Thursday, May 19, 2005
The next generation knowledge tools
Two communications from Dr Richard Ballard, Founder of
Knowledge Foundations, with foot notes
by Paul Prueitt, and links to additional comments that might be made by
BCNGroup members
[79] ß First communication
Second communication à [80]
Comment from Paul Prueitt.
The note from Richard Ballard is a wonderful one, one that exposes to me more of his theory of information, and his internal architecture.
The context of these two notes is his trip to the Washington DC area, where I live, and his meeting with several groups regarding the use of his company’s software product, Knowledge Foundations Inc’s Mark 3 knowledge base.
In posting his two communications and in making both footnotes and a few embedded comments, I expose my own feeling regarding Richard’s work and his scientific and business strategy.
The philosophical discussions will not go on here, however; because the key is deployment.
What the Roadmap proposes is a community-based synthesis of innovations based on 10 COTS products, at a low cost into a critical application area such as US Custom’s Advanced Targeting System or into a battlefield environment. Smaller systems are being (slowly) developed through partnerships between OntologyStream and other groups. This is slow work because we do not, yet, have a financial foundation that allows us to move on issues that seem to be immediate.
So there could be a comparison of
1) The integrated product suggested by the Roadmap
2) The possible future system, CoreSystem, discussed by Sandy Klausner
3) The Knowledge Foundation Inc’s Mark 3 technology
4) The Knowledge Sharing Foundation’s concept
The Knowledge Sharing Foundation concept suggests that the Mark 3 should be deployed as one tool along with other tools as part of an extension of the concept that the Roadmap outlines.
We should also say here that a Sowa VivoMind application should be available in the same “desk top” so that people can use the inference by analogy (similarity of graphs) that he talks about. Other systems, such as the poly-logics based technology advanced by Pilesystems Inc (in Germany) are also on the “BCNGroup” radar screen as being potentially valuable if the Knowledge Sharing Concept where found to be feasible.
The problem is that these two system do not have the status of SchemaLogic Inc, MITi Inc, Applied Technical Systems Inc, Recommind Inc, Acappella Software Inc, and Intellisophic Inc; as having off the shelf software and services that can be purchased by the federal government. Knowledge Foundations Inc’s status is not clear to me.
The Roadmap proposal and the concept of a Knowledge Sharing Foundation are designed as steps towards a National Project where sufficient federal and private resources are made available so that K-12 school curriculums can be developed, as well as advanced knowledge management programs, so that the public awareness of knowledge science principles can be assumed.
If this National Project were to be found viable, then the BCNGroup founding committee would propose that the individuals who have made uncompensated contributions should be identified though a process of scholarship, patent review and community-based discussions. One would expect, at this point, that these individuals would be able to write
1) Curriculum elements and be compensated for this writing
2) New patents based on a rich interaction with other innovators and scientists who collective, as a community find new funding and opportunities due to the National Project.
An expending market for knowledge system would allow compensation to be properly assigned.
This is a forward looking concept that suggest that past work would, in many cases, be the basis of future patents, and that patents can be developed and compensated for in a reasonable way, allowing individuals to benefit while not making the technology difficult to evaluate and use.
We as a Nation could then move on to the next step.