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We use terms like “knowledge economy” (Peter Drucker)
, “knowledge as the fuel for innovation” (Nonaka) to emphasize the value we put
on knowledge.
Putting knowledge to work requires tools enabling the
gathering and structuring relevant information as factors driving innovation,
creativity, and invention. In practice tools and techniques are tangible
instruments of applying knowledge to solving real life challenges.
This is especially important in modern information society
“where the creation, distribution, use, integration and manipulation of information
is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity”. (see here)
Both concepts - knowledge economy and information society -
are closely related by its emphasis on increasing technological capacity to
store, analyze and compute information
as bases for data mining and discovery. In our daily practice we can see the that a direct impact of knowledge economy is measurable in the explosion of scientific and medical discoveries, technological patents and rapid research progress.
Information overload and information wealth
On a practical human scale we are facing information
overload – a condition described as “the difficulty a person can have
understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence
of too much information.” (see here)
Clay Shirky operationally defined information overload
rather as a case of filter failure in his famous talk at Web 2.0 Expo NY: "It's Not InformationOverload. It's Filter Failure"
In reality we should rejoice and take advantage of the fact that we have unprecedented in the human history access to information wealth. And to cope better with information wealth we need automated smart tools allowing us to take advantage of this unparalleled access to information.
Let’s take a practical case from our daily work. Research
tells us that we spend almost one third
of our time searching for relevant information. Of course finding relevant data is critical to
our productivity but spending one
third of our productive time on searches leaves not much time on the actual
creative usage of our findings.
On one hand we have the challenges with large data sources
that includes capture, storage, and search of relevant information and then we
need effective tools for sharing, analysis, and visualization. On the other hand all of us can benefit from knowledge mining tools allowing us to concentrate on applying knowledge instead of using our precious time on inefficient searches.
Knowledge Base –
practical tool set for discovery
In short knowledge base allows us to see how different pieces of information are inter-connected! This is the principle of how the Web works: it is all about linking web pages.However, what is even more useful is to link the topics that are discussed on those web pages with related topics on other pages. This allows are to purely look at the relationships as a family of connections without the distraction of seeing the the unrelated information. This allows us to focus on the topic in context of its relationship, correlation, influence, meaning, to other topics and contexts. Such information filters help with understanding and conveniently provide facts and insights to form our judgment and decisions.
Here is an example of Visual Knowledge Map. The topic is "Learning". The sources for generating the Visual Knowledge Map are numerous articles in Wikipedia that address the subject of learning in rich context. The Visual Knowledge Map was generated by WebSummarizer.
The Visual Knowledge Map is interactive. You can click on the + and - signs to zoom in and zoom out.
Visual Knowledge Map - Topic: Learning - Generated by WebSummarizer from Wikipedia knowledge base
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| Visual Knowledge Map - Topic: Learning - Generated by WebSummarizer from Wikipedia knowledge base |
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WebSummarizer is a powerful text mining and visualization application. It offers rapid summarization of web pages and documents, creation of personal and corporate knowledge bases.
The summarization results are presented as:
BlogSummarizer, WebSummarizer and WikiSummarizer are products of Context Discovery Inc.
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• Visual Knowledge Maps
• Tree Views (structured text)
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You can summarize text in English, French, German and Spanish.
BlogSummarizer, WebSummarizer and WikiSummarizer are products of Context Discovery Inc.
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