everything I didn't quite manage to pull off -- I'm going to hone in
on an interesting fact that dawned on me recently: for the first time
in quite a while, I have three papers kicking around in draft form.
("PlanetMath.org and the Hyperreal Dictionary Project", "Arxana", and
"Surveying the Metacommons".)
This wouldn't have been so exciting if it was not for all the
interactions that went into getting things to this point. For that,
thanks go to you!
I don't know precisely what choices I am going to have to make to
finish any of these papers off (or all of them), but it seems a decent
time to make a status report as I consider what comes next.
It is not always a good sign to have too much going on at once -- but
when the different subprojects are structuring a whole or have
substantial and interesting relationships between them, perhaps it is
a good sign.
So, I thought to describe the separate ambitions behind and spell out
possible relationships between these papers.
TENTATIVE ABSTRACTS
1. PlanetMath.org and the Hyperreal Dictionary project
This is a policy advocacy paper. I want to challenge the conventional
views on non-"free as in freedom" publishing in mathematics, and win.
An important distinction is implicit in the title: on the one hand, we
have the "institutional" PlanetMath.org, and on other, the
"non-institutional" HDM project. Mathematics is also
non-institutional, but is not project-based -- I call it an
"enterprise". The paper will argue for cooperation on the
institutional level to create enterprise-level non-institutional
enhancements. The main challenge is to show that FAIF publishing is
such an enhancement. And, if possible, to illustrate how it can feed
into other enhancements.
2. Arxana
This is a theoretical paper about data and knowledge management, with
an applied component: an implementation of "the scholium system". The
theoretical motivation is to build a fairly general model for
knowledge-bearing artifacts and knowledge use. The applied motivation
is to build hackable semantic platforms. I had started out with the
notion that this might be useful as an AI platform -- but over the
years it began to look like it would be more useful as an AI-building
platform.
3. Surveying the Metacommons
This is a social science paper about resource management.
Specifically, it surveys contemporary approaches to cooperation and
sharing and to understanding these behaviors. When is it "better" to
share than to hoard? How should we design institutions and rules to
generate the most social benefit? How do we characterize "social
benefits" in the first place? The idea of a "commons" may or may not
be important in the ultimate answers to these questions, but it is a
place to start. Specifically, we will begin with the high-level
question: what are the approaches to answering/solving/resolving the
deep questions already mentioned? We guess that these approaches will
often be "commons-based".
CONNECTIONS
(1)=>(2). The scholium system lurks in the background as we talk
about ways to run disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge
management projects.
(1)=>(3). I thought it would be a good idea to split off everything
having to do specifically with PlanetMath into its own paper, and let
the abstract idea of a metacommons roam around freely, finding
suitable material on its own. (Hence (3) is a survey paper, and (1)
is a position paper.)
(3)=>(1). Any definitive or even authoritative answers we can
generate for the deep questions asked in (3) will inform the ultimate
developments in (1).
(3)=>(2). Arxana (and any technologies that it models) is a hands-on
toolkit for studying and doing resource management. Its featureset
should adapt to whatever we learn about resource management
techniques.
(2)=>(3). We should see if we can find socio-theoretical rationale
for different kinds of programmatic knowledge/rights management
techniques.
(2)=>(1). One of the specific applications of Arxana will be an
improved community-interaction platform. Community interaction is
advanced in (1) as the main "value" inherent to the PlanetMath.org
institution.
CONCLUSIONS
The three papers are indeed closely related. Working on any one of
them to the exclusion of the others would probably be a bad idea. On
the other hand, they probably do not need to be read as a coherent
whole -- they could be published separately when they are completed.
What is required to complete them? (1) seems close to being done now,
although there is some remaining background that needs to be worked
in, and a "shepherding process" of testing and discussion to ensure
that it is as convincing as possible. (2) mainly lacks a specific
technical detail -- most likely I will need to go "into the field" to
get help finishing this detail, or else I will need to get some help
and additional focus creating a different back-end that accomplishes
the needed task (even if in a limited way); on that note, a survey
describing relationships and differences with Semantic Web efforts and
other semantic systems should be given. (3) This is probably the
least far along -- but there is presumably an algorithm for writing a
survey paper that can be followed.
Would they form a nice coherent whole? I had the notion that they
might be several chapters in a thesis -- but I think that even though
they are related, the subjects and approaches seem too scattered to
make a good thesis. Perhaps either (2) or (3) with enough work and
additional details could itself become a master thesis -- or they
could stay short.
How do they relate to other things I am working on? (2) certainly
seems the most central for me, however it does not come near to
answering all of the theory questions that define the HDM project.
Perhaps it would be a chapter in book on the HDM project. It also
relates to my more "creative" writings -- but more work would be
required to really merge these two things. Since (3) is grounded in
social and economic theories, the relationship to creative writing
might be tenuous -- but actually a lot of the initial inspiration is
the same (e.g. Korzybskian ideas about how to think well are certainly
related to resource management).
Are there co-authorship possibilities? Maybe! In some cases I may
already have someone in mind. But there's almost always the
possibility for cooperation on further papers along these lines, or
about topics in gaps I haven't talked about in this email but have
potentially blabbed about at length elsewhere. But if you're
interested in working with me on finishing any of these things, please
let me know, and we'll see! Finishing these things seems like a
priority to me for further development for HDM (e.g. I'd probably want
to finish the basic database stuff for Arxana before going on to
provide additional Multi-User feature). If there are other papers or
projects that are related but not the same, maybe we can work together
in a small writing group.
REFERENCES
(1). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/pmhdm-paper.pdf
(2). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/regression.pdf
(3). http://planetmath.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/metacommons-survey.pdf
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