blog: KIDMM '08

Now the MSc module has run this year for the first time since starting on this list, I can add the file of my response:

KIDMM '08

The placing of this file in its folder is an accident.

The last opened piece of post, the papers of the Virgil Society, is an accident.

What I have done today, in relation with the module, is an accident, the meeting of the Regional Council of my union, UCU, and a visit to Fordwich, is an accident.

That is enough of accident, for I want to bring this to closure.

Everything must have a closure, as it must have a beginning.

0. Prolegomena

Before the module, I constructed a gallery of recent work in progress, as exemplar of what I would be dealing with. The material has been assembled over the past couple of weeks, involving some hours, was then pulled together, involving about an hour, put on the walls, another two hours over two days, and then taken down, an hour. Photographs were taken and assembled into a video, and put on YouTube before my sessions of the module started.

This note is to explain my intervention logic, overall objective, (logical frameworks), but not necessarily in that order.

This module in knowledge management is undertaken within a Faculty of CISM and you are taking it as an option within a pathway.

How does the pathway shape both the knowledge and the method, and so too the Faculty?

And this brings us to the first matter: is the construction of the module and its name a response to a market pressure or desire?

If you are doing software engineering and wish to communicate with a community of practice of sftwarre engineering, how will you discuss knowledge management?

Is the concept knowledge management appropriate only to one small component of human experience, or is it generalisable? Is it a matter of business, of science, of engineering (BSE), is scientific knowledge and its management different from business, or would scientific knowledge not conceive of management? What then of arts, and humanities, and CISM?

Then there is the matter of what constitutes whether knowledge, in its elementary form, might have some unit of measurement? What are its dimensions?

And finally, whether something is true, right, good, and beautiful? What is to be called the thing which brings dispute and error? So that you must accept change.

How do you know you are right?

That is enough for a Sunday morning, for we must make a beginning.

1. Gallery

1.1 Broadband dongle

1.2 V&A, Stained glass

1.3 National Trust, Osterley

1.4 Information Research

1.5 Loveless

1.5.1 Sparks

1.5.2 St, TBL

1.5.3 .net

1.5.4 Web Design

1.5.6 Paper 1 Holsim

1.5.7 Paper 2 Ontologies

1.5.8 Lovelace

1.6 FRISCO

1.61 Marburg, 1998

1.6.2 BCS

1.6.3 RAE

1.6.4 UKAIS

1.6.5 KU

1.6.6 Stamper

1.7 Modern Railways

1.7.1 Bowker

1.7.2 Kent

1.8 Enyclopedia Britannica

1.9 Sterling Euro

1.10 River

2. Talkies

2.1 Picture,

2.1.1 Parthenon,

2.1.2 Subject, object

2.1.3 Groups

2.1.4 Neo-Classi-CISM

2.1.5 British Museum

2.1.6 Athenian rights

2.2 KIDMM

Knowledge, information, data, documents, records, content, metadata

grep, search

Google, wikipedia, wiki, Facebook, Flickr, Wetpaint, blogger,

2.3 TALIS

2.3.1 Users, victims

knowledge management :: management knowledge

Walter Benjamin:: Benjamin, Walter.

2.3.2 Librarians

2.3.3 Software engineers

2.3.4 Record architects metadata

2.3.5 Competition, co-operation, markets, standards, Z39.50, Dublin Core

2.4. Plato's pals

2.4.1 Structured text

2.4.2 Names, places, times, concepts

2.4.3 Athenian democracy

2.4.4 Indexes, bibliographies, Library of Congress records, Subject headings, class numbers,

2.5. Ontologies, semantics, metadata, taxonomies, patterns and thesauruses

2.6. Seven types of semantics

2.6.1 Names

Herculs, Herakles, Alcibiades, Socrates, Greece, Hellas, Athens

STEPS

2.6.2 Concepts

Choice, Athenian democracy

Upper Case, lower case

2.6.3 Reference, citation, Index

Hunter, Richard L.

(Record management, document management)

2.6.4 Case

The Choice of Hercules, Plato's Pals

STEPS

(Project management, content management)

2.6.5 Collection, information

JSTOR, ULRLS, KUIR, Facebook, wikipedia

2.6.6 Subject, discipline

phKO, phArt

2.6.7 Totality, self, Uiversity, Method

2.7. Cases, methods, purposes, values, contents, concepts, contexts, constructs.

2.8 Faceted classification and numbering notation - Dewey/ Encyclopedia Britannica

X. Concepts

KIDMM

Words, sentences, paragraphs, documents, records, collections, records

Self, totality, and levels of analysis

Here, now, this

True, right, good

Dialectic

Progress

Visualisation

Social, organisational being, personal constructions

Commodity fetishism

Bob's activity reports

Chris' crickets

Ennui

Punktum

Y. Evidence

This is a return to my method and what constitutes experience.

When we have done something, what is the next experience which constitutes evidence for or against? We have authority, revelation, sensation, experiment as evidence. In order to undertake the design exercise, we need a case on which to elaborate. I took the twenty four hours after the module, and noted events which might raise opportunities.

Middleton, OAG, Bradshaw

UCU meeting

Role profiles

Palestinian tour

Gagosian Gallery

History Today

Iranian

1968 and all that

Newspapers online

Jarman

There has been an exhibition at the Serpentine, and a film showing at Tate Britain of some of Derek Jarman's work. In one, I saw the link with Plato's Symposium, but that wouldn't have been apparent from the documentation, it was my knowledge. Now I have one pice to add. But being Tate, we have to add BP. I'm also reminded of metaphor and allegory, perhaps moreso in the visual arts? But from the film came a good case of one of the points of argument, about how you set the scene, how you move from the out to the in, and the in to the out, the dialectic I called at one moment. Film also shows how you introduce the person. But what is the equivalent of the paragraph?

J.Doc, KO

Z. Project management

Collecting the material for the gallery took parts of a couple of weeks before the module. I had done the Information Systems Strategies module shortly before but was doing new stuff for this. The broadband dongle took part of a Sunday walking around Kingston, once I had noticed what was happening. The V&A stained glass needd a sunny afternoon at the right time, but I had found the material and the captions before. Osterley is part of a longer campaign on the National Trust but needed two visits, first when i discovered the value and then to take the pictures. The market money stories popped up during one railway journey of the papers lying in a railway train. The Loveless popped out of the combination of a web site, a magazine, and a meeting of the UKAIS in Bournmouth. Modern Railways and the Economist the consequence of that railway journey. The River is a production within Kingston University. FIRCO the consequence of attending the UKAIS. But also of Loveless.

It took me about an hour to sort through all the material whcih I had assembled in a number of by now scruffy plastic bags, and sort and order into the concepts classes and categories and attach the labels. This is a process I find most exhilarating as it is here an now that the broad and general ideas come into being. before I do this, I do not know what is going to happen. The gallery is the outcome, the consequence,l and is not present before.

It then took me about an hour on two successive occasions to mount the material.

It took about an hour to photograph, convert into Keynote then into Quicktime and put up onto YouTube.

Afterwards, it took about an hour to dismount the material and assemble with the stuff which had not been mounted into categories. I now have to mark up the text material, photograph, then try to work on how to assemble the photographs and this text file into a narrative. This last piece has not yet been done.

This text file will go on Wetpain, in IS2KO.

You might reasonably ask, if the material will be on YouTube, Wetpaint, Facebook and so forth, why should anyone pay to do the module? In order to give scope for thta discussion, the YouTube has been so constructed that unless you have done the module and seen the material, it is unlikely to make any sense. As it exists it will serve only as a momento.

The next outing is my seminar on 7th May at 13.00 in the Sopwith Building, entitled, And let there be light. This one will be different.