Condo New Condo
Support / R&D Know New Condo New Condo
New Condo New Condo
Read Only
Bulk User
Free Access
User Knowledge
API Federation
Server TopicQuests
KG Admin TopicQuests Non-Profit
Non-Profit
Knowledge Garden
33. A Strong Conjecture
• A Knowledge Federation’s topic map provides
a Rosetta Stone substrate
– Supports reasoning by analogy
– Big Data population studies (probabilities and
statistics) provide clues added to the map
– A well-organized map of the growing territory
provides a navigable terrain to support journeys of
discovery
34. Completed Representation
Compromised Host
Appropriate For
Bacterial Infection Contraindicates Antioxidants
Because
macrophages use Gardens and
Co-create antioxidants
free radicals to kill
kill bacteria Big Data Science
Federate free radicals
Thanks to Mark Szpakowski , Patrick Durusau , and Martin Radley for
valuable comments
