Peace through Peaceful Interactions, Knowledge

Gardens, Topic Maps, and Category Theory

Jack Park jackpark@topicquests.org

Stanford⟺Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley Peace Innovation Workshop,

9 April, 2012

© 2012, TopicQuests This work is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Peirce: Categories Writ Large

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_%28Peirce%29

Firstness Possibilities

Secondness Reactions

Thirdness UX: Habits

Diagram co-created with Mary Keeler and Howard Liu

Peace: Categories Writ Large

Peace Data MAPI

Topic-centric Trust Building

UX: Peace

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dckf69cs_28c3k2t4f8

Peace Mapping Israel Palestine

Republicans Democrats

Peace

Peaceful Interaction

Shared Topic*

For category diagrams drawn this way, see, e.g. Lawvere, F.William & Stephen H. Schanuel (1997). Conceptual Mathematics: A first introduction to categories. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

*Shared topics relate to Issue-based Information Systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue-Based_Information_System

Category Theory and Topic Maps

• Goal – A global Knowledge Garden engaged in trust building for peace

• Trust built on shared topics of interest – “Let’s discover or co-create topics on which we agree, and build on that…”

• Features – Topic maps federate topics shared during peace interactions

• Represents links (trails) to other individuals with similar interests – Facilitates trust growth

– Category theory facilitates exploration of the topological space entailed by peace interactions* • Multiple ways to discover, study, and enhance relations among participants

• Conjecture – Topic maps can play roles in category theoretic knowledge

representation

*Some ideas: http://sites.google.com/site/howdowestop/topology-in-this-work

Inspiration: Robert Rosen

Environment

Metabolism

Repair Replication

Figure 10C.6. Rosen, Robert(1991). Life Itself: A Comprehensive inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Page- 251

A canonical organism expressed in category-theoretic representation

What is a Knowledge Garden?

Federated Information Resources

(Topics)

Condo (Topic

Garden)

Condo (Topic

Garden)

Condo (Topic

Garden)

Collections of participants at topic-centric portals (condos) with all information resources federated

A Knowledge Garden federates Social with Technical and Political

What’s In a Condo

• A Social Contract – Sensemaking

– Discovery

– Learning

– Peace Interactions

• User Experience – Epistemic games

– Structured conversations

– Social gardening • Tagging

• Annotating

• Connecting

Federation

Conversation Tools

Topic Map

Research Tools

Other

Games

Closing Thought: 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

Completed Representation

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Contraindicates

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

Because

Appropriate For

Compromised Host

Let’s Co-create a Garden and Federate Peace Interactions