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I’m in the midst of writing and revising my thesis proposal. It deals with the ontology of tags–ontology in the sense of being and what is. While perusing the internet for information sources speaking to the notion of tags and folksonomies (collections of tags), I ran across something new in Thomas Vander Wal’s blog, Off the Top. It is a short video of the ideas embedded in the talks he’s been giving recently about social networks. In it he explores the granularity of social networks and the overlapping connections that comprise them.

Though the vid is short, I found it interesting because it speaks to my ideas and understanding of culture, which is a type of social network I suppose. I wanted to post it here and get back to a more thorough explanation of it in relation to culture.

Granular Social Network from Thomas Vander Wal on Vimeo.

Tags:cultural schemas, culture, granularity, sharing social network Comments are off for this post

One of these days I’ll get to the IA Summit. There are some slides of presentations from this year’s summit available on Slideshare. This is one that I wish were available for download, but unfortunately is not. But, I can post it here to make it easy for myself to find, and I get to share it with those who might be interested. It’s definitely hard to read on this blog, so it’s worthwhile clicking on the Slideshare link and then viewing it in full screen mode.

I not only like the title of this presentation, Linkosophy, but it focuses on some of the fundamental issues of emergent networks and communities as well the issue of imposing structure. These are some of the issues that I am most interested in in terms of ontology, semantics, and tagging. This presentation discusses some of the tagging that has emerged and its relationship with structure.

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Well, I set a date for defense of my dissertation proposal. It’ll be on June 12, 2008 at 9:00AM. I’ve got a few more weeks to refine and finish up the proposal. I want to get it to my committee members about four weeks prior.

So what’s my dissertation going to be about? The tentative title is The Ontology of Tags. It’s basically an exploration of the use of tags as representations of cultural schemas, which are the flexible and adaptable cognitive structures that comprise the conceptualizations of an ontology. I adopt a Heideggerian existentialist perspective on ontology, which is phenomenological rather than categorical.

The formal ontologies constructed for information systems today are based on a classical notion of ontology that consists of complex taxonomies comprised of categories and relationships between them. However, formal ontologies are problematic in that they simultaneously crystallize and decontextualize information, which in order to be meaningful must be adaptive in context. In trying to construct a correct taxonomical system, formal ontologies are focused on syntactic precision rather than meaningful exchange of information. It is not fair to claim that syntax is irrelevant, but the meaning we make of information is dependent upon more than its syntactic structure. The semantic content of information is dependent upon the context in which it exists. For true semantic interoperability to occur among diverse information systems, within or across domains, information must be contextualized.

The way to introduce this contextualization is through the notion of culture. Culture is a phenomenon that emerges through the interplay of intrapersonal cognitive structures (i.e., schemas) and the extrapersonal structures of the world. Culture shapes the way we conceptualize the entities and phenomena of the world of our experience. What I describe as culture, Heidegger describes as background, in which we are continually immersed as Dasein. We are always being-in-the-world. Moreover, we are always being-in-becoming, emerging into the world as it were.

My thesis is that ontologies are more properly conceptualized as cultural schemas (i.e., shared cognitive schemas) rather than taxonomical structures. Situating them as cultural schemas means that they are inherently flexible and adaptable. I believe we can create schematic or phenomenological ontologies for information systems using sets of tags and folksonomies, which can complement and supplement the formal ontologies that are developed by ontology engineers and information scientists.

So, that’s my thesis and proposal in a nutshell. Although I try to explain it as simply as I can, most people still have trouble grasping it. I consider myself very lucky to have a committee that gets it. And each brings a particular expertise to the committee that touches on the major components of my justification and research project. I’m really excited and looking forward to June 12th.

Tags:cultural schemas, culture, folksonomies, Heidegger, ontologies, ontology, semantics tags Comments are off for this post

Al Gore did another TED Talk last month. He has a new slide show where he talks about the democracy crisis as a parallel to the climate crisis. He tasks us with a generational imperative. I think it’s brilliant. And I only hope that my research can be part of the solution to both crises.

Tags:climate crisis, cultural schemas, culture, democracy generational Comments are off for this post