The Art and Science of Documentation Management

The Art and Science of Documentation Management

Graziella Tonfoni with Lakhmi Jain intellect

The Art and Science of Documentation Management

Graziella Tonfoni with Lakhmi Jain

Professor Dr. Graziella Tonfoni was born in Bologna, Italy on July 23, 1957. She attended the Liceo Classico Galvani and passed her final exams with 60/60 cum laude in 1976. She was selected among the 50 top students in Italy and got the Ettore Majorana Certificate in 1975. She got her Doctor Degree in 1980 (110/110 cum laude) at the University of Bologna, where she now teaches Computational Linguistics. Also a Visiting Professor at the George Washington University U.S., she is internationally known for her inventions in documentation management, textual theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, communications, training, and multimedia education. Dr. Tonfoni was a Visiting Professor at a number of American Universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. A winner of the Minerva award, she is the author of more than 100 publications. Professor Dr. Lakhmi Jain is a Director/Founder of the Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering System Centre in the University of South Australia. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and presented a number of Keynote addresses in International Conferences.

The Art and Science of Documentation Management

Published in Paperback in UK in 2003 by Elm Bank, an imprint of Intellect Ltd, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK Published in Paperback in USA in 2003 by Elm Bank, ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA Copyright © 2003 Intellect All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Consulting Editor: Masoud Yazdani Copy Editor: Holly Spradling

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Electronic ISBN 1-84150-875-6 / ISBN 1-84150-072-0

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne.

Dedication

To our families and friends for having understood and complied with our writing nature and writing instincts

Preface Why should we change our perceptions on documentation management in the first place? Well, because we live within such a complex information environment today and we have to cope with such overwhelming quantity of documentation that tools we have, both technological and conceptual, though still useful, are not sufficient and need therefore to be complemented by new visions and new ways of looking at information altogether. Many of the most significant changes having occurred in “thinking” or viewing information derive both as a result of newly introduced technologies, tools and theories, and out of the seeking by the human mind for a most comprehensive view and interpretation of the world we live in. If we have lived in a more constrained information environment in the past, and somehow protected by excessive quantities of data, certainly the situation has very much changed. The present information age challenges us deeply both at an individual and at a collective level; information workload is so immense to trigger new needs and new requests for different strategies, perspectives and ways to cope with day by day struggling for surviving the information workload. Pressured by various kinds of needs and requests, which may be very demanding, we may either collapse or we may evolve our capacity to transform creatively a major problem into a long lasting project meant to stay and to have a most positive impact and very positive side effects. It really all depends on our attitude and skills: if we start conceiving information as just unprocessed matter to be first analyzed and then be shaped, we may also think of ourselves as artists shaping the world of today, in meaningful ways, meant to stay for the future. By fully enjoying information, by not opposing it or resisting it, we may undergo a most significant and wonderful experience, the same complex and very rich experience based upon a combination of various skills, practice and techniques, which a vii

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sculptor may have, when struggling with hard matter such as marble, meant to become a beautiful sculpture at the end. We may also think of ourselves as painters, accurately mixing colors to create special and unique effects, knowledgeable painters though and skilled too, who need to be expert in the nature of pigments and chemical combinations. Paragraphs we “carve” with struggle and words we harmoniously “combine”, may at the end result into documents meant to stay for the future generations, to witness “who we were” and “what we did”, and “why we did it.” Those same well carved paragraphs and sentences may in the present establish understanding and create the conditions for peaceful cooperation among individuals. On the contrary, if paragraphs are not well carved, if words are not harmoniously combined, those same unverified, uncontrolled, ill-formed pieces of text may create the conditions for misunderstanding, disappointment, resistance and even war at the end. If history is made through documents, it is a fact that we build our own private and collective history on a day by day basis, writing our reports, summaries, e-mail messages, which may be little pieces of a most beautiful mosaic to be completed; on the other hand, if we allow misunderstanding to occur, those same messages, reports and summaries may just become splinters of a disruptive bomb. It is our competence and responsibility to decide what any document, which comes to us or comes from us, may or should become. Our life is based upon knowledge we are fed with and we feed with, the same care which should be applied to food and nurturing needs to be extended to information and communication for sure. If it is true that “we are the food we eat and the air we breath” it is also true that “we think through the information we are being exposed to and perform through those communicative tools we have been provided.” Major care should be given to all the most important features of the communication world we live in. Challenge and responsibility being the keywords. But… is this a real book? Books create some kind of expectations such as to find linear text accurately organized in paragraphs and chapters. Well, this book has titles and a table of contents, but those titles are more meant to introduce readers to a set of concepts illustrated through sequences of visuals and schemes, alternated with some explanation and comment, which is there too, in the form of sentences and short paragraphs, con-

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necting and harmoniously linking visuals, which constitute the prevailing part of the book anyway. So, in some ways, this book is “a visual book” resembling a lot what screenplays are for and it also presents itself as a workbook, really ready to be filled up and completed by the reader with observations, reactions, comments and more derivative thinking triggered by those same concepts, which are illustrated. This is why pages are neither dense nor completely full; they are in fact meant to leave space open for the reader to take turn, pause, think, visualize and proceed forward. Why was this book conceived and designed this way? Well, there are already plenty of good manuals describing textually and linearly what has been done in documentation, what is being done and what should be done, providing guidelines in a detailed way. No reason to add one more book to an already quite extended, rich and thoroughly thought through literature. But documentation management is not purely based upon rules, and if specific guidelines are important, they are not really enough. Managing documentation and trying to extract meaningful information, as to proceed toward consistent decision making, resides upon a whole set of quite complex skills and, above all, on a real information sensitivity. Aim of the present book is to promote such sensitivity, providing readers with a whole set of visuals and representation models, which are meant to enhance their capability of “thinking documentally” and to teach how to penetrate each single document in depth and through all of its layers, placing each single piece of information in context and analyzing it both multidimensionally and dynamically. Pages are not completely filled up as to allow readers to fill them up themselves with examples coming out of their own day by day experience. Some paragraphs are meant to be for brainstorming more than for providing immediate solutions. Sensitivity to documentation issues results from a very specific and complex competence in mastering a whole diversified set of tools. Many and complex are those aspects of communication, which do come into play. Just like a movie, which may have both very long shots and very slow ones alternating with very short and fast sequences, this book shows a real alternation of slow and fast sequences; by having been so designed, it is actually meant to help readers

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gain insight, by accompanying them throughout a set of quite diverse experiences. Some of these experiences are intentionally planned to promote rethinking and awareness about what it really means to access and use documentation consistently, as to reach the most appropriate kinds of conclusions and build knowledge correctly upon them. As pointed out before, there is already a quite extensive, valuable and very detailed literature in the field on documentation management. As author of a specific approach to the problem of envisioning documentation management altogether, Professor Tonfoni felt the need to take another route and very much a complementary one, so this is not “one more book” to add to the current literature, and it is not even quoting other manuals all that much. Though we have a lot of respect and appreciation for most of the work which had been carried on in the field, this is rather a manual and a textbook on its own, meant to lead the reader throughout a highly visual and a very absorbing experience based upon a full exposure to the main concepts and processes, which are of relevance to anyone in the field of information systems, library services and communications. This book is also complemented by other books and articles by Professor Tonfoni, which are indicated in the bibliography, it is therefore meant to lead the reader toward a unique learning experience throughout harmonious merging of different resources. Readers may want to stop and observe carefully some pages, may want to pause, think and find examples, derived from their own experience. This book is meant to support readers with some visual tools meant to refer back to their daily experiences and day by day life in the world of documentation management. Any example or experience which may be found of relevance, will therefore harmoniously complement and complete this book, which should literally “grow and expand” throughout the reading process “toward multiple directions.” Readers will therefore be asked to follow different but parallel reading paths, and will also be asked to perform some specific operations to really absorb those concepts illustrated throughout the book; it will then be most easy and natural to just continue along the lines, which have been drawn. The readers of this book are urged to come out of this reading experience as if they had got a special pair of glasses. From now on, we trust that they will be able to see

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through those glasses aspects of documentation and information they had never perceived before. ….And quoting Leonardo da Vinci… “it is only when you see that you actually know.”

Acknowledgments Professor Tonfoni wishes to acknowledge her colleagues at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. for having provided opportunities for the present work to be presented and illustrated, and particularly Chairman and Dean Lile Murphree. Thanks are also due to: •

Dean Tom Mazzuchi, and Professors Michael Stankowski and Dianne Martin, also Directors of the Cyberspace Policy Institute. Professors Julie Ryan, Richard Scotti and Christopher Heikimian have also provided professional support in setting up her talks and speeches and seminars in the Washington area.

•

Prof. Shelley Heller and Robert Lindeman for having created the opportunity for research work in textual information visualization to be illustrated and presented as part of their program.

•

Prof. Masoud Yazdani, President of Intellect, for suggesting the title of the book and making the publication of this book possible.

•

Davide Zangara, responsible for the CPP-TRS digital archives in Bologna, Italy, who patiently converted drawings into GIF images as to make the packaging of the book possible.

•

The Centro Cultural Casa de Catalunia Barcelona, Spain, for reproducing the sequence of photographs of Anton Gaudi masterpieces, which are in the present book.

Lakhmi Jain wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Berend Jan van der Zwaag to the final layout of this book.

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Contents Chapter One

page 1

Documentation management: an art and a science

Chapter Two

page 19

Documentation management through metaphors and analogies

Chapter Three

page 81

On envisioning documentation

Chapter Four

page 99

On iconizing documentation

Chapter Five

page 145

On visualizing documentation

Chapter Six

page 255

A few more exercises

Chapter Seven

page 283

Conclusions

Bibliography

page 285

Index

page 295

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1

Chapter One

Documentation Management: an Art and a Science This chapter is meant to illustrate how documentation management may be viewed and perceived both as an art and a science. Conceptual tools for rethinking of documentation are provided, which are derived out of a reformulation and adaptation of literary criticism and rhetoric. In order to be effectively used are categories here illustrated first placed within a larger framework for rethinking of the very act of producing documentation. The natural output of this new model of thinking about documentation management is meant to lead readers harmoniously into the realm of document engineering. When we think of documentation management we have to immediately consider the complexity of this area, as even the two terms assembled “documentation” on the one hand and “management” on the other hand, entail a whole set of different aspects and their respective definition is a very complex one. As we may find in the Encyclopedia Britannica, art is “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments or experiences that can be shared with others. The term may also designate one of a number of modes of expression conventionally categorized by the medium utilized or the form of the product… The term may further be employed in order to distinguish a particular object, environment, or experience as an instance of aesthetic expression, allowing us to say, for example, that drawing or tapestry is art…” On the other hand, science is “an activity or discipline concerned with theory rather than method, or requiring the systematic application of principles rather than relying on traditional rules, intuition and acquired skill.” And documentation is defined as “the process or specialty of accumulating and classifying documents and making them available to others.” Whereas management is “the application of skill and care in the manipulation, use, treatment or control of things or persons, or in the conduct of an enterprise, operation and so on.” 1

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Chapter One

Within the broader domain of documentation management, concepts, which are currently seen as opposite up to conflicting ones, may be harmoniously and effectively merged as the approach presented in this book is meant to demonstrate practically. Just like we may see happen in research in artificial intelligence, when the problem of language was considered to be of relevance to the field, then a category was found by the research community, meant to label work done in the area. The specific category, which was initially identified and assigned, was the one of natural language processing, which was meant to cover language phenomena to be handled and processed. Immediately after such choice was made, it became evident to the research community that at least two sub fields should be identified and some further specification of natural language processing should be added. Two new terms have therefore been identified: which are respectively the one of natural language generation on the one hand and the one of natural language understanding on the other. These new and very specific terms were meant to identify and define two very distinct aspects of language performance, which are production and reception. Along the same lines as for documentation management, we may productively draw a distinction between “document production” and “document-making” sense” for practical decision making. The final aim as for carefully working out a comprehensive and most appropriate definition as for what documentation management should in fact be all about, is to promote accurate and effective decision making based upon reliable information derived from consistent interpretation. Both aspects of documentation management, even if they are defined as distinctive ones, are nevertheless very much interconnected, as it is only as a consequence of really accurate documentation production, that we may conceive and envision a whole process of consistent meaning attribution and correct interpretation. It took a really long time for the linguistic community to acknowledge those very tangible differences existing as for the process of language generation and the process of language understanding, whereas as for documentation management, it became soon quite obvious that both processes of production and reception respectively are not only very distinct, but that they cannot at all be taken for granted. Documentation management requires in fact a real competence, based upon a wide

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variety of skills, coming as a consequence of a most articulated and highly complex acquisition process. We may definitely observe how much were academic models of documentation management and practitioners’ models, very distinct and very different for quite an extended period of time. Over the last two decades of our history, has the pervasive expansion of the Web and of the Internet in some ways determined the need for coming up with a real dialogue and discourse, finally connecting academic groups involved into research with the practitioners’ expanding population involved with day by day problems to be resolved. Practitioners in the field of documentation management, such as information analysts, may certainly maintain that kind of authority, which comes from expertise and direct involvement in the field. Practitioners are therefore able to appreciate the validity of a certain model of exemplary work in documentation once they are exposed to it, and they are certainly very likely to perceive and then evaluate the degree of accuracy in coverage of that very same model and framework made available to them. Information analysts are also able to identify errors and recognize what is really new and original as for each derivative part of each theory of documentation management they are exposed to. Information analysis may in some ways resemble literary criticism, which may be defined as the art and skill of appreciating and estimating the properties and qualities of a certain literary work, which has been reached throughout the practical use of many stylistic and rhetorical devices. By acting as some kind of literary critics may documentation analysts today talk back to the originating documentation producers in most constructive ways, asking them to be more specific, challenging them in many ways, up to even being able to ask them to complete and revise their work, if that was to be found not adequate. The new role assigned to documentation analysts may in some ways resemble literary reviewing to some extent. As documentation reviewers themselves, will they be able to continue their conversation with the readers, who are decision makers. By acting as really specialized reviewers themselves, may documentation analysts today talk to decision makers effectively, also suggesting that different attitudes should be adopted as for the different kinds of documents. Some documents may in fact be considered as primary sources whereas others are to be viewed as derivative literature.

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Chapter One

As information experts and specialists themselves, documentation practitioners will be able to annotate each document, attaching a short description as for the nature of it, they may add abstracts both informative and indicative, they may then also proceed toward creating a digest and abridgment themselves. A digest produced for facilitating decision makers needs to be considered as a consistently arranged compendium of selected and previously verified documents. The practitioner’s voice may be revealed by the practitioner’s trace as for each document provided. The practitioner’s interpretive added value to each document may come in the form of an attachment, complemented by a comment signed, which will definitely create a point of reference for further questions to be asked. The practitioner’s voice is today most appreciated as for document passing and handling. Anonymous or serial passing of pieces of information has proved to create enormous problems and also cause predictable damage, as when there is a need to ask for further clarification, nobody is really available to provide an answer, as there is actually no way to find out, to whom should that question be addressed in the first place. Information tailoring is a quite recent and widely explored area of research, meant to ensure that users are modeled consistently, so that they may be provided that kind of knowledge they really seek. Decision making is about the quantitative aspect and the qualitative aspect of information and knowledge to be provided. But information tailoring should become an even more comprehensive research field and be extended to the tailors’ role definition too. In other words, it significantly matters, who has been in fact the tailoring team, and obviously declaring the identity of the teams involved is of crucial relevance. Information packaged always reflects the angles chosen by the documentation producers and this very aspect should be fully acknowledged and accounted for. Information tailoring practices, if the information tailors’ perspective and point of view are missing, may easily turn into some kind of blind tailoring or black box tailoring altogether, where criteria prioritized as well as decisions made as for priorities, quantity and quality of information, sources and resources accessed, may remain unknown. Documentation management related activities reside upon verification of collections of information made available. Information services and library studies be-

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come an integrating and most relevant part of information science. Collecting documents, filing them accurately and classifying them consistently is at the core of information analysts’ curricula. By learning how to handle large collections of documents, do information specialists acquire the capacity of shaping new information artifacts, which are derived from already existing sources. Entire sections of already existing documents may have to be converted into a new document, according to some specific format required. Aggregation of newly composed documents may also be suggested so that information analysts will have to be able to segment and parse a derivative document into many and most meaningful chunks, by adding the crucial metadata on top. Metadata will include the source of extraction and the level of processing that a very specific chunk of derivative documentation has undergone, along with the information analyst’s identity. In order to facilitate documentation management of various kinds up to non homogeneous kinds, repositories are made up, based upon highly specific filing choices and precise categories assignment. In order to facilitate targeted publications, such as reports or newsletters, each content package and component is to be extracted out of a wider repository according to the filing choices as well as labeling decisions made. Research on text mining is of crucial relevance, as to ensure accuracy and consistency in the selection of most meaningful chunks of information. In her recent article that appeared in the ASIST Bulletin vol. 27 n.1, 2002, E.D. Liddy accurately and comprehensively defines “text mining” as “ the process of analyzing naturally occurring text for the purpose of discovering and capturing semantic information for insertion and storage in what we will call a Knowledge Organization Structure (KOS), with the ultimate goal of enabling knowledge discovery via either textual or visual access for use in a wide range of significant applications.” Liddy adds that “text mining is appropriately considered a subspecialty of the broader domain of Knowledge Discovery from Data (KDD), which in turn can be defined as the computational process of extracting useful information from massive amounts of digital data by mapping low-level data into richer, more abstract forms and by detecting meaningful patterns implicitly present in the data.” As for documentation management areas such as knowledge discovery, capturing and creation, as well as knowledge classification and representation beside and be-

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yond information retrieval and knowledge dissemination, become of crucial relevance. Another area of research, which we may certainly add to this list, is data warehousing meant to indicate a whole variety of processes, which are relevant for collecting data from a whole number of different and diverse resources. Data warehousing is definitely meant to provide decision makers with a complex and highly integrated overview as for a certain topic they may need to explore both in depth and in breadth. Documentation management is definitely meant to provide information analysts with those tools, which are specifically required, to cope with errors and misreading which may occur. There is no doubt that documentation management is prone to errors in many ways and of different kinds. A difference should be drawn between errors in packaging and in interpretation, which is accidental or beyond the control of the individual or team involved versus intentional misconduct, which may be demonstrated to have been designed and planned, as coming out of an act of will. Continuing and sustained verification for information packaging and interpretation accuracy is meant to reduce the risk of sustained vilification, which would derive from both accidental mistakes and intentional misreading. Envisioning documentation management by and large triggers the need for actually considering the whole and complete information cycle and for thinking comprehensively about the whole process of information acquisition, packaging and utilization. Information may in fact be packaged and delivered but not necessarily be disseminated, or it may be disseminated, but not practically used, as it has been widely analyzed in Tonfoni (1998a), according to the nature of information provided and displayed. Careful attention should in fact be given as for the potential impact of a certain package of information once disclosed both at a reduced scale and at a larger scale. Amplification and distortion phenomena should be considered and analyzed before any critical information package is so widely circulated to become worldwide available news. Chains of reactions caused by uncontrolled and unmonitored flows of critical knowledge, as well as consequences and side effects deriving out of their amplifi-

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cation throughout the media are also illustrated in the following chapters of this book. Persistence of undesirable interpretive side effects as well as resonance of some interpretive generalization and dissemination of models, which are replicated throughout a whole variety of contexts, demands careful attention as for the pervasive use of some very special terminology. Some information packages are particularly likely to trigger both interpretive and behavioral patterns meant to stay over time and expand significantly. Careful scrutiny is therefore to be planned as to verify that undesirable patterns are not encouraged so as enhanced by leakages and informational by-products, determining some interpretive loops, which may also be caused by some kind of interpretive exhaust and waste. New disciplines meant to regulate flows of information become a real ‘must be learnt’ for information analysts and for anyone involved in specialized documentation management, they are precisely Information Security and Strategic Ecdotics. Information security is the science of securing information, which also needs to be conceived as the science for making sure that information is accurate, and therefore secure enough for decision makers to feel comfortable about making their own choices based upon it. Information security resides upon the capacity of ensuring information accuracy. As a highly specialized discipline in itself, it is meant to provide those tools, which may assist information analysts in verification of the nature of information, they are analyzing and in charge of interpreting. Information security also about securing decision makers, that information they are provided with, is really secure as for its reliability, perspicuity, salience and relevance. Strategic ecdotics may provide substantial help to information analysts, as it is planned to support them with a highly consistent set of categories, meant to make qualitative reasoning upon the nature of information possible in the first place. Strategic ecdotics allows for the reasoned analysis, the context sensitive interpretation and therefore the consistent classification and evaluation of documents, coming both in verbal and in written formats, throughout the application of context sensitive categories and scientifically based principles.

8

Chapter One

Strategic ecdotics may profitably incorporate a methodology for document deconstruction, which is about x-raying, in-depth analysis and evaluation of a document, as to challenge its clarity and consistency by disclosing hidden meanings, implications, contradictions, and alternative interpretations. Conceptual tools provided in the field of information security and strategic ecdotics are meant to make possible misunderstandings and derivative mistakes surface. When a field becomes well established as a consequence of a fully recognized set of theories then operational models also become available and a new definition may be required. We may certainly think of the field of Document Engineering as the most advanced area as for research in documentation management meant to incorporate comprehensively both practical and conceptual tools, meant to optimize the documentation flow and final output result. Quoting literally out of the second symposium on document engineering (DocEng ‘02) presentation, mission and statement “we organizers of DocEng ’02, hold to an expansive notion of documents. A document is a representation of information designed for reading by, or played-back to, a person. It may be presented on paper, on a screen, or played through a speaker and its underlying representation may be in any form and include data from any medium. A document may be stored in final presentation form or in may be generated in the fly, undergoing substantial transformations in the process. A document may include extensive hyperlinks and be part of a large web of information. Furthermore, apparently independent documents may be composed, so that a web of information may itself be considered a document.” Information and knowledge management may harmoniously converge. Documentation deconstruction techniques reside upon a whole theory and methodology for dismantling a given document as to be able to analyze it in depth and to evaluate it and verify its accuracy, clarity and consistency, by also disclosing possible contradictions, multiple meanings and implications up to alternative readings. Rhetoric may be therefore envisioned as the art of artificiality not only for representing meaning in literary texts, but also for constructing and reconstructing meaning in documents throughout the use of figures (from Latin: schemata, ‘struc-

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tures’). Documental figures may be defined in terms of modification devices of ordinary language and ordinary text composition, meant to render the actual meaning. We know well that in painting, we may really see objects and events represented as they really are and look like, only when the law of perspective is applied. In order to have a realistic perception of the painted object, it is absolutely mandatory to make artificial calculation and to use artificial devices as to make the painting come out exactly the way it naturally looks. Along the very same lines, a whole artificial equipment of conceptual and stylistic devices needs to be used for accurate document perception based upon document engineering. A whole mechanics of figures is of direct relevance as for realistic representation of documental evidence. Definitions illustrated here have been extracted out of most brilliant and relevant current literature in the field of rhetorics, as we may find most finely and comprehensively illustrated in Dupriez (1991) and Carey-Snodgrass (1999). Terms have been transported here as to be more or less fully reconfigured and adapted to the field of document engineering. Definitions here provided in alphabetical order, are meant to be read and analyzed carefully as to be fully absorbed by readers, who will then see them indicated all again in the context of the chapters following as they will be asked to practice consistently the very same textual operations here illustrated. Here are the definitions provided and adapted to the document engineering perspective: Abridgment: a simplified, shortened, compressed or condensed version of a previous and more extended document, intended and meant to reduce the originating document to its basic elements to save space for storing it and time for reading it, to remove confusing or ambiguous parts, or to enhance its appeal for readers, who are not experts in the field. Unlike paraphrasing, an abridgment is intended to shorten while maintaining the original structure. Ambiguity: a deliberate or unintended fusion of meanings in a simple image showing within a sentence or within a paragraph. When deliberate, it is actually meant to promote meaning, nuance or ambience as found in connotation, pun and paradox, all of which are subtleties of language open to multiple interpretations.

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Amplification: a grandiloquent development of ideas and concepts, events and episodes meant to make them vividly rendered as more richly ornamented, broader in scope and range, or more forceful and strongly convincing. Battology: an unnecessary, tedious repetition of the same thoughts, in the same terms, in similar clauses. It is somewhat meant to convince readers of assessments or truths, which may look weak or highly controversial anyway. Brachylogia: a vice of elocution consisting of excessive brevity, which for reason of space and time limits, may be pushed to the point of stylistic obscurity as for the level of compression and highest condensation reached. Caricature: an outlandish exaggeration of appearance and behavior and, most meaningfully, of patterns and models. Some examples considered to be valid as to become models of reference, may be either intentionally or unintentionally modified up to fully distorted so that the originating model is partially up to fully lost in its originating structure and intended meaningfulness. Chiaroscuro: a deliberate contrast of light and dark to highlight movement or intensify a particular figure or setting, which translates into a stylistic contrast meant to underline a certain concept or make a specific event become most visible among the many others presented. Circumlocution: an indirect method and strategy of discussing a topic without naming it, either to create irony or to avoid unpleasant or shocking terms, which may confuse the readership or trigger some feelings and emotions which are unwished. Condensation: the opposite of amplification meant to reduce the space and time for displaying some ideas and concepts or for illustrating some facts and events. Squeezing in and enlightening meaningful relationships, so as reducing the space for display may be one of the derivative side effects of efficiency in presentation. Connotation: a range of implicit and implied associations, emotions, overtones, shades, and nuances of meaning, triggered by a word or expression, which is likely to enhance and advance its use beyond its own ordinary definition, regularly provided in the dictionary.

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Contamination: an amalgamation into a single sentence or paragraph of the material of two or several sentences or paragraphs, which may happen as a consequence of a whole set of different combinations, such as superimposition and different kinds of overlaps, occurring at different layers and levels. Counter-interruption: a suppression of the very beginning of a text, which may occur accidentally or as a result of premeditated and intentional action. Criticism: a reasoned analysis, classification, interpretation and evaluation of a text or a whole set of texts, throughout the application of established evaluation criteria and principles of excellence. Cryptography: an encoded writing of sentences and paragraphs in a text, which may be decoded or deciphered only by readers, who actually possess interpretive keys for both in breadth and in depth understanding. The decoding process is in fact cryptanalysis. Denotation: a literal meaning of each single word within a language and culture just as reported consensually in the dictionary, without its accompanying emotional implications. Dialect: a non-standard or informal speech pattern of a minority group within a certain culture. Just like a real language its single forms are consensually used and passed along over time. Dialogue: a most natural mode for speech when it becomes verbal exchange and communicative interaction occurring through language. Most literary dialogues attempt to reproduce real or supposedly real conversations, also incorporating a representation of the originating context just as modeled. Digression: a part or section in a work of writing, which treats matters apparently extraneous to the principal subject and subject area, which are nevertheless to be considered as essential up to crucial as for the author’s goal and really consistent interpretation. Documentary: a historical work derived from the arrangement and presentation of nonfiction such as data, graphs, news articles, editorials, government reports, maps, eyewitness reports, interviews, political cartoons and trial transcripts. Information

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Chapter One

packaged according to a variety of forms and formats is reconfigured in the form of a video production, complemented by voice narration and explanation of each single sequence. Exegesis: an interpretation, analysis or explanation of a single sentence, paragraph scriptural passage or of a complete essay, indicating and elucidating a difficult literary passage or disclosing and fully explaining the symbolism in allegorical, metaphorical and analogical texts. Extenuation: a substitution for the real idea under discussion of an idea of the same kind but of weaker interpretive value and power based upon imitation of the originating model. Flashback: an abrupt return to an earlier time, meant to fill in background details, scenes and contextual knowledge, which is relevant to a plot or to the evaluation of its characters’ actions or attitudes. It is somewhat a narrative reversion to previous events. Flashforward: an opposite of a flash back consisting of the insertion in the storytelling process of background details, coming in the form of a scene also carrying contextual knowledge, which happened after the event currently being narrated. Hyperbole: a bold exaggeration, meant and intended to draw attention to an idea by focusing on it and by representing it in many and various ways, some of which may definitely have been significantly expanded up to fully extremized. Interruption: a voluntary action or utterance that prevents discourse from proceeding continuously. It may occur in the form of a pause of different length, as a consequence of inserting some new elements, which have an alien nature, also coming in the form of utterances of various size and duration. Inversion: a reversal of what is considered to be the normal and usual order of the constituent parts of a sentence or paragraph within a certain text meant to higher the level of attention and to raise the level of informativity of a certain text as it is certainly meant to occur unexpectedly. Irony: an implicit and implied discrepancy between what is said or done and what is actually meant. It may be expressed and come in the form of a joke, intended seri-

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ously or not, certainly indicating the opposite of what one thinks or wants others to think. Jargon: a language, which is inaccessible to non-specialists and therefore obscure if proper interpretive clues are not provided. As for those who have the interpretive clues and use it currently it is meant to enhance the cohesiveness of the group in charge of keeping some information reserved and undisclosed. Loop: a text, which by returning to its starting point, suggests that everything is beginning again and will continue to repeat again in exactly the same way, once the end is reached in some kind of circular motion and dynamics. Meaning: a concept, which has a whole literature behind based upon many and different theories. Meaning of a text may be defined in terms of what is left after reading has occurred. After completion by their authors, texts remain no more than artifacts until they are read and made alive. For readers, meaning may be conceived as an effect produced by the text itself. The effect is either immediate or deferred by reflection and further in depth analysis. It is diversified not only as for multiplicity of cultural differences involved and incorporated within each single word, but also as a consequence of the different approaches, taken by readers both as for single sentences and paragraphs and for the whole text. The author may hopefully plan and foresee all of these angles of approach, leading to a real diversity of decoding procedures, meant to accommodate readers’ expectations. Memoir: a recollection of personal observations and experiences composed as autobiography or biography or historical fiction or documentary. Its size may vary according to the various levels of detail, which have been designed and planned. Miscellany: a medley or anthology made out of the selection of very diverse writings, which may be both homogeneous and not homogeneous ones, and refer to a broad range of subjects, produced by various authors and then collected as part of an anthology. Montage: a narrative collage formed of a series of brief descriptions, glimpses, pictures, impressions or interior thoughts or memories, rushed past the reader in rapid order, meant to establish some special atmosphere or to create an intended effect and also the a sense of the passage of time and dynamically evolving events carried on and moving along.

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Motif: a communicative pattern or predictable arrangement of many and diverse stylistic resolutions, meant to express one or more abstract themes within a narrative text mainly, but not exclusively. Paradox: an assertion, which runs counter to common sense and shared opinion and whose very formulation is meant and intended to contradict current ideas and current assumptions. Successful paradoxes appear true upon reflection and must therefore be carefully designed, planned and finely constructed. Paraphrase: a short, succinct elaboration, restatement or clarification of the overall sense in a piece of writing. As an aid, paraphrasing in meant to preserve the meaning of difficult passages, by altering style and diction to straightforward denotative language. As for figurative language, restatement in simple words to be interpreted literally is not feasible as subtleties indeed to be fully illustrated by attaching most accurate interpretation clues. Parody: the conscious and deliberate imitation, either of content or of form and format, which is explicitly meant to achieve a mocking, or a comic effect by extremizing some features and by exaggerating some specifically selected elements out of the model under consideration. Pastiche: a medley, hodge-podge or patchwork of humorous or satiric terms, phrases, sentences or paragraphs, taken from other sources and pieced together for the sake of comedy, burlesque or satire. It is once again the result of some specific text features selection and extremization. Point of view: an angle or perspective through which the author displays action and characters to the viewer who is actually the reader. As for its impact on interpretation it may be kept undisclosed or be fully disclosed according to the author’s purposes and aims. Redundancy: a repetition of an idea or concept in two or more closely rephrased sentences or paragraphs, according to some repetition of forms and formats or to some more or less partial reconfiguration of contents. Scrambling: an intentional disruption of cause and effect chains rendering the sentence, paragraph or text fully unintelligible for reasons, which will have to be made

Documentation Management: an Art and a Science

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explicit. It is some kind of text deformation happening at various levels and at various layers. Selfcorrection: a textual operation through which a speaker appears to retract purposely what was in fact just said in favor of something stronger, more decisive or appropriate and for reasons, which may be kept undisclosed or explicitly indicated and thoroughly explained. Squint: a lack of clarity in the linking together of segments and paragraphs of the discourse or text. It may be the result of an intentional choice as to displace the reader even if just momentarily, or be just some accidentally occurring phenomenon in need to be fixed. Telescoping: a process of condensing into a single sentence, or paragraph two others, which have the same topic. It is meant to underline the relevance and significance of the main topic, which is considered to be crucial and critical, but also easy to be missed or left out. All of these documental figures here presented and more which readers will find described and defined in the course of the next chapters of this book show evidently how a document needs to be seen as a complex artifact, as to be seen as a realistic representation meant to carry along the really intended meaning. Such a complex artifact may be the result of an elaborated process of consistent interpretation rendering throughout the employment of a whole set of strategies and devices of very complex nature. A really accurate document may have to be conceived not just as a linear narration of facts, rather as a three-dimensional reconstruction of proportionate elements meant to make realistic understanding possible in the first place. The present chapter has been conceived and set up to demonstrate how documentation management may in fact be conceived as both an art and a science. Any artistic performance of real excellence may in fact only be based upon effective mastering of extremely precise schemes and tools as it has been here extensively illustrated. Rhetorical figures, currently employed as for literary analysis, have been more precisely reconfigured as to fit the document engineering specific requirements. In order to be able to capture the real essence of each document, a mental model for representing a variety of phenomena, that involve knowledge representation and

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information processing (Hegarty et al., 1988; Johnson-Laird, 1983) may become a useful device for learning and information seeking (Marchionini, 1995). More specifically diagrams are abstract graphic portrayals of the subject matter they represent (Lowe, 1993). Correspondence between the diagram observer’s reactions and the diagram author’s intentions represents an interesting topic for further exploration and research, meant to identify, focus on and describe different individuals’ modes of perception and behavior (Chi, Glaser and Farr, 1988). A mental model for representing and handling interpretation complexity will have to entail dynamic viewing of each part of a document. A really comprehensive and highly flexible model may also allow multiple contexts to remain attached to the same document, when that is in fact needed, as to ensure both in-depth and in-breadth understanding to take place. Comprehensive models are more and more needed as the range of topics and technologies relevant to the field of documentation management and document engineering has expanded in most dramatic ways, as we may see reported by the call for papers for the Symposium on Document Engineering 2002, which indicates that conceptual topics of relevance are “ document standards, models, representation languages; document authoring tools and systems; document presentation (typography, formatting, layout); document synchronization and temporal aspects; document structure and content analysis; document categorization and classification; document internationalization; integrating documents with other digital artifacts; document engineering life cycle and processes; document workflow and cooperation; document engineering in the large; document storage, indexing and retrieval; automatically generated documents; adaptive documents; performance of document systems; markup languages (SGML, XML); style sheet systems and languages (CSS,XSL, DSSSL);structured multimedia (MPEG-4 SMIL,MHEG, HyTime); metadata (MPEG-4, SMIL, MHEG, HyTime);metadata (MPEG-7, RDF); document database systems and XQL; optical character recognition; type representations (Adobe Type 1, Truetype); page description languages (PostScript, PDF); electronics books (E-book) and digital paper; applications of constraint systems for document engineering; document transformation (XSLT); document services on wireless networks (WAP); document linking standards (XLink, Xpath, Xpointer); document APIs (SAX, DOM).”

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Visual metaphors are particularly conductive as they are actually meant to enable information analysts to think about each document, which will be now illustrated, as one more example of how may art and science be merged harmoniously as to make document engineering possible in the first place. The Collins English Dictionary provides a definition of a hologram as “a photographic record produced by illuminating the object with coherent light -as from a laser- and without using lenses, exposing a film to light reflected from this object and to a direct beam of coherent light. When interference patterns on the film are illuminated by the coherent light, a three-dimensional image is produced.” Along the same lines we may think of a document as a three-dimensional representation of meaningful relationships, as for a certain content placed in its own context and therefore visualized in all of its originating complexity reflecting and refracting upon different layers. A documental hologram may be viewed as a set of communicative patterns produced by interference between some kind of interpretation reflected by a certain context and other kinds of interpretation, which are also available there. If carefully analyzed, may a photograph of such patterns be derived so as to produce a comprehensive interpretive space of the document being considered. Only be ensuring that both comprehensive and flexible models are really supported, is it really possible to think of documentation management as a unifying practice, still very much enlightening each contributor’s personality and unique skills. Just like artists and scientists may be envisioned as a real example of uniqueness in outstanding performance and contribution, whose output results still may be universally made available and participated to mankind to be destined to stay overtime, so are information analysts the artists and scientist of knowledge packaging, destined to stay overtime and to be fully appreciated. There is a tremendous interest worldwide in the application of artificial intelligence paradigms in document understanding, recognition and management. It is very important to represent the document as a meaningful data source. The main attributes of artificial intelligence paradigms such as learning, adaptation, fault tolerance, selfrepair and self-organization are used in document management effectively. The artificial intelligence paradigms have firmly entered in all spheres of our daily activi-

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ties. For example, intelligent management of home appliances is not a thing of the past. We are experiencing a revolution in information availability and exchange. Document agents are one of the most promising tools to conduct business in this information rich world. We still have a long way to go as far as the fusion of the document and intelligent paradigms is concerned.

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Chapter Two

Documentation Management through Metaphors and Analogies

The second chapter of such a “highly visual book” is actually a textual one. This chapter is a very dense one and heavily refers back to a previously published book by Professor Tonfoni: Tonfoni, G., 1998, Information Design: The Knowledge Architect’s Toolkit, Scarecrow Press. Paragraphs shown in boxes are actually extracted from such book literally. In order to expand on those issues, which are presented here, readers are welcome to go back to the previous book as well. The point made throughout this chapter is, that we all need to be able to create and use metaphors and analogies. Any time we “create and carve” a new metaphor and analogy, we have to check carefully as to make sure that the end result is really what we intended to have in the first place. Documentation management today is driven by metaphors and analogies, and we have to make sure we are ourselves able to interpret them consistently and also to create new ones, when needed, or better ones, if some improvement may be foreseen and wished. Given the “high density” of the present chapter, readers are suggested and recommended to pay accurate attention to each of the concepts exposed and maybe to read some parts more than just once, as to make sure they have absorbed content in full details. The sequence of figures, complemented by a sequence of photographs, is meant to familiarize readers with the process of “conceptual visualization” and abstraction in reasoning upon information. Readers are therefore required to observe carefully details, which are visually represented by each of the figures and explained as a 19

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subheading to each scheme. And then they are asked to observe very analytically the complementing photographs meant to reinforce concepts already illustrated. As to ensure successful results, should such back and forth process “from scheme through text toward photograph and back” be performed not just once but a few times. Readers are also asked not to feel impatient or become frustrated if they cannot see the immediate connections between concepts and processes explained and visuals made available including the picture of Gaudì’s masterpieces. This connection may become obvious only over time and it is definitely going to be facilitated significantly by the actual visit to those architectural structures indicated and supported by the explanation of the same author who may in fact show visitors how to look for those specific details she had been able to see and extract in the first place. There are other domains where some processes may be indicated but not fully explained in written words, as practice and direct experience are a substantial component in the acquisition process. Molding clay is a good example: there are in fact manuals meant to illustrate readers ‘how to do it’ but nothing may replace the direct experience and direct observation of a master involved in the process of molding clay. The master, of course, will be aware of the fact that there are observers who are in need to be indicated the reasons why some actions are so important and why some details should be not dismissed. This chapter does not carry the promise to actually replace the personal explanation by the author entirely neither to be a surrogate for the actual visit of the architectural structures presented as models for metaphors molding, it is rather meant to provide a flavor of what that real experience may actually end up being. This chapter is intended to provide a virtual visit and a virtual learning facility before a real visit and an actual learning by observing and doing may become possible. Readers are invited to follow the flow of paragraphs and visual and enjoy the new stimulus provided, without worrying if they cannot immediately grasp the whole complexity of the content, including the visuals and the pictures. Just as for holograms which may require some time to be actually completely perceived does this chapter require some extra time to actually allow all of its content to surface completely. Readers are therefore invited to allow themselves that time.

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Well-designed metaphors create a valid support for meaning transport and consistent metaphor making is a substantial need today. Metaphors have always regulated the flow of information and the production of meaning in cultures in many ways, and the persistency, consistency and pervasiveness of their use by a community has proved to be the consequence and the result of an appropriate, acceptable or even excellent act of shared meaning acceptance and consensually agreed upon use. If well formed metaphors are meant to stay, ill-formed metaphors are most likely to fade away. Good metaphor making and new meaning creation are bound to specific laws, which guarantee for stability of the new word or expression introduced into a certain field; just like the physical law of gravity regulates objects’equilibrium as to avoid that they fall unexpectedly, basic principles also establish the extent to which a certain metaphor may productively be used as to convey intended meaning. Since words, sentences and stories of various kinds are circulated in a certain culture, not only with a certain definition, but also with feelings and perceptions and emotions attached, creating metaphors in a highly interconnected society, as our society is today, also implies making sure that those emotional links are the ones really wished. Metaphor making is not just a one shot operation, as it is rather a complex issue altogether, which may undergo many and various processes of accurate selection for final decision making. Ignoring those differences in day by day life in the global world may in the long run produce clusters of meaning, which do not match and rather trigger undesirable links, reaching toward the opposite direction instead. Just like fossils, words may become “concretions”, incorporating and carrying along a lot of extra-matter, which may cover almost entirely the texture of the originating information structure. Various cultures perceive different words and concepts in many and various ways. Introducing new terminology in the form of more global metaphors implies the need to identify emotional links attached to each single word and expression in each culture, as to decide how really globally we may want to go, foreseeing the consequences for newly imported meaning attribution into a previous and already stabilized context for interpretation. As Gannon (1984) has very sharply pointed out, addressing the issue of fundamental relevance of context for interpretation beyond and behind “just language sharing”, it is a fact that knowing a foreign language and mastering it syntactically does

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not necessarily guarantee for consistent contextual meaning sharing and for conveying meaning after all. A wrong assumption may even become dangerous altogether, leading the communicative partner to some basic trust, which cannot be kept after all. If the listener thinks “this speaker though not native, seems so know my language very well, so I am sure that we will share both context and meaning”, but that is in fact not true. The conversation is not likely to be based upon actual sharing, rather upon thinking of sharing values and meaning, whereas there is no real agreement after all. Better at that point not to know the language at all and to have intermediate stages of processing, including a translator. It is better to communicate through a translator rather than get the impression that, because of commonality of language, there is sharing of meaning, if there is none. International business operators may write entire essays on the frustrations they have themselves experienced, when such kind of misunderstanding has happened, materializing into a feeling of having been cheated, just when they thought they were actually fully tuned in. This is the reason why processes of intercultural communication may proceed successfully only throughout an overall increased rethinking and full awareness of the implications of each single word. The same kind of observation applies to metaphor-based communication. May a global metaphor making process exist and is it appropriate to think along those lines in the first place in the era of networked communication? Given the explosive growth of information sources and information systems designed and engineered to coordinate the overwhelming complexity of resources available, thinking in metaphors, poses the need for thinking of business and management problems in highly consensual ways. Just like any research community would do, when introducing new terminology to reflect and represent discoveries made in the field, the business community is mostly interested into metaphors for recognizing and identifying organizational problems to be solved, which are characterized by the following set of needs: • need for substitution, means being able to use some information in place of other information fast and effectively;

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• need for superimposition, means being able to place some information on or over other information accurately; • need for mixing, means combining different kinds of information and blending them together consistently; • need for transposition, means reversing the order of information and moving it into a different position correctly; • need for augmenting and excessing, means having the potential to provide more information than what was initially requested appropriately; • need for reducing and compressing, means having the potential to provide less information than what was initially requested contextually. Now let us analyze two very precise metaphors: the one of “information design” and the one of “knowledge architecture” to see how they have been used by the business community and how separate and contradictory or integrated and comprehensive they may be. As in Gannon (1998), the metaphor of information design becomes dominant in the late 1970s: information systems were designed and mass production was to be easily associated with the exponentially expanding use of the technology; concerns for issues such as ergonomic features and user-friendliness as well as for those aspects meant to underline and enlighten the role of the users, were easily conveyed by the use of the term “design” already widely recognized to indicate the art of making a certain environment both functional and pleasant according to the users’ needs. Architectural design is the realm of the future inhabitants’ wishes and needs converted into explicit requests, meant to become true facts, through the interpretation of a sensitive designer able to plan and design accordingly. Design also carries another meaning, which implies the distinction and separation between the thinker and planner versus the executing team. Designed products then are meant to be for a wider though specific audience, not a single-based solution, rather a specifically targeted audience of consumers. A designer will deliver a plan and a team will have to implement and execute, based on that plan, a series of items to be then mass-produced. Differently than in a craftsmanship-oriented culture, the one who thinks is not the one who actually builds. Still the metaphor of information design, successfully borrowed from the field of industrial design has its historical roots in scientific management: the planner or the

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planning team first envision the object or product and then plan for the various aspects of the prototype. Design is by definition the realm of planning against arbitrariness. A business firm may design a product strategy, where the product may be just a concept. A well formed concept may be so powerful as to sell the product. The designer looks as being both in charge and responsible for such concept: but a designer is not committed to the whole process as the current definition of designer versus engineer clearly states. In a larger institution, individuals may not become really involved with a process, which is recognized as fully conceived, planned and promoted by a single individual or a planning team and then delivered with a set of instructions for execution to colleagues afterwards. Business operators may want to convey and share their experiences and feelings about marketing and management, in order to be able to discuss, consensually plan and finally accept those new strategies, they need to first consider them to be the most appropriate ones. A fully committed team is what is requested as to consistently organize information, which needs to be converted into knowledge after all. Information is quite a vague term; everything is information today, but what matters most is the process of identification and conversion of information, which is really relevant and correct, into knowledge. Knowledge is what is meant to stay as the result of a filtering process and further consolidation of flows of information, which originally come in as hybrid, fuzzy, mixed, contradictory ones. Raw information cannot be incorporated within an organization and be used without any previous selection and accurate decision making: as to do so, effective discrimination criteria are required. What really matters is being able to discriminate between consistent versus fuzzy information, and temporary versus stable information, as to then be able to proceed toward a correct estimate of time and commitment, which is requested to perform a certain task and to achieve a certain goal. Solutions have become more and more personalized today. Strategic search criteria as for identification of relevant knowledge is what really constitutes the grounding for accurate decision making. Any metaphor which may

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significantly help build context, along those lines, needs to be considered as a most productive one, very likely to be used pervasively and consensually. A real sense of belonging sustained by a clearly recognizable identity in organizations may only be maintained if a certain style and culture are well recognizable: care for the individuals’ needs and stability and stability derive from a caring attitude to be promoted within the organization first of all. If care is missing, loss of identity and lower commitment are most likely to follow next. A constructively active attitude toward information is expressed, especially within the United States, in the form of a more extended and comprehensive metaphor. The knowledge architecture metaphor is at least as comprehensive and precise as the information design metaphor is, and it also provides additional vocabulary, which allows adding new and derivative concepts. Architecture is both a solid art and a science, based upon a tradition of hundreds of years: this way robust context and precise points of reference for asserting identity may be built. Architects need to have a complex competence, quite difficult to define altogether. Their ability is measured as for stable results they are meant to achieve, like the construction of buildings of various kinds and different functionalities, planned to stand over time. The concept of relative stability in a world of continuous change and therefore very unsettled is a most reinforcing element for collaboration. Metaphorical reasoning based upon architectural thinking may lead knowledge managers toward thinking of themselves as some kind of knowledge architects, monitoring major flows of information, providing a set of tools to operate on such flows, and finally feeling committed to the overall process of construction of relevant knowledge meant to stay. The knowledge architect’s metaphor seeks to go beyond the information design metaphor, by opening new ways of thinking about information systems as to tailor them according to distinctive needs by organizations and individuals. Although there is no ideal metaphor, which may help us think in all the details on how to develop specific guidelines as to the help build the ideal information system for each single organization, metaphors may be productively and harmoniously alternated and integrated.

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Information design and knowledge architecture are close enough not to require further explanation to be added as to justify those conceptual links, which connect them; those two domains respect some kind of minimum distance principle, which help not to have the two fields collapse and lose distinctive features. If the domain of design and architecture were to be as close as to loose their own distinctive features, then poignancy of metaphors introduced would also be diminished in significant ways. Differences and nuances are meant to stay. From the vantage point of view of information design, we may add that any effectively planned information system needs to make users “comfortable” in the first place. A user is comfortable enough when the system is “functionalized” with respect to the users’ needs and “personalized” as to lower their estimated workload. Those concepts would persist if we were to get into the domain of knowledge architecture: they would still hold in a different but close enough framework. The concept of “planning”, leading harmoniously toward “building”, is meant to constructively enlighten the constructive role of a committed team, within a larger community, which may be already used to work collaboratively. If a building is found to be no longer adequate, it may be easily expanded both horizontally and vertically; if the building is found not to be of use, it may even be totally reconfigured or taken away. What certainly matters is that the architects’ team is able to monitor an information process in a longer term perspective. A building, just like a knowledge building, shows different spaces, meant to exploit different functions compatibly; if some space within a certain organization grows steadily, it may expand as to occupy another space. Any indoor space is subject to modification, even if a building is in itself a steady construction. The concepts of refunctionalizing and modifying information systems within an organization is certainly better carried on by the knowledge architecture metaphor. In the design metaphor, once an object is planned, produced and finally delivered, it is by definition a prototype, and further modifications cannot be added to the same object.

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Any change would require the design of a different prototype to be then eventually compared with the previous one. Changes cannot be made within and as part of the same object. Once the product has been declared to be completed it is in fact completed: design is therefore meant to represent a more rigid concept, suitable for indicating progressive modifications, to be performed upon differentiated objects and families of derivative objects and products. The concept of work in progress may be better conveyed and represented by the architectural metaphor: in architectural planning changes may be made within the same construction without implying that a new construction is built. Even if both design and architecture involve some dynamics, it is in fact a different concept of dynamics that they represent. An organization is subject to change and continuously changing conditions are part of its culture, but each organization is grounded upon some conceptual foundation, especially when we talk of institutions and corporations which have been there for a while, showing their different identity. Organizations may reinvent themselves at various stages and evolve toward many directions, both horizontally and vertically, even the most dramatical changes we may see happen, are bound to some continuity, which may only be recognized if carefully observed, just like progressive stages in the planning of a building may be recognized in the originating technical drawings and blueprints. Individuals acting in an organization may like to envision themselves metaphorically as located within an expanding building, being furnished and refurbished, with separate office spaces and common areas modified according to the internal needs and demands, more than think of themselves as part of a uniquely designed object and precious prototype, which cannot be only partially modified, but may soon be substituted by a new one and different one, they are very likely not to be part of, because new elements and material will be needed. What was used in the first prototype version will be most probably replaced as to better show the difference of the new product, as to keep the metaphor going. If the problem addressed by a new metaphor introduced into the organizational field is to effectively help a community working collaboratively to define itself, its own needs, expectations, demands and tasks, then access to the most appropriate concept

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may create the most suitable framework to help individuals rethink their own day by day activities. The knowledge architecture metaphor is obviously highly compatible with the one of information design, just like architects and interior designers play highly compatible roles, they actually take turns quite harmoniously, especially because they neither share exactly the same target, nor do they perform the same task. So will the architectural metaphor cover more general issues, whereas more local and detailed issues may still be well taken care of by the design metaphor. Concepts such as “functionality of objects” may be consistently applied to the packaging of messages and flows of information, which do not necessarily need to be converted into knowledge, but which are still within the organization. Metaphor shifting is another important aspect of good metaphor making: if a certain metaphor cannot reach a further level of detail, within the originating domain, then a good switch just at the right time is the most productive solution. We may effectively think in terms of “consolidated knowledge” to be used by the organization within a “knowledge construction” framework. We may envision a building, which may expand and incorporate knowledge coming from a different organization, resulting from a harmonious merging, and we may envision the planning of new “knowledge wings” for the building either horizontally to host the new knowledge space requested, or vertically by adding one or more “knowledge floors”, or again, to be taking some space away, reorganizing already existing areas according to a different kind of use, need and demand. Peculiarities in style of communication by a certain organization or institution may find adequate definition in terms of “elements of furniture”, some kind of important “accessories”, a blend of new forms and modes reflecting upon innovative design of information systems. At this point, the design metaphor shows its relevance as for capturing first and then representing later the peculiarity of those new solutions, derived from the merging and fusion of the previously existing organizational cultures, a precious mix of various elements and material creating a new comprehensive solution.

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Within the knowledge management community, it is quite common to hear comments such as “when the two organizations have merged, their styles have somehow merged too and therefore have changed significantly.” Within the realm of design we may find appropriate terminology as to explain why a certain way of organizing internal communication, or to plan on information systems, found to be effective and manageable is also an elegant solution, worth to be proposed as a standard. Design and architecture cover separate areas, which are nevertheless highly compatible: metaphors derived from the domain of information design do not interfere with those belonging to the field of knowledge architecture, which are meant to handle different kinds of problems and to describe different kinds of phenomena within an organization. By all means, it is a qualitative difference and not a quantitative one. But do those two metaphors actually cover the whole range of events, actions, facts and data, which need to be covered by the knowledge management community, or do they actually leave something unattended and therefore unexplained? A most significant problem and concern within the knowledge management community today, which is consequently reflecting upon each single organization, beside change, is the tremendous urge for finding consistent strategies for information filtering. If not taken care of appropriately, will the huge amount of information available actually inhibit vision and accurate decision making as a consequence. If there is some concern about making sure that appropriate knowledge is easily available and accessible, it is of no less concern that information, which is not relevant to the point, may be easily recognized as such and taken away as a consequence. Both metaphors of information design and of knowledge architecture show some difficulties in conveying that sense of accuracy and sharpness, which discrimination capabilities require and demand. As to precisely enlighten those aspects, a new metaphor of “knowledge sculpturing and carving” may be introduced. A basic training in the visual arts may allow us to see which new meaning attribution the new metaphor of “knowledge sculpturing and carving” shows and which positive emotional feelings are carried along, attached to such metaphor.

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A whole set of different skills and a more complex competence is required as to patiently be able to identify what kind of information or knowledge should remain untouched, meaning accessible and available, and what kind should be taken away instead as not necessary and not relevant in the first place. Just like information shows to be exceedingly heavy and redundant once extracted out of some document or document sequence, the act of sculpturing is about eliminating exceeding weight and material. An expert and decision maker should first define the level of detail as to then proceed toward extracting some precise information out of a certain source or set of sources; the act of carving is in fact about shaping a most appropriate decision. Even in the sculpturing and carving metaphor, no contradiction is to be found with respect to the previous metaphors of design and architecture. A specific concept may be conveyed effectively, with a new metaphor at no damage of other concepts already covered within a different domain throughout a set of other metaphors. Today we need to be able to interpret large sets of events, through the use of relevant and consistently packaged knowledge. The most suitable metaphor, as to be able to address such a complex problem, is actually the one of “knowledge management”, which has been so much and so widely used that it looks more like an already stabilized expression, belonging to common sense after all. It was originally generated as a specific metaphor, meant to add a sense of skilled complexity to the more obvious and simple definition of “knowledge processing”. The metaphor of knowledge management results with no doubt into a real enhancement as to describe both the kind of operations, which need to be performed as to retain valuable knowledge and the kind of skills required, as well as the domains to which such skills should be applied. Other powerful metaphors, now currently employed and naturally incorporated within organization, are the ones of “ information gate-keeping”, as to indicate the process and the disposal meant to actually prevent information overflow and workload to happen and “data mining”, meant to indicate the heavy job of extracting something valuable after an accurate process of in-depth search has been accomplished.

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Even if those terms come from different domains as to be applied to closely related problems in knowledge management, none of them has been found to be inconsistent or difficult to retain and use just because it is not a direct derivative of a previously introduced metaphor, like the design metaphor or the architecture metaphors. Harmonious absorption of an expanding metaphor outside an originating framework is not only possible, but highly recommended and most positive after all. If only terminology coming from either design or architecture were to be accepted, the attention span would be lowered rather than increased, because derivative terminology, even if found to be completely suitable, would be also too much predictable at the end. If a word becomes too predictable, we know that it is actually capturing less attention because it is indeed highly expected and therefore considered to be obvious. Meaning drifting and shifting from one metaphorical domain into another one is therefore bound to well formedness conditions; a new metaphorical domain needs to be accessed if and when found appropriate and more suitable than the previous one currently used. Metaphorical drifting and shifting very rarely imply the decay of the previously existing metaphorical domain: no discussion that even if the metaphorical expression “data mining” comes from a different domain, metaphors which have previously been derived out of the realm of design and architecture are still available and widely used. No effort is made or needs to be made to disconnect previously connected conceptual chains evolving into effective examples. Special attention needs to be given to emotional aspects attached to each new word or expression introduced, as we have already pointed out. Care attached to the “knowledge sculpturing and carving metaphor” really adds value to the description of a quite specific operation. Same holds for “data mining”, which vividly carries the sense of fatigue and risk of an operation, which requires maximum attention and may be hazardous after all. Such nuances could not have been so vividly represented within the domain of design or architecture. Metaphors are rich and powerful triggers, and their information energy should be carefully monitored. If an information expert may find a whole set of helpful tools coming out of the information design or knowledge architecture “terminology basket”, as to describe topics of major relevance within a certain community and may

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just block undesirable associations and adjectives, this becomes harder when there is a narrative intention attached to it, which means when entire stories are searched and linked to a certain metaphor or analogy. Special care should be paid as to where and when the analogy should be stopped. It is of absolute relevance that any metaphorical disposal may be either disconnected, before it gets to that a part of the story, which is not relevant to the point made or may even be misleading; it is even better if a more suitable and consistent story is found instead, which does not carry any undesirable association along, which may lead toward misinterpretation and final misunderstanding. Since stories and narratives, as well as words, come with their own cultural baggage attached, implications and ramifications need to be accurately explored and checked. A word may be viewed as an iconized set of potential networks, linked up to other words, which may be triggered at any time, some of which are productive whereas others are not so productive, and some may certainly be misleading, if activated on a random basis. For these reasons, a “melting pot approach” to analogical thinking and metaphor making has shown not to be as effective as initially expected. A real and in-depth understanding is only significantly enhanced within the knowledge management community through a whole variety of highly specified and carefully defined metaphors, fulfilling a whole set of different tasks. In Gannon, (1984) it is brilliantly illustrated how different cultures and attitudes may be productively and globally conveyed by synthetic descriptions carried by metaphors. The power of Gannon’s assertion resides in the search operation, performed within each of those cultures and countries, which are taken into account, and each metaphor is bound to a very specific context. Only an in-depth and context-based understanding of each single metaphor, within its own culture, may create the background knowledge and conceptual grounding, which is needed for effective and consistent meaning transport and consensual sharing after all. In some ways, is the knowledge management community today constantly producing and accessing a highly consistent vocabulary of new metaphors, which are meant to define different and very specific problems, bound to culture constraints, which are to be first disclosed as to be consistently described afterwards.

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When a certain problem refers to a domain which is found to be too wide and too complex, then metaphor splitting, just like in the case of the information design metaphor versus the knowledge architecture metaphor, seems to be the most adequate and appropriate solution. When a certain problem needs to be analytically described, then a whole family of derivative metaphors may come into play, just like we may see happen in the case of knowledge architecture. A “knowledge architect” needs to first identify “information territories”, which may be worth spending time and energy building upon, as to initiate the “construction of the building,” which is obviously a “knowledge building” meant to stay in time. Within the knowledge architecture metaphor, which may easily be expanded as to incorporate different kinds of details, just like in any comprehensive metaphor, different kinds of issues and tasks may be synchronously recognized and represented. Any metaphor, which is by all means intended to be comprehensive, therefore incorporating a whole variety of layers of meaning and triggering many meaningful links at the same time, may propagate more specific knowledge throughout a whole set of submetaphors as well as through a whole selection of analogical stories, which may exploit different communicative intentions and functions according to the nature of the specific problem, which is addressed at each given time. A “knowledge construction” within an organization, is meant to represent the complexity of multiple tasks in many ways and synchronously. At a purely descriptive level, different operations involved may be analytically illustrated and metaphorically specified in full details, carrying along explanation to be conveyed synthetically also. As to expand along the same metaphor: the kind of material identified as most appropriate to be used represents that specific kind of knowledge within that specific organization, which is considered to be “stable” and “solid” enough, to become part of “the knowledge construction”. Along the same lines, “architects” and “carpenters” are those knowledge managers and providers, who may play different roles within a certain institution, and are to be defined according to those two categories and their respective and current meaning attribution.

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A highly comprehensive metaphor such as knowledge architecture is, also allows for procedural explanation to occur: just like out of a wide literature of examples in the history of architecture a variety of different styles in building may be recognized, described and explained; the same variety of perspectives and views may be transferred and transported into the definition of different information packaging styles reflecting upon documents produced accordingly. Case studies may illustrate the different attitudes and choices made at the management level. Major differences shown between classical versus baroque architecture may be described just as major differences shown between and among various styles of doing business. A really comprehensive metaphor is dynamic by nature, both complex and highly articulated, precise and flexible at the same time. A rigorously specialized and technical vocabulary shows to be of tremendous help as to avoid misunderstanding and undesirable overlap, which may easily occur. Comprehensive metaphor making is based upon a very accurate analysis of layers of meaning and meaningful links attached to any new item involved. Any designed metaphor, which results out of a creative process of collective thinking, also represents a memory cluster and a repository of local and culture-based experience, to be first interpreted internally and accurately reconfigured, as to be shared and conveyed externally. Access to the specific organizational culture, which created the conditions for a metaphor to be shaped up, may be facilitated in the form of additional sharing of internal knowledge. Visual metaphors are most effective ways as to think about information both abstractly and practically. Both “information design” and “knowledge architecture” are highly visual metaphors, which allow abstract concepts to become material and tangible and to be therefore really understandable. Just like physics provides a whole set of visualization tools and models of different kinds as to facilitate understanding of abstract concepts, such as “forces” and “energies”, a powerful and consistent system for visualizing abstract concepts and operations in knowledge management is most useful. “You cannot solve the problem if you cannot see it clearly,” may sound like a real motto in knowledge management issues. Any powerful visualization tool needs to be the result of a previous process of interpretation performed collectively within a

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certain organization, creating some kind of mapping, showing both history and progress. Any highly visual metaphor in knowledge management is therefore to be considered as an effective repository for collective memories. What needs to be stored and visually represented is a summary of meaningful experiences, found to be of relevance, as to be conveyed and shared consensually. Visual metaphors in knowledge management are therefore most likely to stay and to become tools for thinking and sharing interpretation. Effective understanding, within the knowledge management community, shows evidently to reside on a fundamental sharing and effective conveying of highly comprehensive metaphors, which are the end result of a compound of a “culturally separate items” carefully described, defined and explained as to be finally integrated. Effective metaphors are the result of a lot of previous work done as a follow-up of creative sprouting of new concepts within an organization. A highly skilled process of selection and meaningful definition of each single item introduced is very important: metaphors accurate carving and sculpturing, as a matter of fact. Today the research community worldwide is asked to both advance highly specialized knowledge and to make it available to a wider community of users, which may be defined as final users of specialized knowledge, who need to access and use pieces of information for specific purposes in their own daily life. For example, we all need to know something about progress in research in medicine just to be able to ask the expert the right questions and, even more fundamentally, to be able to describe those health problems we may encounter and symptoms with “understandable words.” We need to access some knowledge in business as to be able to define our financial needs with accuracy, we need to understand some instructions in order to be able to use the technology at least at some level of detail and then maybe further ask to have an expert solve some more delicate and specific knowledge problems. We may add all of those specialized knowledge fields we need to rely upon in many and various ways, such as medicine, business, and so on. Researchers and teachers are therefore facing the need for advancing research and keeping a common code, which may be used by experts in the field in order to communicate, exchange and

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compare results. Meanwhile they also need to translate some of the results into common sense as to make those results widely available. In order to circulate new discoveries and to distribute specialized knowledge to a larger community, the making of metaphors and analogies is a fundamental process. Far from being just the result of some accidental brainstorming, accurate metaphor and analogy making may only happen as a result of a skilled art and science. No metaphor or analogy could represent a specific topic within a highly specialized knowledge domain, without having undergone major processes of redefinition first. This is what is being precisely explored in this chapter: the skilled technique of making of metaphors and analogies, which are produced and meant to carry specific new meaning and knowledge, expected to be absorbed consistently. Some specific examples, derived from metaphors introduced in the field of Information Design, are progressively illustrated. Metaphors and analogies are inherently part of our life and of our communicative intercourse on a day by day basis. A wealth of literature has been produced starting from Lakoff’s (1980) major contribution and continuing with an extended literature by Gentner (1983) and Hofstadter (1995), who have harmoniously linked knowledge coming from cognitive science and computer science to studies on reasoning, metaphorically and analogically. What is here illustrated is a set of conceptual tools, which are meant to help the reader analyze the generation, use and interpretation of metaphors and analogies in scientific research fields, such as the one of information sciences, as to demonstrate the need for a very accurate analysis meant to ensure that intended meaning is the one actually being recollected. In order to be reliable, complex processes such as metaphor generation and analogical reasoning need in fact to be envisioned as complex and articulated mechanisms, meant to explain those cognitive processes, which would otherwise remain invisible. Those processes will first of all be made surface, then visualized and described as to grasp the significance of new meaning generation coming out of an old meaning reconfiguration. We will now proceed toward an “in depth exploration” of those mechanisms in scientific metaphors and analogies, which enable us to recognize and absorb new knowledge in specialized domains.

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First of all, we need to recognize that the making of some particularly informative metaphor carries along the need to discard many of the originating links: the quantity of new information attached to a certain term, comes in fact as the result of some dismissed expectations. We may therefore add that most powerful and highly informative metaphors come as the result of previously meaningful links dispersion and new meaningful links configuration. What is here presented is a conceptual framework, derived from a process of visualization of those dynamical events and facts occurring when new metaphors are generated out of meaning explosion and progressive reconfiguration. Before getting into a more accurate definition of what a conceptual tool kit for metaphor generation and evaluation should entail, let us briefly analyze the process of further approximation any metaphor, which has been created to define a highly specialized knowledge domain, is supposed to undergo. In order to undergo major and most significant new meaning attribution processes, the old term, ready to be metaphorically reconfigured, will have to change its status progressively, moving through different stages, which may resemble those transformations occurring when a concept gets transferred from a “plenum of meaning” into a “vacuum of meaning”. A “plenum of meaning” is precisely that state or space of meaningful links, in which an element represented by a single word is contained at a certain meaning attribution pressure, which is greater than actual contextual and desired meaning attribution pressure. The whole interpretation space is therefore regarded as filled in with a lot of semantic matter, which may jeopardize new contextual meaning attribution, if filtering processes were not activated to reduce the level of fuzziness. On the other side a “vacuum of meaning” is an ideal situation to be reached, which means the definition of an enclosed interpretation space, from which undesired contextual accretion has been removed, so that semantic matter remaining in the interpretation space will exert less pressure than the actually desired contextual attribution, just the opposite than what we have seen happen within a plenum of meaning.

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A vacuum of meaning represents in fact the state of lowest semantic energy and context attribution possible. Only after a condition of vacuum has been reached, may an accurately selected word be productively turned into an operationally valid metaphor, meant to convey a new and highly specific meaning. If a vacuum condition has not yet been reached, then will that word, not having undergone a previous process of filtering, carry undesired contextual attributions along. Any metaphorical domain needs to be accurately defined, as to establish plausible links and connections, as it shows in the following example: “With such radical changes occurring within our current time and space framework, how could we actually think of language and communication the same way we used to do before?” “Information transport, which means precisely passing from written texts in their stabilized form, like currently used textbooks and journal articles, into a hypertext format or according to website standards will entail a deep and quite articulated rethinking, which will trigger major changes as well.” “We are in fact able to see a ‘Doppler-like effect’ in text perception and processing, which is an apparent shift in the frequency of communication waves received by an observer and text perceiver, depending on relative motion between the observer and text perceiver and the source text generated communicative waves.” In order to be able to better describe a certain new domain, in this example being represented by the definition of the new discipline of Information Design, further ramifications may extend toward different directions, by using a certain terminology, which is supposed to be well known in other domains and disciplines like we can see in the following example: Information Design is about: “Promoting qualitative reasoning about communication and information. Promoting quantitative measurement and qualitative criteria for information processing. Promoting context sensitivity. Promoting ‘in depth search’ capabilities and ‘in breadth search’ capabilities. Promoting cognitive awareness about the different tools and media. Promoting ‘Macrodesign’ skills and ‘Microdesign’ skills. Promoting knowledge of the Physics and the Chemistry of information.”

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Within an appropriately constructed conceptual realm for metaphor generation and evaluation will each word introduced, have to be precisely defined in its own functions and range of applications. This way it will be interpreted only after accurate definition, based upon selection and focusing processes, has occurred. Such metaphor may be properly defined as the “aggregate of surrounding conditions or influences for facilitating reasoning about a new knowledge domain.” As a consequence of a shared core of precisely defined concepts, which are stable, will a metaphor meant to define a new concept, possibly be turned into a representation model, according to which different kinds of operations are made possible within a new knowledge domain. In order to represent complex concepts first and to define them afterwards, a combination of different metaphors may work both at a higher speed and at a higher degree of precision and reliability. A metaphor may in fact grasp just some parts and some aspects of a certain domain, whereas a different metaphor may grasp some others, which would otherwise be missing or just left out: paradoxically discontinuity is in this case the only guarantee for real continuity in interpretation. Metaphorical reasoning is such a complex realm, that only a kaleidoscopic combination of different models for visualizing and expressing various aspects of the word, which is accurately transported from one domain into another one, could possibly represent and map such complexity. This way, we may actually discriminate between large scale metaphors and reduced scale metaphors, operational metaphors and narrative metaphors, as to be able to accurately evaluate the degree of approximation, these metaphors may actually reach. As to define a new research field such as the one of Information Design both a narrative and explanatory text is produced as follows: “By analyzing carefully new ways to better define a new field such as Information Design (ID) is, I can see some need to discuss some basic terminology and basic concepts coming from Economics, which may be productively adapted, of course only after accurate reformulation. As to be able to create some common background for discussion, I can first of all foresee the need to create a distinction between Micro Information Design issues and Macro Information Design issues just like Micro Economics and Macro Economics do have different though highly compatible concerns.

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Micro Information Design can be defined as that branch of Information Processing which is in fact concerned specifically with individual information units and knowledge packages. Macro Information Design is concerned with the behavior of aggregate information variables, through the study of information activities and processes of various and different kinds, taken as an interdependent and interconnected whole and dynamically represented in their differentiated stages too.” “Just like Economics, Information Design is meant to be a science that analyzes different allocation and utilization of information resources, and most of the time choices need to be made without the complete spectrum available and because of major time and costs concerns, they are therefore made out of projection and prediction. Less efficiency may sometimes be preferred to increase or keep established relations, which would otherwise be jeopardized. This is precisely where qualitative reasoning and quantitative analysis and measurement come in as most effective tools.” A process of meaning reconfiguration may reach a high level of accuracy, which needs to be defined according to a preset series of differentiated stages of meaning reconfiguration, which are the following ones: Meaning dissemination: the process of distributing knowledge widely, meaning in small particles around the old meaning territory. Meaning dispersion: the process of spreading information over a wide area after selective separation of relevant from non relevant information has occurred. Meaning dissipation: the process of spreading information in random ways to the point of destroying an original common sense based meaning territory. Meaning distortion: the process of altering or twisting an original and natural condition in meaningful links. Meaning diffusion: the process of deliberately causing to spread around newly established links according to a preset series of targets. Meaning disruption: the process of breaking apart, through an interruption meant to prevent common sense based meaning attribution, therefore deeply affecting the overall understanding. Meaning distribution: the process of dividing knowledge related to various links according to different categories. Meaning dissolution: the process of separation between and among knowledge packages entailing loss of connections, which were previously part of common sense based interpretation.

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Meaning disintegration: the process of separation into the global structure of a term causing transformations at different levels and at various degrees to occur. Meaning distillation: the process of extracting abstract concepts out of common sense based knowledge producing therefore the formation of new meaningful conceptual links. Meaning distinction: the process of separating into categories different information attributes after having assigned new target. Meaning dilution: the process of deliberate reduction of meaningful links out of a given word. Meaning dissociation: the process by which a strongly bound combination of words breaks up into simpler constituents capable of recombining under changed contextual conditions. We may see here that what cannot be captured by just one metaphor or analogy is in fact carried by a combination, conveying different features synchronously. A visual representation of both “plenum of meaning” and “vacuum of meaning” in context attribution, is represented in figures 2.1 and 2.2 respectively.

Figure 2.1. Plenum of meaning, which is the state or space, in which a word is contained at the highest meaning attribution pressure.

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2.1. A. Gaudi': Casa Battlo', Battlo' House, Barcelona.

Figure 2.2. Vacuum of meaning, which is state or space in which a word is contained at the lowest meaning attribution pressure.

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2.2. A. Gaudi': Casa Guell, Guell House, Barcelona.

It has been already explained, it is hard to think of new concepts and ways of reorganizing already existing knowledge with no physical models available. This is why identification of relevant models is so important as to be able to discover events, enlighten hidden facts and name processes, which would otherwise remain invisible and therefore unknown. Since complexity of metaphorical reasoning needs to be handled anyway, being able to refer to a highly articulated framework for interpretation, may result into a most useful process meant to facilitate accurate interpretation of newly introduced concepts. Consistently linked interpretive concepts, meant to be used both separately and in combinations, may in fact solve specific problems, only if these problems have previously undergone a process of redefinition, which is required as for either metaphorical or analogical reasoning. Introducing new concepts as to interpret newly observed facts and phenomena will consequently trigger the need for an “in depth search” within a new knowledge domain. Applying metaphorical reasoning to newly introduced concepts means creating a conceptual platform for supporting new definitions with derivative experience coming from other fields, which are well known and therefore stable.

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Such process may be of tremendous assistance for facilitating reasoning, once the interpretive perspective and point of view have been accurately defined, and may therefore constitute a common background meant to indicate new common sense reasoning trajectories. Creating well supported common sense is most relevant for an overall rethinking and reorganizing of a specific knowledge domain among different individuals involved with cooperative documentation management issues worldwide. Accurate rethinking of the inner nature of each word and consistent redefinition, by introducing physical models of reasoning, which can be easily shared, is in fact a fundamental step toward better coordination of any new meaning production process, both by single individuals and groups of individuals acting cooperatively. Accurate observation and interpretation of complex situations, through consistent design of precisely defined metaphors, will lead not just researchers in the field, but everyone in need to understand specialized knowledge to be able to use it, toward a deeper understanding and mastering of complex knowledge domains. A really effective interpretation process will also enable experts to undertake collective action and consensually share interpretation of new phenomena, as it shows in the following example: “Communication Environmental Awareness is concerned with issues such as: how to integrate information resources harmoniously; how to combine different communication tools and make them compatible; how to create high context-sensitivity in order to be able to plan consistently on “information territories” and on “knowledge buildings”; how to coordinate actions to be taken by sharing a common terminology meant to transmit very precise instructions.” and again: “Information Design needs to be based upon Visions on Information in a very broad sense. Only this way will it be possible to proceed toward organization of a whole information territory, with different tools, different functionalities, different materials and different individuals involved in the planning and in the actual construction.”

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and again: “Before any text construction may actually get started, the information site will need to be carefully measured and prepared.” “Construction workers will know what to do from blueprints prepared by textual architects and information engineers.” “Part of the workers’ training is knowing how to read blueprints.” “Specialized tools for building are needed so that construction is possible upon accurate excavation, which means digging the hole for the foundation and basement.” Planning and further designing of a consistent metaphor will result into an extremely delicate operation, which implies a previous selection process among different possibilities, complemented by consistent reinterpretation of relevant aspects. Accurate selection of a specialized terminology based upon a global reconfiguration of just those elements, which are the relevant ones to be transferred from one wellknown domain into a newly established one, is also required. Neither words may be taken for granted nor ways of expressing concepts and of explaining processes may be considered obvious, just because the terminology may sound familiar, like in the following paragraphs: “It is very important to develop a special sensitivity to information problems such as: Where does the information flow start and stop now? Which dynamic flows of information should be converted into well organized information territories or knowledge buildings of various kinds? Which flows of information are more likely to stop or continue?” and again: “Relevant questions to be asked to support evaluative and strategic reasoning: Where did the information flow get started? How did the information flow get started? For how long did the information flow continue? How many operators have been involved in the process? For how long have operators been involved in the process?

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Which role did the operators actually play? Which kind of planning of the construction was made? Did the actual design reflect the original planning? Did the actual implementation reflect the design and the planning? Which changes and/or near misses may be recognized and why were they made?” If a physical approach toward communication, information and knowledge building is introduced, then many variables come into play, such as space and time. An information organization and knowledge building process needs to be directed toward a highly specific goal achievement and be related to time and space variables. Different times of perception as well as different spaces of perception should be foreseen. Consequently, each term needs to be accurately reframed and redefined: without such previous re-conceptualization process, fuzziness and confusion may arise later. A metaphor is produced to support redefinition within a specific knowledge domain, is a dynamic structure, meant to be turned into a reliable cognitive tool for supporting description of newly defined problems and for designing ways to solve them consistently. Metaphors are dynamic and are therefore specifically suited for grasping the inherent complexity of each phenomenon or set of phenomena, they are meant to represent, both synthetically and analytically. It may sound contradictory and unusual to think of metaphors as analytical procedures, metaphors being conceived primarily and used as synthetical procedures planned to indicate new meaning connections. By introducing the concept of progressive reconfiguration of a metaphorical structure stage by stage, the possibility of introducing analytical thinking into the planning and designing of precisely articulated metaphors becomes real. In order to better understand which important implications may be derived, let us carefully consider a metaphor as the result of a complex process of meaning attribution and redefinition. A metaphor is the result of accurate transferring of a certain meaning, coming out of a selection of relevant features, from an “old”, well established and known domain, into a “new” and less established, because still vaguely defined, domain. A scientific metaphor is meant to enlighten first and then describe, define and explain an event or fact or set of events of facts.

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The transferred meaning may be represented by an entire concept or chain of concepts, also triggering more concepts and further connections, as we may see in the following set of redefinitions: Envisioning: Meant specifically for architectural models evolving in space and time, information flows to be then organized as information territories. The envisioning process shows to be particularly useful and a higher degree of accuracy may be reached thanks to technical capacity and mastering of both simple and complex techniques. Viewing: meant specifically for both simple and complex objects, structures and textures and to be linked directly to architectural, photographic and pictorial perception. The dynamically evolving process of viewing shows to be effective in order to identify and represent multiple levels and layers, and to recreate holographic configuration in language and in communication. Visualizing: meant specifically for identifying, defining, representing and exploring elements, which were previously unidentified, after having had them surface. The process of observation and accurate analysis, just like in physics and chemistry, allows for definition and description of different kinds of phenomena, at different levels of complexity. Metaphors in poetry not only allow but welcome a whole set of possible interpretations; they are therefore by definition meant to be centrifugal, because they entail expansion of possible meaning attribution toward different directions and paths, departing from a core definition. In order to make sure that a scientific metaphor is adequate in the sense of conveying specifically that kind of meaning, which is intended to be conveyed, it needs to undergo most fundamental changes and become centripetal, which means that different kinds of meaning attribution processes will have to converge toward a very precise core definition. A scientific metaphor is always generated within a specific and only relatively stable realm, which means that it comes from a certain region of meaning, where dif-

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ferent semantic attributions may be possible and may in fact occur, but only some of which may alternatively prevail or dominate as to be transferred into newly established conceptual domains. Metaphorical perception in poetry is in fact based upon most welcomed and most appropriate co-occurrence of various meaning attribution operations. If this is precisely what metaphors are good for and are about in poetry, the same may not apply to the design of scientific metaphors, which are meant to facilitate highly specific meaning attribution as to avoid undesired meaning accretion. In order to be reliable, any scientific metaphor will have to be conceived as part of a more general framework, where by framework we mean a skeletal structure of meaning, which has been previously designed, set up and accurately checked in its own single parts, which are all interconnected and interdependent as well. A scientific metaphor designer needs to proceed toward accurate and highly specific definition of each of those parts, as to turn a “framework” into a “domain”, which is precisely a meaning territory governed by a single overall ruling principle. Only at that point will the metaphorical domain be ready to be turned into an operative tool for a more articulated interpretation and understanding of a complex phenomenon or set of phenomena. In order to present an accurate definition of an “operationally valid metaphor,” we need to first analyze the process of further and progressive approximation a metaphor is supposed to undergo, when proceeding from a general and well established knowledge domain, passing through a carefully defined intermediate stage to then finally end up to a new domain for new meaning attribution. The conceptual model for progressive meaning shifting from one domain into another one presented here, needs to be viewed in conjunction with the previously introduced definition of metaphor, and it is aimed toward representing different states of a same metaphor, which has been undergoing radical changes, here defined kernel changes, because of the activation of very strong processes as transformations, such as meaning explosion of different kinds. Once a certain word has been accurately reconfigured, showing a set of precisely defined meaningful links, and organized within a highly predictable context, according to consistent mapping of expected associations, based upon common sense

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reasoning, will it then be possible to proceed toward more powerful and radical changes, as it shows in the following set of metaphorical instructions: “Identify the ‘information territory’ Visit the ‘information territory’ Choose the suitable ‘knowledge material’ Choose the available ‘knowledge material’ Select techniques for planning and building Decide techniques for restoration and completion Plan accurately for integration of ‘present’ and ‘future’ Plan accurately for integration of ‘past’ and ‘present’ Plan on space and time needed for future construction Recognize / analyze space and time needed in the already available construction Plan on functionalities to be ‘built in’ Verify the already existing and ‘built in’ functionalities” And in the following set of metaphorical questions: “Viollet Le Duc carefully explored and studied the relationship existing between the kind of material and the finally resulting building, with specific attention paid to technical details. Gaudì proceeded toward extension and expansion of previously organized models available in the architectural studies tradition of his country. Relevant questions to be answered in Modernism were: which ‘models’ should be selected and for what reasons; How a ‘single style’ should reflect upon ‘collective style’ and how eclecticism still will have single authors; How the ‘new tradition’ should be linked to the ‘old tradition’ and be recognized in its own features; How ‘complexity,’ ‘contradictions,’ ‘dynamicity,’ ‘continuity’ and ‘diversity’ need to be combined and in which ways should different models reflect different users’ needs.”

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Among those radical changes, which create a further layer of interpretation, meaning perturbation may be defined as both the action of perturbing a set of existing links and the resulting condition of a word within its own natural context for interpretation. It is a fact that perturbation may cause kernel meaning structures to undergo substantial modifications; according to this view, inner transformations will occur in predictable chains of reactions, which may be monitored. Transferring a word from a previous and well established context of interpretation into a new and dynamically evolving context of interpretation implies that the word will change its meaning state, according to a set of principles, which have been applied in a more or less powerful way. Nevertheless traces of modifications occurring are left, as to be able to keep track in details of each transformation, which has occurred. Progressively transferring a word from a certain domain into another may also be defined in terms of revision stages at different levels of approximation, until a final domain is reached throughout a set of precise operations, which are to be performed upon the same word. Proceeding from expected interpretation throughout progressive stages of perturbation will result into a whole set of radical changes. Discarding of meaningful links and consistent reconfiguration will indicate the specific need for accurate multilayered and multifaceted representation of those very specific explosion and aggregation processes, which have occurred causing the overall meaning to progressively shift and even radically change at the end. In order to capture such complexity, only a very articulated and complex metaphorical structure may serve the purpose. Observation of different radical changes occurring at the kernel level of meaningful links will in fact result into a set of different observational stages to be progressively and dynamically represented. Perturbation and radical changes have occurred in different parts of the originating context and have caused changes to occur at different levels, just as a set of explosion processes would do. Observation is therefore bound to different stages: moving around old meaningful links, which had been discarded, is an absolute requirement for any researcher and scientist today in order to focus and to actually understand which changes may be made and which are the consequences of such changes. In the process of creation of

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a metaphor, no understanding of the whole set of transformations is ever possible at the same time. Observation is in fact bound to moving around and finding the right perspective for viewing and observing each single meaning explosion or aggregation having occurred. Figures 2.3 to 2.8 are meant to represent qualitatively different kinds of radical transformations, having occurred at the kernel level of meaning of each word transferred from an originating domain into a new one still “under construction.” Details in each of the present meaning reconfiguration schemes may be grasped only if the observational point of view is shifted by moving around the same word, which is undergoing multiple changes in many directions at the same time. Observation is also bound to the possibility of recognizing different kinds of explosion in meaning, which have occurred at different times, so that an overall perception about something, which has occurred and has produced major changes within the original structure, may be gathered. A more accurate multilayered and multifaceted perspective or set of perspectives, related to different observational points, to be accurately identified may be reached after all. It will be part of the originating decision making to include and dynamically visualize these most fundamental changes, which have occurred according to most appropriate points of observation, so that qualitatively different and extraordinary powerful phenomena, which have occurred, may be grasped in their complexity.

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Figure 2.3. A word exploded and losing some of its expected meaningful links in multiple directions.

2.3. A. Gaudi': Parque Guell, Park Guell, Barcelona.

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discontinued process areas for observation

core of information

no information

Figure 2.4. A word becoming a metaphor showing holes and discontinuities while undergoing a reconfiguration process.

2.4. A. Gaudi': Casa Mila', La Pedrera, Mila' House, Barcelona.

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no symmetry

no correspondence

Figure 2.5. A word becoming a metaphor gradually recreating new meaningful links, different from the old ones, which have been discarded.

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2.5. A. Gaudi': Parque Guell, Park Guell, Barcelona.

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Figure 2.6. The newly reconfigured word showing new meaningful links and connections established.

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2.6. A. Gaudi': Parque Guell, Park Guell, Barcelona.

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Figure 2.7. The newly reconfigured word comparatively showing now how old links needed to be disconnected as to allow for new links to be established.

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2.7. A. Gaudi': Casa Mila', La Pedrera, Mila' House, Barcelona.

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Figure 2.8. The newly reconfigured word, which has become completely independent from the old context, creating new context for interpretation.

2.8. A. Gaudi': Parque Guell, Park Guell, Barcelona.

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Without accurate monitoring of the overall process, it would be hard to identify those relevant features of the metaphor, which need to be checked and analyzed in order to gain a correct perception of the kinds of perturbation, which have occurred. The dynamic model here introduced is meant to represent at a macrolevel those same phenomena, which may be represented at a microlevel in terms of chains of reactions consolidating as new combinations of meaningful links in sequences of words, which have undergone metaphorical processing altogether. The actual need to represent major changes at a macroscopic level emerges as a result of the specific intent of making visual and physical the overall perception of a highly articulated phenomenon such as scientific metaphor making. Experiencing different observational points of view, still within the same metaphor, will guarantee for a whole set of differentiated perception modes, which would otherwise be lost. Anyone accessing a scientific metaphor meant to create a shared new context of meaningful relationships should always be aware of the continuity of those links and of those new connections established. Well formed metaphors are characterized by stabilized context conditions. A major difference exists between a stabilized word in a relative stable domain and a word, which is characterized by stabilized conditions, coming after major changes and perturbation effects, which may completely modify the originating set of meaningful links and context, within a relatively unstable domain. Accurate checking on newly established conditions within a metaphor will be needed in order to find out about the details of newly established equilibrium conditions, both at a local and at a global level. In other words, not only is the point of view for observation subject to continuous change and movement, but it is also bound to accurate checking of discontinuous conditions as for newly established and highly localized meaningful links reconfiguration. Differences among meaning reconfiguration processes may be defined as it follows: • Restoring: have the original meaningful structure of a word surface and kept as much as possible within an unstable domain. • Restructuring: have the original meaningful structure of a word surface to be completed and expanded and refunctionalized within an unstable domain.

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• Reassembling: have the original meaningful structure of a word surface as to have as many original parts and pieces fit together according to a newly designed structure. • Reconfiguring: have a strong common sense based knowledge model available as to have a plausible new setting consistently organized within an unstable domain. According to different combinations among and between words, a whole set of possibilities will be made visible, resulting into new but still predictable meaning aggregations. Such model reflects different stages, single steps or degrees just like special phases and positions are part of an evolving process. Such model also reflects different states, which are different “conditions of meaning pressure,” in need to be consistently visualized. Analogical reasoning, in a specific knowledge domain, has to be conceived in terms of harmonious interplay of different kinds of experiences through consensual sharing of a common terminology and progressive building of a new framework of reference. This way it will be much easier to enlighten and share output results based upon a terminology, which may facilitate exchange of data, information and work in progress within a relatively stable knowledge domain. A relevant example of analogical reasoning is established as to represent the concept of information decompression and knowledge packaging, as it follows: “The Microwave and Frozen Pie Example: Be very cautious when you decompress information! Passing from a certain state, the compressed one, into another, the decompressed one, too rapidly, may affect the perception because of the quantity overload, just like leaving a frozen pie within a microwave, far behind due and expected time.” “The Chairs and Window Example: Create as much structure as needed in packaging knowledge! Too much structure may result in undesirable constraints, whereas visibility may require moving around without hitting heavily constraining and rigid barriers, just like if you add too much structure to a chair, knees and legs may be injured, or if you add it to a window, your actual viewing may be jeopardized.”

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We may think of an analogy as a whole system, which has been originally planned, conceived and designed to fit a certain set of contexts, which may be defined as contexts for meaning management. Not only should categories be changed to allow new categories to be identified as to represent different aspects of specific knowledge, but an overall reconfiguration of functionalities and contexts needs to be progressively reshaped, as to allow the analogy to become “a same structure but different functionalities system.” An information management system may be visually represented by a whole set of drawings, indicating different stages involving changes and modifications. New categories will have to be introduced according to accurate decision making, upon which kinds of specific knowledge domains should be addressed, because most suited and therefore “relatively stable.” In order to be able to proceed toward a basic configuration of an information management system, we need to specify that the original context will have to be progressively taken away as to create the possibility for a new context to be introduced and harmoniously incorporated. Reconfiguration of the system is based upon consensus on new categories to be introduced as well as upon agreement about definitions to be used. Just like for a word undergoing metaphorical transport, old links, which have accumulated over time, will be substituted with new links based on consensual decision making upon new relevant knowledge to be made widely available. Figure 2.9 shows precisely how the progressive reconfiguration of the system should take place. First of all an analogy is recognized in its own original context as becoming progressively free out of accumulated contextual links based upon categories, which are only related to the originating domain of action as well as interpretations deriving from the originating model, not to be reported and referred to any longer. Transitional stages have to be foreseen as to allow reconfiguration to actually take place, by progressively discarding the originating model. Progressive discarding needs to be complemented by a parallel process of newly defined links assignment, as to proceed toward accurate reconfiguration.

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pe elo ge v E n gua n La

Figure 2.9. A knowledge shell undergoing analogical reconfiguration.

Finally an information management system needs and implies a set of different operations to be performed within the context of each original setting, as to produce a new and precise definition to be made accessible and to be turned into an operationally valid and productive category to be stabilized, commonly shared and productively used. The very first operation is the most accurate preparation of a consistent and stabilized set of categories and solidified and selected knowledge, which comes as the result of accurate decision making by experts in the specific knowledge domain. What is in fact represented in figure 2.9 as a set of segments, each of them embedded within an amoebae-like space, is the body of consolidated knowledge selected after an accurate decision making has occurred. It comes from a much more dense context of information and knowledge, based on terminology, produced and consensually agreed upon by experts in a specific knowledge domain, which may be defined as “knowledge shell.”

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A fundamental and absolutely mandatory process of translation from each term coming from the knowledge shell has to be foreseen as the only viable solution as to produce common sense knowledge to be then made available to a wider community. Commonality of terminology, just like an envelope explicitly showing the sender and the receiver, will favor and enhance qualitative reasoning about the kinds of operations performed, upon specialized knowledge; the commonly shared code may be productively referred to as “envelope language.” Figure 2.10 shows how a precisely redefined and commonly shared terminology may facilitate communication by actually enabling experts in a field to discuss, share and disseminate their own respective contributions at different levels of details. A commonly shared language will be specifically appreciated, and it will add value to communicative intercourses by respecting and keeping the originating context too. e l op ve a ge n E gu n La

Figure 2.10. Envelope language facilitating the analogical reconfiguration process.

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Figure 2.11 shows how a shared language may open up the possibility for an effective exchange of experiences, which may lead toward harmonious convergency of various teams of experts coming from different knowledge domains. By harmonious convergency we precisely mean that, due to a commonality of lexicon and sharing of experiences, two or even more teams of experts coming from closely related research fields and knowledge domains, may find that they are working on a set of common problems in ways which may be harmoniously merged by joining efforts altogether. Harmonious convergency requires conceptual merging and reshuffling. Two or more teams of experts will be in charge of major decision making upon terminology to be finally agreed upon and widely adapted. e op v e l ag e n E gu n La

Figure 2.11. Envelope language having reinforced meaningful links.

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Figure 2.12 shows how the process of a single information segment reconfiguration for a new knowledge domain may result into a very precise definition, therefore liberating completely the analogy management system from old and undesired meaning concretions, found to be of no use any longer, and allowing the possibility for complete redefinition, according to the new and agreed upon meaningful links.

Envelope Language

Figure 2.12. Knowledge segments reconfiguration for new definition.

Figure 2.13 shows how the newly defined and now in full use information segment may reflect and fulfill actual needs, which have been previously identified, in highly personalized and flexible ways. Different levels of visibility for specialized information may be provided according to users' demands and specific needs. The system at this stage will incorporate a component, which is specifically meant to visualize steps in the information problem diagnosis for each single case under examination, showing how single new information segments were designed in their respective dynamics, and how they may be stabilized to be productively used.

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pe el o g e v En gua n La

Figure 2.13. Analogy management system in one of its consolidated and stabilized states.

We may also predict a specific access to tailored solutions for a whole variety of different tasks. We may predict a further kind of use for the system, which is meant to incorporate cases and stories to be consistently indexed to be reused, in order to constitute a relevant body of evidence for those kinds of cases, which are analyzed, reported and compared at different levels of similarity and at various ranks of analogy. Some cases may in fact result into powerful examples; they constitute therefore a most appropriate model for generalization, and extended inferences may be drawn upon bodies of knowledge to be then reused for new cases, which are already under examination because of inherited analogical properties. At this level the system will work as a learning system precisely meant to provide experts with appropriate tools for interpretation and consistent decision making. The nature of an information management system will therefore be “poliedrical”, “multifacets” and “incremental”.

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By “poliedrical” we mean that multiple perspectives will be allowed according to what each user will be willing to see through the system depending on a predefined task or set of tasks to be completed. By “multifaceted” we mean that different categories of users may be foreseen or that the same user may be willing to change role and play different roles at different times, by redefining precisely the kind of perspective to be adopted at each given time. By “incremental” we mean precisely that various levels of knowledge and expertise are made available at different levels of access and time; each level is subject to both update and upgrade according to new information coming from different sources. Appropriate training will have to be provided at various levels and for different purposes as well as guidelines and precise directions for users in charge of inputting new information, according to particularly relevant experiences, which have been selected and found to be of significance in order to extend analogical reasoning further. Mutual monitoring on the users’ side will constitute a guarantee for maintenance according to a predefined set of requirements, though some centralized control will also be needed as to make sure functionality, roles and tasks, embedded within the originating structure to be performed by the system, are in fact respected. Explicit use of the envelope language may result into a most useful device. The concept of a cooperating team of experts in various knowledge domains mostly resides upon identification of a commonality of tasks and indicates the need for sharing experience, within a certain research community, in highly consensual ways. Effective information passing, knowledge packaging and conversational intercourses very much gain out of a common framework for interpretation and labeling according to a highly consistent and consensual model of reference. As soon as upgrading and updating needs surface and become relevant, those very same individual researchers or groups of experts involved in the project will have to

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acquire and analyze in depth the already existing knowledge available and the way it was first built up. Diversification of various levels of depth in accessing knowledge as well as in making the same resources available at different degrees, according to users' typology, needs and tasks, is one of the most fundamental issues to be addressed to make sure that the system may provide qualitatively different, even if highly compatible services. According to such an ambitious goal and for the complexity of tasks to be accomplished, an information management system will serve as an incredibly effective facility, unifying a wide often dispersed community of operators within a specific field, therefore constituting a real point of reference for researchers and a real point of departure for further experiences to be shared, evaluated and selected, as to be consistently reported and finally incorporated into stable documents. By accessing an information management system, intended to be also a learning facility, will each user be motivated into collecting more experiences to be filed according to already set up criteria, allowing for further links to be consistently established, kept and transmitted. This would allow strong connections between and among cases, recursive similarities and strong analogies, to be recognized, case by case. As a learning facility in itself, will any information management system also provide users with accurate models for effective reasoning about cases, which have been found relevant and have been consistently stored. Some specific categories coming from a specialized knowledge domain may be chosen as particularly significant ones as to be widely adopted, as they are the result of accurate decision making and consistent modeling on the experts’ side. An information management system is also meant to facilitate understanding of new concepts, reframing of old categories and reasoning about new possible links to be productively established between and among apparently disconnected events. If analogical reasoning is mostly based upon regressive thinking by linking “new” to known and well-established criteria and points of reference, therefore increasing synthetical capabilities, an information management system may be thought of as a means to establish still unexplored connections between and among phenomena.

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Specific attention should be paid to such phenomena as to avoid misunderstanding as for specific cases. Nothing could in fact be more dangerous than a wrong estimate, followed by an inaccurate decision making. Analogical reasoning may result into a very significant support for filing and indexing and labeling and triggering back cases, which have been appropriately analyzed and categorized. Analogical reasoning in a specific knowledge domain is only possible if complemented by an in-depth search for relevant features to be interpreted in their context, and then linked to previously examined and filed cases. This is why interpretation turns out to be a highly articulated process, which requires a set of specific procedures as to result into accurate explanation. Specific attention should be paid to the way analogies are being constructed: descriptions, explanations, narrations provide in fact qualitatively different knowledge mapping facilities. Specific categories of questions to be asked need to be identified and experts in the various knowledge domains need to become directly involved as to create a realistic model for relevant question asking, according to a predefined model of knowledge storing. Teams of experts will in fact have to undergo an overall rethinking process meant to help them redefine what they have done, researched and observed, not to mention an accurate process of rethinking about their own ways of observation, conditions for observation, and objects of observation. Rethinking of their own strategies as well as reframing of their respective roles constitutes a tremendous support for building a unifying model based upon respect and appreciation of a diversity of views and perspectives. An information management system will facilitate progressive thinking, analogies recognition, ranking capabilities for different kinds and degrees of analogy, consistent evaluation parameters setting, and accurate analytical thinking in most complex situations. Inferences may be correctly drawn only throughout the support of adequate cognitive tools. New concepts need to be architectured and carefully engineered, according to highly visual models of reasoning helping in the planning and progressive construction of new context.

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Diversity and exceptions are valued as precious resources for further research and analysis, especially in those areas of expertise and knowledge, where a lot of unstable experiences are still to be interpreted, filed appropriately, and still have to be consistently organized and categorized. Inaccurate filing would in fact result into a very ineffective process, and more than that, into an extremely damaging procedure, leading toward oversimplification and misleading evaluation. Experts in various knowledge domains, will be able to see the practical advantages of being supported and sustained during the heuristic process. They will also find motivation for contributing with their own experience to the progressive growth and maintenance of the overall system. Decisions will have to be made about which cases, packaged as stories, should be incorporated as to be part of the permanent memory as opposed to just being part of the episodic memory. Qualitative reasoning about information constitutes a tremendous support for accurate decision making and for establishing consistent links and connections. Visual schemes may create a highly facilitating set-up for consistent packaging and dissemination of examples, stories, analogous cases, carrying along possible explanation and interpretation, to be then converted into a body of consolidated knowledge. Qualitative reasoning about different causes and symptoms to be consistently interpreted, will require different levels of access based on higher versus lower density of information to be provided to the different users as well as different degrees of technicality in a specialized language. Availability of verified information is in fact the result of a very accurate process of decision making, selection, focusing and consistent packaging. The Knowledge Grinding and Dripping Model is meant to describe the process of expert knowledge distribution within a specific knowledge domain, precisely addressed to different individuals being involved into the process of knowledge use for appropriate solution of specific problems. Let us first consider the following set of metaphorical statements: “Whenever major flows of information are in the process of getting organized and reconfigured as knowledge packages, a set of events is likely to occur.”

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If the events are well known in advance, they are then more likely to be monitored and turned into effective processes later on. “This is why a specific and complex competence allowing for communicative patterns recognition as well as for qualitative reasoning needs to be developed: competence being defined in the Webster’s Dictionary as ‘the quality or state of being adequate or of having sufficient knowledge, judgment, skills or strength in a certain field.’ ” In order to be able to explain how such model may be productively used, let us first summarize the process of specific knowledge categories definition, which has been assigned as one of the major tasks to teams of researchers and experts working within a certain domain. What final users are expecting to have is basically an accurate definition of a set of special knowledge domain categories and relevant knowledge containers, filed according to a very precise technical terminology and complemented with specific information, resulting from a consistent selection process occurred as the result of cooperative interaction by the experts, who have been assigned such task. Figure 2.14 represents the final agreement on relevant categories, reached through consensual final decision making by teams of experts involved. Teams of experts have been in charge of monitoring accurately the definition process for each case as well as the corresponding category assignment, they have therefore proceeded toward building a very precise set of categories and respective contexts for understanding, here defined as knowledge containers. Teams have also been in charge of the selection and decision making as for what is relevant to whom and what should be kept and how should it be appropriately named. If we were to create another parallel metaphor to better describe the process teams may go through, we may add that they are mostly in charge of “information harvesting and relevant data crop collection.” No doubt that they may play a most important role in controlling and monitoring information both quantitatively and qualitatively. Teams have therefore filled in the containers, having named them consensually and consistently.

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[Category] 1

Container1

[Category] 2

Container2

[Category] 3

Container3

[Category] 4

Container4

Figure 2.14. Expert knowledge grinding and dripping process, stage 1.

At this very precise stage of the process, users will come into play. According to each diagnosed case will users have to be able to proceed toward definition as for their own information needs case by case; they will therefore have to get access to information being facilitated in the process of predefining their needs, as shown in the following example: “Decision making on monuments, malls, scenography determines choice of material and level of commitment” and “Permanent buildings have suggested paths though some internal change is possible.” Criteria, which have been identified, show basic stability: “Temporary set ups like scenography show as special information settings, providing more or less close relationships between actor and audience, and imply different degrees of active versus passive behavior.”

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Criteria which have been identified, show flexibility of use: “Semipermanent buildings have free paths showing structural information distribution stability, though changes and revisions are possible. Internal restructuring and refunctionalizing also possible.” After the process of expert knowledge acquisition has been completed at a very basic level, it will become much easier for users to pass knowledge to each other. Dissemination and distribution of newly acquired knowledge at this level will of course entail adequate understanding of a commonly shared code and a very active role in the participation and sharing and dissemination of expert knowledge. The envelope language will in this case be a transitional language between and among different states of information, meant to transfer knowledge from one specialized domain into another; accurate decision making is needed as to provide the individual with those conceptual tools, which are absolutely relevant to insure success to any knowledge conversion operation, based on monitoring and control capabilities upon the overall process. By assuming a more protagonistic role within the process, experts will be in charge of autonomous decision making, both in terms of density of information they are willing to provide and in terms of distribution among different partners cooperating within a certain field. As it goes further: “TEXTUAL SCENOGRAPHY is the art of representing a document on a perspective plan reflecting one or more specific point or points of view and not on a principal interpretation axis. It is therefore considered to be the art of perspective representation applied to the organization and representation of stage cooperative working scenarios. ORTHOGRAPHIC PROJECTION being the specific technique and set of techniques meant to focus on a specific point desired or set of specific points desired.” Once the level of processing has been determined and both quantity and quality of information have been carefully defined, specifically designed and personalized

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packages of knowledge may become available for each individual. Figure 2.15 represents the stages of the process which have been synthetically described. Levels of * 1 2 processing 3 4

Closed EL

Open EL

EL EK

Control on both quality and quantity.

LEVEL OF PROCESSING

EK=Expert knowledge EL=Envelope Language: means transitional language among and between different stages of information

Figure 2.15. Expert knowledge grinding and dripping process, stage 2.

Special care and attention should be paid to the role played by experts cooperating, as to carefully decide which task should be assigned to each of them. There is in fact a strong link between the intensity and effectiveness of a certain kind of processing and the number and kind of individuals participating to the process. Nothing will have to be left to arbitrary choices and accurate and consensual decision making will have to be promoted as to avoid inconsistencies, which may arise later on, leading toward confusion and undesired ambiguity at the end. Figures 2.16 and 2.17 represent accurate distribution of roles to be played consistently within each knowledge dissemination process; definition of tasks does in fact constitute a fundamental issue.

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Figure 2.16. Expert knowledge grinding and dripping process, stage 3.

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Figure 2.17. Expert knowledge grinding and dripping process, stage 4.

Knowledge packages based upon personalized needs and demands should be provided to individuals in order to be properly understood and processed, information will have to undergo a major process of reconfiguration according to the need. Final aim is conveying knowledge to those individuals who are not experts in the field, therefore in need for precise directions and for some basic knowledge. Knowledge coming out as the result of new cases observation, found to serve as productive examples, will produce an incredible amount of new data, information and stories to be filed consistently. Some of these cases will in fact serve as reinforcement for precedent cases, some of which will constitute an important platform for further expansion in the range of applications of an already well-tested and carefully verified procedure. Some of those cases will provide new evidence for newly discovered aspects or open up possibilities for new inferences to be drawn. New

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knowledge coming in and new cases supporting evidence will constitute a significantly wide repository for further research based on new incoming information to be consolidated. Extra space for new experiences, found specifically significant to be kept as outside information supporting evidence to inside knowledge, which has already been stabilized, will have to be foreseen. The definition of a metaphor, introduced by Webster’s Dictionary, is the following one: “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.” This short statement is indeed quite interesting because it points out first of all that a metaphor, (from Greek: metaphora, transfer), is a “figure of speech” which in cognitive terms means a visual representation of language activities meant to convey some meaning, which would not be visible otherwise. Like we may further see in the following example: “Textual Restoration is based upon: first recognizing the nature of the knowledge material, second reassessing the nature of the knowledge material, third choosing the kind of restoration.” A metaphor is not a fuzzy model, complexity does in fact entail a high degree of accuracy and precision. In order to be properly handled, those different layers of meaning and levels need in fact to be first isolated, recognized and defined, and then prioritized, selected and progressively ordered as to allow for appropriate interpretation to occur. The concept of “metaphor performance” derives directly from the more comprehensive concept of “complex and dynamic conceptual environment.” The visual dimension of a metaphor is meant to underline the fact that a metaphor is a conceptual tool for explanation which may significantly gain out of visualization. The Random House Dictionary has a slightly different but completely compatible definition, which is the following one: “a figure of speech, in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.”

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The “literal applicability” would entail illustration of observable elements, whereas “resembling” implies projection of meaning according to visualization criteria, which means being able to observe through a theory and not just with naked eyes (Tonfoni, 1996). Not only may we have highly defined metaphors, but also “mixed metaphors” also called “similes”, which are used or regarded as being used to represent “something else,” to be still defined. Analogy is defined in the Random House Dictionary as “a similarity between the features of two things, on which a comparison may be based” and again as “ a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.” If we take literally this definition of “form of reasoning” we can see the implications of it, which are somehow related to a visual representation of a complex and dynamically evolving process, in many and various steps. During the last two decades, there have been great advances in the development of artificial intelligence paradigms including knowledge-based systems also called expert systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary programming and agent-based systems. These paradigms have been successfully applied in many areas (Howlett, 2001; Jain, 1997-2002; Lazzerini, 2000; Medsker, 2000; Russo, 2001; Sato, 1997; Seiffert, 2002; Teodorescu, 1998-2001; Van Rooij, 1996; Vonk, 1997) including document management. There are many differences between problem solving using the techniques associated with traditional data processing and problem solving which uses a knowledge-based approach. For example, in knowledge-based techniques, there is an emphasis on knowledge rather than process. It suggests that the adoption of knowledge-based techniques will have several advantages over alternative procedural techniques in attempting to solve significant problems in the area under discussion. The knowledge derived from the expertise and experience of the most competent designers can be made available to all those who wish to create document management techniques. We may conclude this chapter by saying that we share the memories we have built. We create “modes of reasoning” brick by brick, where each brick stays for one piece of memory, one story. The resulting overall building will create the way we see and interpret events and facts in our lives.

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On Envisioning Documentation

This chapter of such a “highly visual book” is much less textual than the first section is. This chapter is based upon a combination of rather short textual explanations complementing a set of illustrations. Those illustrations are meant to convey visually the very same concepts, which have been previously textually introduced and linearly explained. Readers are suggested to take all the time they need as they move along paragraphs and then to proceed their reading journey through the set of figures, moving from figure 3.1 to figure 3.7, following subheadings clearly indicating the concepts introduced. A set of “relevant questions” to be addressed complement each figure. This chapter may present very different reading times. In other words there is no way to tell how much time will be necessary to each reader to go through this section. As this book has also been designed to promote awareness as for our cognitive profile and skills and preferences, it will be on the reader’s side to observe and keep track of reading time and reading pauses, which may become necessary. Differently than other books and exercises where there are right answers and wrong answers as for some question posed, there is no such thing as a correct or incorrect reading time and reaction to concepts presented and illustrated here. Envisioning a certain information problem and beyond that evolving those abilities which are most suited to be able to then proceed toward further information problems capturing and grasping by finding the most consistent way to envision them and then solve them, may only become possible throughout a quite articulated learning path. Readers are encouraged to take their time as to try envisioning the information problems which are here illustrated. Some preliminary observation coming in the form of paragraphs in the next pages are meant to help readers who will then be

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asked to think about very relevant questions which may involve time to be really thought through. When a problem is there, we need to be able to describe it and define it first, as to be then able to solve it. Packaging information as to have it available, conveyed and perceived as it was first intended, is not at all an obvious operation, it is rather a complex and highly articulated process, which requires many and various abilities and skills. As to make sure that an “information deliverable” is organized consistently with the purpose previously identified as to be prioritized, a whole set of operations need to be performed and many crucial answers need to find a response. Some textual operations are relatively easy to be performed, whereas some others need to be first defined, as they require a much deeper understanding of the nature of the information problem to be solved. In order to understand a complex problem, an accurate and very articulated representation of such problem is not only useful, but absolutely needed. This is the reason why within some scientific fields, such as the ones of physics and chemistry, models for visually representing those problems, which then need to be solved, have been developed and carried on through time. The symbology, which has been derived accordingly is now consensually shared by the research community worldwide and it also constitutes an interpretive infrastructure for conceiving new directions and for producing new results, to be then compared and exchanged. There is no doubt that visual tools help envision the various aspects of a certain process or a complex object, including facts and events and dynamically evolving in time. Graphical representation has a whole literature on its own evolved over times and meant to optimize readability and transparency of information conveyed as we may read in Tufte (1983, 1990, 1998) and Costa (1998). There are in fact rules as to achieve well-formedness conditions in graphic representation such as for texts, and graphs and diagrams are also subject to variables and need to be evaluated as for their coherence and cohesiveness and more than that. Graphical representation are also bound to the nature of data they display as there are of course major distinctions to be drawn as for financial data versus his-

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torical data. Each domain will therefore dictate some specific and additional rules to be accounted for. The real problem we are addressing now is a different one as we are now here in the process of analyzing flows of information and documentations of different kinds by providing an on-top representation of the dynamic nature. Envisioning documentation, just like envisioning for architectural planning and modeling purposes according to space and time shift and change, means conceiving information as a dynamic flow to be then accurately organized and structured in the form of an information territory, once its “inner nature” has been carefully analyzed. Just like matter, information may show in different forms some of which are simple, whereas other are complex and quite mixed (Tonfoni 1996a, 1998a). Being able to recognize the specific nature of each piece of information is a most important process to be undertaken as soon as possible as to then be able to attribute reliability values to each piece of information accessed and to move on with consistent ranking of the various documents provided. Today, a large number of different resources are available that discrimination capabilities should definitely be acquired as to make sure that what is in fact provided as information may be considered to be effectively reliable information after all. Continuously shifting scenarios and continuously occurring turn taking among different individuals involved into one task along with continuous change presented as a real opportunity, do create the ideal conditions for entire flow of information to be taken as valid without previous and accurate scrutiny. Even if interpreted as challenging and rewarding altogether, there is no doubt that change and transitioning conditions, within an organizational structure, are perceived as threatening and need to be carefully considered and appropriately monitored. Motivation and commitment by individuals or teams to just one stage of a process, which is well known to be at risk and most likely to be either discontinued at any time or passed to different individuals or teams, is hard to keep.

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Evidently, those individuals involved with a certain process perceive and resent instability either consciously or unconsciously, even if they are encouraged to feel committed to what they have been asked to do temporarily as to complete those tasks, they have been assigned. But are results achieved under such conditions actually going to be part of the organizational memory and are they going to be used at all? Which kinds of contributions will actually remain visible if waves of new information, sometime contradictory and fuzzy altogether, are likely to actually prevent any clear-cut decision making based upon stabilized conditions and assumptions to take place? These and more questions are very likely to come up many times every day within a corporate environment and any organizational environment in the stormy information era we live today. Even if individuals are encouraged to think of change as an opportunity to learn for themselves first and as a challenge to cooperatively interact and work in teams, insecurity and instability are present and are of course perceived as diminishing and frightening factors, playing both against personal initiative taking and collaborative attitudes. As a consequence of perturbation and instability, information management, subject to continuous change, is characterized by the following features: • increasingly wide amount of information coming in fuzzy and rough, both synchronously and asynchronously; • increasingly wide amount of contradictory and inconsistent data, in need to be constantly checked and continuously verified; • increasingly frequent change of conditions of satisfaction and continuously occurring communicative context shifts. Decision making, based upon such unstable conditions, is perceived as a fuzzy process. Output may easily result into arbitrariness and chance. If decision makers are not provided relevant information and consequently are unable to envision a consistent model for taking action, they will not be in a position to make reasonable projections and predictions. They will rather be inclined, as a consequence, to resist full involvement and full commitment. Decision making, subject to continuous change of roles, played by single individuals and teams, may also turn out fuzzy. If decision makers may not foresee how long and to which extent they will actually be in charge of and effectively responsible for a certain process, they have initiated,

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they will definitely be likely to resist providing their own experience and those knowledge-based interpretive clues, they have themselves developed in the course of the years, as to facilitate problem solving by someone else. Such resistance is not to be referred exclusively to personality issues and feelings of individual proud, which are obviously there too, but also derives from awareness that each change of context and protagonists, does create a new situation, where a certain problem-solving strategy, which may have been previously suggested and considered to be the valid one, may simply just no longer work. Documentation management is strictly bound to accuracy, motivation and responsibility shown by individuals involved in the process of the document creation and further development throughout a whole set of transitional states. Lack of those elements radically affects the way information flows are perceived, monitored and channeled within an organizational structure. The framework here proposed is aimed toward creating and keeping optimized conditions for positively coping with change and for supporting effective decision making under unstable conditions, by reinforcing the decision makers’ role and responsibility, providing both conceptual and practical tools meant to establish most favorable conditions for taking action. In order to become most effective and sensitive documentation management experts today a whole change in ways documentation management is perceived becomes necessary. Changing perceptions in documentation management becomes a real must. But what is documentation really? Documentation (from Latin documentum: to be taught) is the output result of a whole set of packaging and repackaging operations performed ideally by individuals working collaboratively in groups, within the same organization structure. Daily events, current interactions, occasional conversations as well as planned meetings establish the conditions for information to flow throughout different media and in many and various ways and create the context for an accurate understanding of the organizational culture by en large. Information may be coming in various flows and waves, to be filtered, categorized and organized as to be accessible and reusable for different purposes at different times. As soon as some information is found to be of relevance as to become stabi-

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lized and be turned into a document, then the need to store information in ways, which may be made fully transparent, becomes a major issue. Information packaging based upon both topic continuity and context consistency is a most fundamental process, upon which accurate and timely decision making resides. Availability and accessibility of packages of information in document formats needs to be supported by an enhanced labeling system, which may help speed up effective retrieval. In other words, each document or piece of document will have to be labeled according to qualitative reasoning criteria upon the nature of information. Labeling may extend to single pieces of documents where by piece of document we mean a consistent topic and context completed section of a document, which is recognized as a unit by itself, ready to be linked up to other documents, according to topic continuity and context consistency. Not only is it important to suggest statistical methods for identifying topical words in the form of keywords, but it is also important to add interpretive clues for allowing qualitative reasoning on top as well. Qualitative reasoning upon information is the result of awareness, responsibility and commitment shown by individuals to a certain process or set of processes they have been assigned to and are in charge of. By indicating explicitly which kind of information each document contains, will the originating context, in which the information was first packaged, become visible. By showing which kind of progressive revisions have in fact produced various documental transitional states and by indicating explicitly those upgrading and updating operations or other kinds of modifications, which have been performed, will it also become possible to trace back individuals’ contributions in repackaging, all throughout the different context shifts, which have occurred at various times. Reshuffling scattered pieces of information coming in textual forms and formats, as to turn them into thoroughly organized documentation packages, according to a diversified set of needs and priorities and depending upon continuously changing scenarios, entails a specific competence and cannot be subject to arbitrary and occasional decision making.

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Not only is a very specific «context sensitivity» required, but a consensually shared framework for interpretation needs to be fully available as to be referred to, in order to be actually able to label documents and pieces of documents consistently. A common understanding and naming of the different operations performed is a basic requirement. Each document, in the process of being packaged and labeled as to be ready to be repackaged for further use, represents a learning opportunity for those individuals involved as they will be asked to observe, define and finally indicate those very same operations, which they have performed. As a consequence of explicit illustration of perspective and angles chosen and actions taken upon information, may the same document become a learning and teaching opportunity for those individuals and groups, who will be in need to access the same document, in order to gain knowledge and to process it further, by repackaging it either locally or globally or both. According to such perspective, will each document carry its own history attached, while undergoing changes of various kinds, and may therefore be constantly observed while transitioning throughout different states of information, which may affect its originating communicative value more or less radically. Transitional states within a certain document are therefore to be considered those temporarily defined and stabilized states of information, which provide evidence and support for a certain set of decision-making processes, which have occurred or are going to occur next. Change applies to the conditions of satisfaction any communicative occurrence entails as well as to priorities and roles played by single individuals involved. Temporarily stabilized documentation states will therefore provide context, evidence and visibility for each individual, who is actively involved into the process. Documentation organized and built up according to such view, does also constitute a tremendously rich repository for collective memories within an organization and does create the context for interpretation and understanding of present and past conditions. Obviously, a consensually shared encoding system needs to be provided and made compatible with all the information technologies, which are currently used by the organizational structure as to be made transportable throughout the different communicative situations occurring in the specific culture, and this is precisely why a

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common visual system for encoding documentation has been found to be most flexible and handy. As we have seen before document, from Latin “documentum” and “doceo” literally refers to “an example meant to teach, both for giving instructions and for warning purposes.” A document is therefore any important piece of information, which needs to be carefully analyzed in full details as to be interpreted and used consistently. A document comes from “somewhere and lead toward somewhere else”; it is a support for decision making based upon information coming from different sources, which is meant to produce new information to be reused. In summary: a document may be defined as “a temporarily stabilized piece of information, both verbal and written, which has been derived from an information flow, dynamically evolving and of complex nature, then converted into a written format.” Any document may therefore be approached correctly and consistently understood only if the information flow, from which such document has been derived, is appropriately taken into account and analyzed in its own nature. Relevant questions to be first addressed are the following ones: • What is envisioning documentation in the first place? • What is iconizing documentation? • What is visualizing documentation? Through documentation we create and provide evidence and we convey information, which may also be spread around. Documentation is meant to provide an interpretive infrastructure to a whole organization. Referring to the various definitions of the term “documentation” provided by Webster’s Dictionary, Third International Edition, let us especially focus on the following ones: “documentation is the provision of footnotes, appendices or addenda referring to or containing documentary evidence in verification of facts or in support of theory in a piece of writing” and “the assembling, coding and disseminating of recorded knowledge, comprehensively treated as an integral procedure utilizing semantics, psychological and mechanical aids, techniques of reproduction for giving documentary information maximum accessibility and usability.”

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As a specific aim of this book is to actually create the context for seeing aspects of documentation, which are of major relevance, few possible configurations of dynamic flows of information are visually represented in the sequence of visual schemes, now following, on “Dynamic Flows of Documentation.” The sequence of illustrations here introduced is meant to indicate what “envisioning documentation” really means; which is visual rendering of the complex nature of information both quantitatively and qualitatively, as to be able to assign reliability values correctly and monitor the whole process consistently. The readers of this book are now invited to try to envision information according to the set of illustrations following from figure 3.1 to figure 3.7. Each of these figures is complemented by a whole set of questions, which readers are asked to ponder and think about, not to directly respond to. Readers are invited to observe and think along the next pages without taking any further direct action other than a deep thought on very important issues which are often neglected, even if inadvertently, and pass unnoticed. Readers are here provided an opportunity to observe, read, pause and think.

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Dynamic Flows of Documentation

Figure 3.1. Sequences of documents coming in mixed and fuzzy format they derive from different sources and show inconsistencies.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Is this document reliable? • Where does this document come from? • Is the source of this document a reliable one?

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Figure 3.2. Sequences of documents showing gaps and discontinuities to be cleared.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Is this one part of the document reliable? • Where does this one part of the document come from? • Is the whole document consistent in all of its parts or should some parts just be considered as not reliable ones?

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Dynamic Flows of Documentation

Figure 3.3. Pieces of documents to be turned into a consistent sequence.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Should pieces of documents be really left apart if they come from diverse sources? • Shouldn’t consistent pieces of documents, once verified, be turned into a consistent sequence? • Shouldn’t verified sources just be considered valid even if of diverse nature?

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Figure 3.4. Sequences of documents carrying along contradictory and incomplete interpretation.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Should sequences of documents, previously archived and ordered, be used as “pieces of evidence” if they still carry along contradictory and incomplete interpretation? • Shouldn’t sequences of documents carrying along contradictory and incomplete interpretation be totally rediscussed? • Shouldn’t sequences of documents carrying along contradiction and incomplete interpretation be declared of no use as “pieces of evidence”?

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Dynamic Flows of Documentation

Figure 3.5. Sequences of documents which have been consistently organized.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Should sequences of documents, which have been consistently organized, be used as “pieces of evidence”? • Should sequences of documents, which have been consistently organized, still declare their sources? • Should sequences of documents, which have been consistently organized, still undergo revision stages?

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Dynamic Flows of Documentation

Figure 3.6. A carefully processed sequence of documents organized into a consistent set of documents.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Should a carefully processed sequence of documents organized into a consistent set of documents be used as a “piece of evidence”? • Should a carefully processed sequence of documents organized into a consistent set of documents follow a logical order? • Should a carefully processed sequence of documents organized into a consistent set of documents follow chronological order? Even if stability conditions may be reached in a dynamic flow of documentation, change of conditions and priorities may occur and consequently modify equilibrium, therefore causing temporary instability to occur. New factors may generate the need for a new configuration, though some inertia and resistance coming from the previous configuration may still be there.

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Change of conditions and priorities

new factors occurring may create a new configuration some inertia and resistence coming from old configuration is still active new to fade away new to stay?

Figure 3.7. Modified equilibrium and temporary instability.

Relevant questions to be addressed: • Should a set or sequence of documents, visibly undergoing perturbations and change, be used as a “piece of evidence”? • Should a set or sequence of documents, visibly undergoing perturbation and change, be reorganized according to a new logical order? • Should a set or sequence of documents visibly undergoing perturbation and change be reorganized according to a new chronological order? Artificial intelligence paradigms have attracted the growing interest of researchers in document management. AI has been applied successfully to the classification of image-based documents, showing that it is possible to classify documents by their visual appearance. The AI paradigms offer advantages such as learning, adaptation, fault tolerance, self-repair and self-organization. The artificial neural networks (ANNs) are electrical analogue of biological neural networks. The artificial neural networks are capable to learn facts, represented by patterns and are able to generalize. Thus, we can say that the ANNs exhibit intelligent behavior.

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Fuzzy logic is also used in a number of practical applications for representing uncertain and imprecise knowledge. In the classical Boolean logic, truth is represented by the 1 state and falsity by the 0 state. Boolean algebra has no provision for approximate reasoning. Fuzzy logic provides an approximate but an effective means of describing the behavior of systems. Fuzzy logic can be used successfully in document management. Evolutionary computing techniques have generated tremendous interest in solving multi-dimensional optimization problems. These techniques can be used in conjunction with other AI techniques in document management. Evolutionary computation is the name given to the collection of algorithms based on the evolution of a population towards a solution of a certain problem. The population of possible solutions evolves from one generation to the next, ultimately arriving at a satisfactory solution to the problem. Genetic algorithms (GAs) are a class of evolutionary algorithms. Information agents are one of the most promising tools to conduct business in this information rich world. Information agents are the software systems that are capable of performing intelligent tasks in dynamic and unpredictable environment. It is desirable to incorporate in agents the characteristics such as autonomous, adaptive, collaborative, communicative, mobile, and reactive. There are many real world problems in the world including decision making and classification which do not provide needed information, or the systems under consideration are not well defined. These problems are not easy to solve using conventional computing approaches but intelligent agent paradigms may play a major role in these areas. Document management is also a right candidate for agent-based approach. The development of an automatic indexing, cataloguing and intelligent searching system for a collection of document such as a library is presented by (Troina, 2000). The document collection was first analyzed by pattern of text-based word occurrence. This allowed the user query to be generalized by naturally encoding a thesaurus in a neural network and represents the documents as word vectors. Secondly the system classified the documents into subject related groups using another unsupervised neural network. An unsupervised neural network was used for the first step and a hierarchical Self-Organizing Map was used to cluster the documents

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into classes. The results reported are good with one drawback being some subject divisions made by unsupervised learning where not desired. The research by (Lee, Web access) reports the implementation of Document Image Understanding and Classification software on a large database of image-based documents (Lee, Web access). The software, called MARS (Medical Article Record System) is used on the MEDLINE medical database of the NLM (National Library of Medicine). Structural layout information of scanned documents is valuable for a wide range of document processing applications such as document searching, document delivery and automated data entry. The MARS software divides documents into different classes based on physical layout. The layout structure of each document is derived from and represented by geometry and content-based zone features, normalized by single and multiple column zone vertical area string pattern. Normalized data is first used in a template matching module of the software before a decision is finalized by a rules-based learning system. An example of a rule is the font-size in a zone. This approach of document image classification is claimed to yield up to 96% accuracy.

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On Iconizing Documentation

The fourth chapter of this “highly visual book” consists of an alternation of textual and visual parts. This chapter is meant to illustrate and provide examples of how the information analyst’s perspective and point of view may be attached to a document. Examples are provided and readers are suggested to read and practice by producing examples themselves. This book is interactive and slots here filled by the author’s voice are meant to be further completed by the readers. If we really want to draw an analogy with some outstanding and worldwide known painting experiences we may consider some real portraiture masterpieces, as ‘las meninas’ by Velasquez at the Prado in Madrid, ‘the Arnolfini’s couple’ by Van Eyck at the National Gallery in London. Both paintings show a portrait of the same painter painting. We could add Vermeer’s ‘woman playing spinet’ at Buckingham Palace in London as one more example indicating the very innovative concept of an artist including himself and his point of view in his own piece of art while painting it. This was a very important change and most innovative element in the world and history of portraiture as it indicated somehow direct initiative by the individual painter within the same painting and while painting it. By doing so did the artist show a full awareness of his role and point of view in the painting context he was himself progressively creating. Along the same lines this chapter is about including the information specialist’s point of view within the document, throughout a consensually shared annotation system, which will enable the overall information analysts’ community to actually understand each other in the process of picturing their own interpretive added value to the document before it will reach out to the final users, which is the decision makers’ community.

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Accurate documentation interpretation leads toward accurate decision making. If attention is not being paid to the nature of information reflecting upon documentation, and various operations performed upon each document are not visibly indicated, then distortion may well occur in interpretation, leading toward inaccurate up to totally misplaced decision making. Decision makers and information analysts and all of us living today may in fact add some more along the following lines: “We are the documents we generate and make available” which means that documents are the result of building up memory configurations meant to become stable. “We think through the documents we are exposed to” which means that trust is built based upon evidence we have been presented with. “We decide through those documents we are provided” which means that most accurate support should be produced as to enhance the level of reliability each document shows. Iconizing documentation just like iconizing text, in the ancient tradition of miniaturizing and illuminating written pages, was intended and meant to reinforce and enhance the content of the message visually, to be harmoniously integrated and merged with the text, as to significantly enhance its overall communicative power. Just like a visual code nicely intertwined with a written text, a context incorporating system of icons is meant to make the document more visible, up to fully transparent, and to provide additional clues for consistent interpretation of its content, the way it was really meant to be conveyed as to be understood. Iconizing documentation may result into a most significant support for highly effective and context sensitive storage and retrieval. Communicative intercourses, occurring both in written and verbal format, create the grounding, upon which documentation is built. Facts and events, meetings and conversations are reported and this is how they become the actual “texture” for documentation. Information both extracted, which means literally reported with quotations and references, and abstracted, which means summarized and synthesized, creates the information infrastructure, upon which views and opinions are progressively built. Views and opinions, once established and made widely available, become stabilized judgments and create background knowledge, upon which more and more decisions are made. This is why it is indeed most important that information is extracted and

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abstracted consistently, and that knowledge, meant to be used for decision making, is accurately and consistently packaged. In order to increase the level of accuracy of a certain document, concise and consistent “context transport” is of fundamental relevance. Once a piece of information is found to be of relevance as to be converted into a document, special care needs to be paid to the originating communicative context in which such piece of information was first produced. If such context was lost or was not available any longer, interpretation distortion is likely to happen and accurate reconstruction should be planned and then pursued. If a really complete reconstruction process may look difficult to achieve at times, due to objective lack of reliable information sources, specific indication of this kind of problem should be left within the document itself as some kind of a trace intended to warn users about uncertainty conditions, characterizing the document itself and its nature. Since documents evolve in time and space due to progressively occurring changes of context and as a result of various operations performed by different individuals upon the same “information texture,” specific indications should be provided, along with the text, as to indicate which specific areas of information, also called topical areas, within a certain document, have been exposed to which kinds of modifications. The visual system here introduced is meant to work as a powerful tool for conveying context iconically, which means for “iconizing documents” by miniaturizing context and by attaching it to the document. The sequence of illustrations, here introduced, is meant to indicate what iconizing documentation means and how it may enhance the value of each document significantly.

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Iconization Miniature

Figure 4.1. BOLOGNA – Basilica of St. Petronius – Museum: Page of the Choral Illuminated by Martino da Modena (1477-1478).

According to the view here illustrated a miniature is a decorated document, where the text main topic is augmented in its value and significance by its visual representation. The icon, representing and conveying the main topic, comes usually on the left top of the page, whereas further decoration may follow within the text as to augment the value of some particularly relevant segments or larger areas of that. A document comes in as a sequence of sentences or paragraphs, carrying one or more topics, which may be recognized only after accurate reading of the document has occurred. Main topics of a certain document may be already indicated through some typographic device, which may reveal the nature of the document before the document is even read.

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Traditional Format of a Given Document

Figure 4.2.

Iconizing documents means first of all focusing on the main elements and aspects, which characterize that document, as to represent them visually in consistent ways. What is considered to be the most relevant aspect of a document to be enhanced and visually conveyed is the communicative context in which the document was first generated. The originating context of a given document is the most powerful means to provide readers with consistent clues for accurate interpretation and consistent understanding. Iconizing documentation becomes a most appropriate solution for optimizing both storage and retrieval processes.

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As we may find in the Encyclopedia Americana (1998, vol.15, pp.161-165) storage requires a whole set of various steps to be followed, like “selecting and acquiring the source data, establishing a vocabulary for describing them, assigning terms to each specific piece of documentation, arranging assigned terms in formats to create records, establishing an overall organization of those records into files, creating means for access to the records by various criteria.” Retrieval involves “expressing requests by using terms from the vocabulary, searching the file and matching requests with stored records and retrieving and presenting the results.” Explicit visual declaration of the communicative context in which the document was first produced may only enhance visibility and transparency involving also further operations, which may have then been performed upon the same document or in some of its parts, paragraphs or even single sentences.

Figure 4.3. Keyboard.

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The keyboard illustrates precisely those visual elements which are of use to capture, convey and illustrate the communicative context of each document to be enhanced in its communicative value. Visual elements are added to the document to augment readability and to support understanding. Issues such as topical continuity and topical consistency may be addressed and precise indications may be provided and added along the document. This new perspective meant to indicate how crucial the role of information analysts and documentation management expert is today is also creating the conditions for rethinking of traditional roles in new ways. Terms such as «archivist and commentator» may be extended as to incorporate new individuals becoming more and more the real protagonists of future decision making, including teachers and trainers in charge of deciding how much knowledge should be passed along. To some extent, by first focusing and then selecting some information anybody involved with documentation design becomes somehow in charge of storing some memories, playing therefore the role of a specialized archivist. By being able to provide and attach specific clues as for the process of «information conversion» as well as for the kind of textual operations performed is the document designer also a commentator. Some other terms such as those of « browser and reader» may also be introduced as to indicate that document users may access and use documentation at different levels of detail. They may in fact decide to spend more or less time and energy for actually interpreting and understanding each document according to indications provided to them. An integrated environment for documentation annotation and for conceptual iconization is here presented. The annotation system upon which the whole model is based is meant to support users in performing many and various operations, such as identification of most relevant information, summary recollection and topic consistency identification, both locally, meaning in single documents, and globally, meaning throughout large collections of documents presenting topical consistency and continuity. Conceptual iconization this way may become part of the encoding process and may add interpretive value to each single document, which is of relevance within a complex and multilingual communicative environment as the one we live in today.

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Documents augmented with consistent indications about the specific nature of the originating context will provide readers with accurate clues as for their decision making about how much more should be accessed and read. Iconizing and linking up various documents to create consistently planned information territories driven by topic continuity and consistency may only be possible through the use of a commonly shared and consensually agreed upon metalanguage. CPP-TRS (Tonfoni, 1996) means Communicative Positioning Program – Text Representation Systems and is a highly articulated metalanguage, based upon a whole variety of visual tools, meant to be used for representing various operations, which are currently performed upon documentation. We will here concentrate on ten textual signs designed to convey communicative function, on fourteen symbols designed to convey communicative intention and turn taking and on eight amplifier symbols meant to link up various kinds of documents which show topical continuity and topical consistency. Iconizing documents means therefore being able to recognize first and visually indicate later, at different levels of complexity, which kinds of operations have been performed or are to be performed upon each document or part of a document, and which ones need to be performed next at a higher level of accuracy. CTML (Context Transport Mark up Language, Tonfoni, 1998b and 1999a, 1999b) is an annotation system meant to enhance context visibility in a document throughout its entire lifecycle. It is a derivative language of CPP-TRS (Communicative Positioning Program- Text Representation Systems, Tonfoni, 1996a), which is a visual language based upon a consistent set of dynamic visuals, which may be used in combinations as to represent the kind of information, which is contained in each paragraph of a certain text. The whole system has been widely tested for many years and with a diversity of users as to make sure that categories selected are the ones actually used and naturally recognized within documents coming both in verbal format and in written format. The complexity of our information world today poses the immediate and urgent need for most effective and powerful conceptual tools, enabling both decision makers to reduce the risk of misinterpretation which may be caused by lack of the origi-

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nating context, where a certain information was first produced or by continuously shifting contexts throughout a diversity of media and cultures. CTML is meant to make context attachment possible at a very high level of precision and detail, as to avoid content distortion, which may in fact occur as a consequence of lack of interpretive clues left behind. Qualitative reasoning about the nature of information displayed within a document is made possible and may therefore be easily incorporated within the automation process of reviewing and redacting documents. Access to specific information is also facilitated and contiguous documents may be easily linked up together. Contextual features being displayed by CTML are the following ones: • communicative function or type of a document or piece of a document, conveyed by a set of ten document annotation signs; • communicative intention or style of a document or piece of a document, conveyed by a set of eleven document annotation symbols; • communicative turn-taking or action to be taken upon the document or piece of document, conveyed by a set of four document annotation turn-taking symbols. Documents enhanced by their attached context will provide users, especially decision makers, who see documents as a most valuable and reliable source for decision making with those interpretive clues, which would not be carried by the document itself if viewed purely at the content level, therefore allowing in-depth understanding of each document to occur. Documents designed and packaged according to CTML standard may be also effectively stored, retrieved, cross-referenced, accessed, updated and distributed in a variety of versions, if that is required, still carrying along traces of all textual operations and changes, which have been made in the document life cycle, therefore enhancing speed and accuracy at the same time. Once a given document has been processed according to the previously introduced system for representing context, will it be possible to identify the most relevant elements within the document itself, which means the main topics, each carrying its own context along.

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This means that the same system may be used at a global level, which is once for each document, and at a local level, which is following paragraph by paragraph and marking up line by line. Complemented by this kind of interpretive infrastructure, it will definitely become much easier way to extract information in consistent ways at a higher level of accuracy. Carrying the context along with the topic is definitely meant to facilitate access to documents. Even if the logical-chronological order will be kept and documents will be organized in a sequence accordingly, a further level of access, based upon topic and context visibility, will be provided. A «topic and communicative context completed sequence of text» within a certain document may be productively defined as «documental unit». A «sequence of text» is a sentence or paragraph within a certain document, to which no communicative context has been attributed yet. Due to both topic and communicative context visibility within a certain document, external links may be established between and among different documents. Information extraction out of a document, which has been subject to topic and communicative context attribution processes, results into a most powerful process leading toward the highest level of reliability. Once topic and communicative context are made available constantly and continuously, will it be far easier and faster to search throughout large documentation corpora. It will also be much easier to trigger information for fast and accurate decision making. A document, the way it is currently generated, shows a whole variety of styles and functions as well as a variety of topics and subtopics. Reshuffling documentation consistently, becomes an advanced process of «information reconfiguration», based upon progressive communicative context attribution for each piece of document. Once different communicative contexts have been identified, then different documental units are packaged and labeled accordingly to indicate differences and possible discrepancies too. Producing new documentation based upon previous mix may also entail different choices. Just like an espresso coffee machine may have two different size filters indicating how strong the espresso may be, the same applies with information blends,

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which may be of different kinds. According to the different kinds of blends selected will also the filtering mechanism and filter be different. The illustration following, shows that two filters may be needed as to decide which level of precision information analysts may want to obtain while producing documents also taking into account how wide should their audience be. Highest precision devices are represented in the picture by the CTML filter meant to guarantee full consistency of interpretation for decision makers. A more diluted version still accurate and reliable is represented in the picture by the CPP-TRS filter meant to ensure reliability and readability for a wider audience. Just like for coffee, different individuals may like different solutions and blends and some may like and need very strong coffee all the time whereas others may like and just want a lighter version, still of very good quality.

Figure 4.4. Espresso coffee machine.

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Square: for an informative document or information about a specific document to be then linked up with other documents, as to indicate topical continuity.

Figure 4.5. Square.

Give or create an example of a document out of your own experience

In her four volumes on “Writing as a Visual Art”, first written by Professor Tonfoni in Italian, we may find an example of multimedia writing where reading aloud is also encouraged. The second and fourth volumes are in fact specifically designed to be read aloud. Readers will definitely notice how peculiar each sentence structure is in fact.

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Square within a square: for a summary of a certain document at a very informative level, as to create a consistency link between the original document and its own abstract.

Figure 4.6. Square within a square.

Give or create an example of a document’s summary out of your own experience Multimedia writing by Professor Tonfoni is really about writing in many and very different ways, which readers may find implemented in Italian in the first set of four volumes as previously indicated.

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Triangle: for a memory of a certain document or historical data about it, as to create a consistency link with background information filled in to clarify possible ambiguity or fuzziness generated by contextual assumptions to be explicitly declared.

Figure 4.7. Triangle.

Give or create an example of a memory to attach to the document out of your own experience Those four volumes had been published respectively in years 1991-1994 as it may be found in the analytical Italian bibliography in the “books section”.

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Semicircle: for an idea or a particular concept out of a document or family of documents, it is meant to reinforce consistency and continuity by making explicit commonalities and differences.

Figure 4.8. Semicircle.

Give or create an example of a concept derived from a paragraph of the document out of your own experience

The very concept of multimedia writing should be productively linked with the concept of “writing in most pleasurable ways”.

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Right triangle: for a comment to a document or family of documents, where more contextual information is needed and coming in as a result of browsing through other documents and importing knowledge from other information territories.

Figure 4.9. Right triangle.

Give or create an example of a comment added to the document out of your own experience Definitely many different alternatives to ordinary writing and reading are proposed. There is actually one more book, in the Italian bibliography, which is designed and organized as a puzzle, which the reader may want to recompose. Its title is Frammenti testuali, again by Graziella Tonfoni.

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Frame: for a document analogous to another document and a case analogous to another case, as to indicate topical consistency.

Figure 4.10. Frame.

Give or create an example of an analogous document out of your own experience

Two books, more specifically the second and the fourth out of the “series of four” have been conceived and written to be read aloud. Styles you may find in these two specific volumes are therefore similar.

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Grouped semicircles: for main ideas or concepts that emerge from an originating document, as to create a continuity link between the originating document and a certain selection of keywords.

Figure 4.11. Grouped semicircles.

Give or create an example of a set of main concepts derived from the document out of your own experience

The four main concepts conveyed by the four books are represented by their respective titles and subtitles. Their acronyms are specifically: SM CAV PSM AT Altogether they represent the main book design concepts expressed by the author.

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Circle: for a global idea or general concept that emerges from a document or a set of documents having already been linked and recognized as part of a family of documents; it is meant to reinforce keywords identification throughout a large collection of topic related documents.

Figure 4.12. Circle.

Give or create an example of the main concept derived from the document out of your own experience The main and unifying concept out of this set of books is that writing may be considered as a visualizing art.

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Inscribed arcs: for adding an alternative development to a document or family of documents, where the interpretation process is specifically bound to revision and update processes, in order not to jeopardize accuracy.

Figure 4.13. Inscribed arcs.

Give or create an example of document ready to undergo major changes out of your own experience

The first English abridged version, with the title of “Writing as a visual art”, is the result of content translation and reformulation meant to be read and accessible to a wider audience.

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Opened text space: for opening up a possible addition to a certain document or an alternative to a document within a certain family of documents, specifically used for navigation in a large recollection of documents.

Figure 4.14. Opened text space.

Give or create an example of a document where major changes have occurred out of your own experience

More extended versions of the same book may be foreseen where, for example, special effects as writing to be read aloud may become real in different languages.

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Describe: from Latin describo (write around). It means supporting the original document with as much information as the archivist and commentator feels useful and relevant, visually represented as departing from a central point, the middle point of the spiral being the original document, and proceeding by expanding the spiral, linking it with other relevant documents or adding relevant information for facilitating the original document interpretation. In this specific information packaging mode there is no need to follow any logical chronological order; the spiral may also be small or large, depending on how much information has been selected to be presented.

Figure 4.15. Describe.

Give or create an example of “description” in a document out of your own experience

The “Writing as a visual art” book cover shows the process of deriving one book out of a set of four. The four book covers of the originating volumes are visible in the background.

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Define: from Latin definio (put limits). It means giving just some information about a certain topic having been selected and identified as relevant and being represented by the middle point of the square, by still drawing a wider documentation territory; there is no need to follow any logical or chronological order, but there is a need to select and choose accurately some relevant information about a specific document to be kept within the square, meaning the family of relevant documents linked to the original one. Define is described under certain constraints; like in any dictionary, where the definition of a word or of a concept implies choosing accurately just what is strictly relevant to be written in order to be able to understand the specific meaning.

Figure 4.16. Define.

Give or create an example of “definition” in a document out of your own experience

“Writing as a visual art” is about the skilled art of composition.

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Narrate: It means presenting facts and events referred to an original document by following a logical and chronological order; the corresponding icon has a set of ”narrative points” representing different diachronical stages following each other on a line and strictly linked together. The longer the history of the document is, the more of these narrative points may be added and arrows will precisely mean the logical reading direction of facts and events. If the document history becomes longer and more articulated, some more narrative points are being added on the right side and the line becomes longer and longer.

Figure 4.17. Narrate.

Give or create an example of “narration” in a document out of your own experience

First came the set of four volumes, one after the other, then came the English abridgment: In parallel, papers were also made available and reviewers had to spend time to see all the connections in such a wide up to disperse and bilingual literature by the same author.

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Point out: It means extracting a narrative point, which is specific event or fact, out of a single document specific history focusing on that, adding more information, therefore expanding it as to link it with other documents consistently. The icon visually represents the specific narrative point, which is being chosen and expanded within a chain of facts and events, linking together a set of topic related documents. Within a single document history, it may represent the need for further information and details just about one part of a given document, which may be extended to a family of documents as to indicate a need for specific details.

Figure 4.18. Point out.

Give or create an example of “pointing out” in a document out of your own experience

Out of the wide and sometime different-to-find literature by the same author, we will now here focus on Writing as a visual art, which is quite comprehensive as to illustrate the nature of the work done by the Professor Tonfoni on writing.

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Explain: from Latin explano (unwrap, open up). It means representing facts and giving reasons about a certain document in a cause-and-effect order; the document commentator and archivist may start by identifying and indicating the original cause and get down progressively to a set of effects, or start with effects and go back to the original cause instead. This is the reason why the chosen symbol, a graphic representation of a procedural description, works in two ways and opposite directions: from up-to-down and from down-to-up respectively.

Figure 4.19. Explain.

Give or create an example of “explanation” in a document out of your own experience

The reason why “Writing as a visual art” was published in 1994 was to make a lot of previous work by the author available in English to a readership, which was not just meant to be a scholarly one.

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Regress: from Latin regredior (go back). Regression means here giving more information about a certain item within a chain of information. The visual symbol represents the specific topic focusing process and the in-depth information expansion process, which is being activated just about that topic. The reader may want to have access to differing levels of regression according to differing information needs and different information quantity requested and number of links activated.

Figure 4.20. Regress.

Give or create an example of “regression” in a document out of your own experience

“Writing” may here be considered extensively as that very ability we all need to have today as for making our thoughts, ideas and feelings really understandable to others and to each other.

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Reformulate: from Latin reformo/reformulo (change shape and shape again). It means changing attitude toward information packaging: from explaining into describing, or defining, or informing, etc. It practically means substituting a certain information need and request with a different one, being therefore indicated with an explicit need and request for substitution of a certain visual symbol with another one. The chosen symbol indicates precisely change, substitute.

Figure 4.21. Reformulate.

Give or create an example of “reformulation” in a document out of your own experience In order to compress four volumes into just one, a lot of expert reformulation was needed and a lot of rewriting became necessary to be able to transport meaning correctly from one language into another.

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Inform: from Latin informo (put into shape, shape up). It indicates the most unconstrained way of packaging information about a single document or family of consistently linked up documents. The visual symbol is double-faced: it may be read left-to-right or right-to-left. First Phase (1): from large into tight – it means informing synthetically; departing from a large set of documents or from a rather diffusive single document, proceeding toward a synthesis (central point representing the chosen topic). Second Phase (2): from tight into large – it means informing analytically; departing from a limited set of documents or just one single document (central point representing the core topic) proceeding toward a more analytical search and navigation getting another more general document or more documents involved.

(1) synthetically

(2) analytically

Figure 4.22a. Inform: two phases.

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Because of their strong visual impact, symbol (1) and (2) respectively, are being used to represent the concepts of synthesis and analysis in general and may be added to other symbols as well (define, describe, explain, etc.), as to better incapsulate different kinds of information density.

Figure 4.22b. Inform: double-faced

Give or create an example of “synthetical information” and “analytical information” in a document out of your own experience

“Writing as a visual art” is about the skilled pleasure of writing. “Writing as a visual art” is about how may painting and sculpturing be transferred into composing and how each text may become three-dimensional and beautifully complex.

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Express: from Latin exprimo (push out, press out). It means giving personal and emotional opinions about facts presented within the chosen single document or set of documents. It indicates the most subjective mode of information packaging, bound to personal experiences, judgments and evaluations: the symbol represents a visual territory, which is open and subject to modification according to personal opinions: some kind of amoeba-like shape ready for change and update.

Figure 4.23. Express.

Give or create an example of “expression” in a document out of your own experience

The role of James Richardson in the abridgment has been of major relevance, really crucial in so many ways. The foreword by Marvin Minsky has been such an honor.

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Major scale: This symbol is used by the text composer to indicate to the text executor that the paragraph or sentence or marked off portion of text must be executed exactly the way it has been composed.

Figure 4.24. Major scale.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

Readers are most welcome to practice and use those very techniques which they have been exposed to.

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Minor scale: this symbol invites the browser to become an accurate reader as to be able to modify marked off portions of the commentary to a single document or to a family of documents linked up consistently.

Figure 4.25. Minor scale.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

Visuals are meant to become visual texts and textual representations of many kinds.

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Open or unsaturated rhythm: this symbol indicates to document browser that the commentator and archivist has good reasons to consider and declare the single document or family of documents to be incomplete. It invites the browser to become a reader first and to then get into that portion of the single document or family of documents to search for new information and add it, possibly indicating consistent routes through topic continuity or topic-related documents families.

Figure 4.26. Open or unsaturated rhythm.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

The four volumes and their abridgment still do not represent the complete work as a much wider bibliography of her is available.

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Tight or saturated rhythm: this symbol indicates to the document browser that the commentator and archivist consider the single document or family of documents to be complete.

Figure 4.27. Tight or saturated rhythm.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

Accessing the complete bibliography of Professor Tonfoni may provide readers with a comprehensive view of her work and intent and various stages of her writing life.

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Restoration in the arts may be defined as a set of very precise operations based upon highly specific techniques, which are aimed toward integrating missing colors or pieces of material, or even entire areas whose loss may affect global acceptability of a certain painting, sculpture or building. Restoration needs to get started after accurate search throughout the kinds of material to be replaced, has in fact occurred. This preliminary operation definitely implies a preliminary “in depth” interpretation as for each single masterpiece (OECD, 1996). By using the entire conceptual equipment provided by CPP-TRS (Tonfoni, 1996) different kinds of textual operations may be applied to document restoration. Entire bodies of documentation may in fact show the real need to complete, enlighten, sharpen or replace pieces of relevant information, which, if missing, would jeopardize correctness and completeness in document interpretation. Document restoration is not to be referred to as a process of completion, rather as a more comprehensive process for consistent document interpretation and integration. Restoration of a specific document may mean even full repositioning of such document as to make sure that communicative function, intention and turn taking are reestablished according to a correct estimate. In order to be able to identify those aspects which are so volatile to be often left out and hard to recognize, as they actually need to be made surface and be visually represented first, the sharing of a common code is definitely the very first step. A consensually shared visual code is meant to raise communication visibility in documental information territories organization, and to make knowledge geography and consistent mapping possible after all. Terminology needs to be kept simple just as simple needs to be the system meant to represent a conceptually integrated mapping system for navigation based upon a consensual code to be then referred to and practically used, just like territorial mapping legends are first conceived for interpreting the nature of territories and then practically used for territorial navigation. Inconsistencies, incorrectness, contradictions or fuzziness, which may be easily found at the interpretation level need first to be accurately identified, as to be then fixed. Raising the quantity of documentation made available implies having to support users with powerful conceptual tools, as to be ready to cope with complexity of increasing order of magnitude. CPP-TRS amplifier symbols are meant to provide effective support for searching effectively throughout larger corpora of documents.

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Amplifier symbols are meant to lead readers throughout such a search process linking together larger territories of information. Amplifier symbols are an integrating part of the dynamic approach toward documentation which has here been introduced and illustrated. They are meant to represent various kinds of search processes, which evolve in time and space and are aimed toward capturing and rendering complexity inherent in any of these search processes.

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Search: the present symbol is meant to incorporate and represent the dynamical process implied by “choose,” where arrows split apart and “identify” where elements to be searched are more than just two. It represents the previous stage and precondition for “select.”

Figure 4.28. Search.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Identify: the present symbol is meant to incorporate and represent the dynamical identification of a certain action, process or movement, within a certain context. It represents the previous stage and it is the precondition for “choose,” “search,” and “select.” It resembles a cursor moving along a line.

Figure 4.29. Identify.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Select: the present symbol is meant to incorporate and represent the dynamical copresence of multiple options which may evolve synchronously, there is nevertheless a hierarchy, which may be modified once the final aim has been changed, revised or updated. The longest arrow visually represents optimal option having been identified and selected. It is the result of both “search” and “identify.”

Figure 4.30. Select.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Choose: the present symbol incorporates two arrows departing from the same point, it is meant to represent dynamically the process of choosing between options, which are mutually exclusive, means in an “either or” mutual relationship. “Choose” refers to a choice of possible actions, movements and processes, which are compatible within a certain context, but which will produce different results. The actual choice happens normally after selection has occurred.

Figure 4.31. Choose.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Copy/Replicate: the present symbol is meant to represent the dynamic process of duplication and repetition of a certain action, process or movement, which has been previously completed. Its iconic representation consists of two regular icons, which are close to each other.

Figure 4.32. Copy/Replicate.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Ahead: the present symbol, represented by a single arrow, visually incorporates the concept of moving forward and of going toward a certain direction; it also incorporates the concept of moving away from a pre-identified and predetermined location, it is the exact contrary of “back.”

Figure 4.33. Ahead.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Back: the present symbol, represented by a single arrow, visually incorporates the concept of moving backward by eliminating previous action taken and previous movement having occurred, it is the exact contrary of “ahead.”

Figure 4.34. Back.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Conflict: the present symbol, represented by two arrows with opposite directions, visually incorporates the concept of incompatibility between contrasting processes or actions.

Figure 4.35. Conflict.

Give or create an example out of your own experience

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Consult books on artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems and formulate the answers for the following: • What are expert systems or knowledge-based systems? • What are the knowledge representation techniques for the use of machine? • What are the possible advantages, disadvantages, limitations and applications of expert systems or knowledge-based systems? • What are the successful applications of expert systems or knowledge-based systems? • How do we decide the suitability of a problem for expert systems or knowledgebased systems? • How do we validate the expert systems or knowledge-based systems? • Do you think that the expert systems or knowledge-based systems can offer advantages in documentation management?

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On Visualizing Documentation

The fifth chapter of this “highly visual book” requires a further effort on the reader’s side. This chapter shows a whole set of major problems in documentation management by providing a whole set of illustrations meant to trigger a whole set of diverse perceptions on the readers’ side. Readers are in fact expected to become problem solvers themselves being exposed to a whole new set of conceptual tools. They are invited to work on their visualization skills by practicing directly. A whole set of visuals directly extracted from a previous book by Professor Tonfoni (Tonfoni, G., 1996, Communication Patterns and Textual Forms) are illustrated and explained in full details. Readers are also welcome to access and read the previous books by Professor Tonfoni for additional information about each of the visuals introduced as to familiarize themselves with the whole new model of thinking and conceiving information. Readers are also suggested to access the following website: http://www.intellectbooks.com/ search for /authors/ search for /tonfoni/ Following upon illustration of such conceptual tools, a whole set of problems and issues related to day by day life in documentation management are illustrated both textually, throughout a whole set of synthetical paragraphs and visually, throughout a set of schemes, some of which may be dynamically rendered and be animated. A set of exercises is also proposed to readers throughout the chapter. Readers are asked to find solutions to the problems presented. They are invited to use the same conceptual tools they are progressively exposed to, and they are also invited to practice the new way of envisioning and visualizing information they have previously acquired throughout the previous chapters of the book.

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The history of the visual arts may certainly provide us with a lot of knowledge as for the way people think about themselves and of their role in the world throughout the different ages. Realistic representation of object, nature and human traits take turn with abstract and idealized visions of the world. The religious and social context in which individual visual artists happen to operate, deeply affects their way of thinking and representing reality. More and more today we are brought to think visually and somehow abstractly about a whole variety of processes. Some individuals have a talent for it, some others are likely to encounter difficulties, as they would rather talk and think in objects and in very practical terms as they think more physically about matters of various complexity. This is one of the reasons, why visualizing cognitive processes active while any information gets to be packaged into a written document becomes a very important process after all. Since some stages in this kind of information conversion, may be more fuzzy than others, two strong metaphors have been carefully selected, which are respectively ‘textual canvases’ and ‘textual machines,’ meant to help individuals visualize what happens when they actually start organizing information to be converted into documentation after all. A metaphorically redefined “canvas,” is an information territory to be progressively organized and enriched by a whole set of stylistic colors. A textual canvas represents an overall deep structure, to be worked out in full details according to different communicative positioning patterns. A “machine” is literally defined as a “device for energy transformation and transmission”: textual machines are physical models, representing precisely those processes, which cannot be fully rendered by words exclusively. They are devices for observing and defining those aspects, which were not currently noticed and accounted for. Textual machines are intended to represent visually physically and dynamically global and local transformation and transmission of communicative energy at a “deep structure” level, which is in the pretext preparation, which is the previous set of stages occurring prior to the final text configuration.

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Textual canvases and textual machines are intimately connected, they are extremely useful tools for self-reflection and self-observation (more information about each of the CPP-TRS visual tools can be found in the summarized English version of Tonfoni’s four Italian books, which have been published with the title Writing as Visual Art [abridgement by J. Richardson and with Marvin Minsky’s foreword], Intellect U.K., 1994 and reprinted in 2000, Intellect U.K. and Scarecrow Press U.S.). Textual canvases and textual machines are here illustrated along with their respective links. Textual canvases are dynamic visual schemes to be used in practical ways to sustain practically the process of writing, whereas textual machines are meant to be interpretation devices intended to sustain explanation of abstract concepts and processes and they are not meant to be integrated within the writing process.

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Textual Canvases a. Density in Texture – This canvas shows the different possible densities of information to be organized and turned into a document. WORD Adjective Another Word

Another Word OUT

Another Word

Another Word

OK

Another Word Adjective

Adjective Another Word

Another Word

Another Word

Adjective

Adjective Adjective

Adjective Adjective

Adjective

OUT

OK

OUT OUT

OUT

OK

OUT

OK

b. Word Explosion and Word Chaining – This canvas represents the cognitive process of free association triggered by a word. It also depicts how a group of words can be linked together from a word explosion so that they form a logical, linear chain. The word chain that results from this process will first be a sentence but can also be extended to a set of sentences and paragraphs. WORD (Source)

Other Words

OUT

OUT

WORD (Target)

Other Words

OUT

OK

Other Words

Other Words

OUT

OUT OUT

c. Metaphor Creation – This canvas illustrates that a metaphor begins with two word explosions: one for the source word and one for the target word. The

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source word is the word we start with, and the target word is one that has been chosen for transferring a new meaning to the source word. d. Pattern Recognition and Analogies in Documents – This canvas shows how a visual frame may represent the logical structure of a certain event at a conceptual level. Once a certain event is visually represented, it becomes easy to recognize its structural patterns in other conceptually analogous events within a certain document. e . Global Narrative Document Planning – This canvas represents a visual scheme for globally planning of document. A canvas such as this enables us visually to represent a long narrative that may encompass a number of events, protagonists and possible outcomes. It opens up the possibility of conceiving many different ways to develop the document while retaining and checking its coherence. backward links

forward links

1

3

2

4

5

so

but but

so

f. Local Narrative Document Planning – This five-part canvas helps us visualize the details of a document. It visually represents how to examine the backward and forward links from a narrative concept, visualize a document in different ways from a particular point, use temporal and casual connectors to link narrative concepts, and how to reconstruct the document differently by chaining its sequence.

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initial-locally analogous stories

globally analogous stories summary

intermediate-locally

analogous stories

final-locally analogous stories

g. Analogous Narrative Document Planning – This canvas is a visual aid for planning or finding other narratives that are analogous to a particular document. It visualizes the different ways that two narrative documents are analogous. They can be partially analogous – or they can be totally or globally analogous. Title Interparagraph coherence paragraph 1

paragraph 2

paragraph 3

Interparagraph coherence

Topic

(a) Identification

Topic

(b) Maintenance

* TopicDomain

(c) Maintenance

Topic

(d) Shifting

Topic

(e) Adherence

paragraph 4

Topic

(f) Reestablishment

h. Explanatory Document Drawing – This canvas presents visual schemes for planning and organizing an explanatory document by exhibiting a logical progression of causal or temporal development. The first visual scheme resembles a traditional outline and shows the logical progression of the document, starting with a title and flowing down through the division and development of a set of paragraphs. The second scheme provides an alternative to the strictly logical progression of paragraphs, and instead focuses on identifying and maintaining a topic.

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i. Dialogue-Conversation – This canvas is for visualizing a conversation, recording its rhythm, and tracking its evolution. It is divided by a vertical line into two parts: the left records the contributions of the initiator of the conversation, while the right records those of the addressee. The lines flowing down through the initiator’s and addressee’s parts trace the dynamics of the dialogue as it progresses. The process of planning and drawing a conversation on the canvas has the effect of slowing it down so that it stays focused and heads towards the same goal. It also enables a detailed, written reconstruction of the conversation meant to become a document.

j. Collective Document Perception – This is a two-part canvas. The first part helps to visualize a particular type of collective document planning called “collage writing.” Collage writing may be done by a group of individuals who collectively endeavor to create a text by piecing together their individual written contributions. The second part of the canvas represents “mosaic reading.” Mo-

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saic reading shows how different document readers can read the same text in different ways. In mosaic reading, a small group of people summarize the same document and then compare them to see how they differ. k. Document Rotation – This canvas visualizes an organization process for those documents that carry the “same” message to readers who have differing information needs and backgrounds in order to accommodate their particular perspectives and expectations.

l. Hypertext – This canvas is particularly suited for “hands-on” explanatory document such as instruction manuals or procedural guides. This is non-linear and intended to be used to fulfill differing information needs. We may add that analyzing a document or document segments may only happen correctly in the context, from which a certain document derives, this is why textual canvases should be considered not merely as practical tools but as interpretation devices for communicative positioning detection.

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Textual Machines Textual machines are dynamic visualization tools for representing different cognitive processes active both separately and together. Let us explore their meaning. i.

Machine for Simple Rotation of a Word – This machine models the cognitive process of freely associating words with one particular word. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for word explosion. ii. Machine for Complex Rotation of a Word – This machine models the cognitive process of selecting attributes or adjectives, and then organizes them linearly. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for word-chaining. iii. Text Motion Machine – This machine provides a dynamic, three-dimensional way to think about a narrative document in which many possibilities are kept open. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for planning a narrative document. iv. Textual Lens – This machine models the cognitive processes of focusing on the same part of the text and then expanding the aspect that is considered to be most relevant. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for textual rotation. v. Wheel for Text Browsing – This machine models the way information is processed and how much the document implicitly or explicitly conveys, and how narrative document has forward and backward links. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for planning narrative document in a detailed way.

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vi. Carriage for Memory Text – This machine enables use to see the relationship between an evocative word and a memorized narrative. It demonstrates how the same word may trigger many different narratives. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for finding analogies in narratives. vii. Carriage for Explanatory Text (Simple) – This machine visualizes the process of knowledge acquisition and storage. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for planning and drawing explanatory text. viii. Carriage for Explanatory Text (Complex) – This machine is a more complex version of the machine above. It models the process of knowledge acquisition, storage and retrieval. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for hypertext. ix. Three-Floor Rotation Machine for Poetry – This machine models the structuring of evocative text that triggers emotions and personal feelings. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for creating a metaphor.

x. Machine for Transferring Text – This machine models how a document constructor can organize the same topic in two different text styles. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for organizing the density of the document.

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xi. Device for Transforming Text in Phases – This device models the process of transforming document paragraph by paragraph from some initial version to a final version. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for organizing the density of the document.

xii. Focusing Machine – This machine helps us understand the importance of focusing as it demonstrates how different individuals focus differently on the same document. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concept as the canvas for mosaic reading.

xiii. Machine for Producing Ideas and Turning Them into Text – This complex machine models how one or more evocative words initiate the processes of planning and organizing a text. It is a three-dimensional representation of the same concepts that have already been explored, as in word explosion, focusing and linearization. xiv. Textual Catapult – This machine enables us to identify a missing element from the document that can be added, based on the context. The context is the expectation that the text itself creates. This is a threedimensional representation of a whole set of concepts that have already been explored as in document planning and implicit versus explicit knowledge recognition.

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As to acquire a special sensitivity to documentation issues, some basic concepts need to be explored first. Concepts and procedures of relevance to any effective seeking of information will be illustrated in visual ways as to be fully captured in their complexity. Once they will be fully understood in all their nuances and acquired in full details, it will definitely become much easier for readers to visualize elements which are of relevance in managing documentation. Visualizing documentation according to the “conceptual infrastructure” here proposed will also support readers as for clarification of the very nature of information, provided in written forms and formats. Once a given document has been processed according to the previously introduced system for representing context, will it be possible to identify the most relevant elements within the document, which means the main topic, carrying along its own context. The same system may be used at a more general level, which means once for each document, and at a more local level, which means following paragraph by paragraph and line by line. This way will it become much easier to extract information in consistent ways and at a higher level of accuracy. As to be really sure that we have indeed identified the most relevant topic and we may therefore proceed to a consistent summarization process, we need to make sure we have indeed identified the “really most meaningful sequences” among the many others. There are indeed additional degrees of freedom when cognitive capacities and discrimination abilities are involved, whereas a purely automatic approach to the issue is rarely adequate. Any automatic system would in fact need much more knowledge about the context as we know that topical selection is really bound to context indexing. We will now consider documents to be some kind of “summaries,” in the sense that each single document is the result of a whole set of selection processes. Documents in fact are made of single pieces of information and knowledge packages, which come from a variety of different sources and media. Just as summarizing takes place in specific contexts and may be based upon previously existing written information or verbal information, so does documentation

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tailoring happen to be the result of a set of operations of quite diverse nature. Documents are therefore utility texts, and their functionality and adequacy is strictly dependent upon their impact and capacity to actually inform and help solve problems. Documentation tailoring is really based upon a highly context sensitive and highly skilled reduction and condensation of a certain amount of information. While accessing and making sense of tailored information may the reader trace back and reconstruct a whole discourse as to then be able to develop and evolve a really consistent interpretation. Context indexing may significantly help in the process of reconstruction. Context indexing may consist of just one word representing the key concept: as such, it corresponds somehow to a further process of summarization, which is definitely made visible throughout the use of a specific keyword, which may significantly support the classification process all together.

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Topical Selection and Context Indexing

Give or create an example out of your experience where being able to access context for a document and not just a topic or a set of topics would have been or would be of relevance and of value.

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Carrying context along with each topic presented within a document is definitely meant to facilitate access to that document. Even if a logical and chronological order is to be kept and respected during the linear reading of a page in a document, as contents are organized and provided in sequences according to the syntactic structure of each language, a further level of access based upon topic and context visibility may most appropriately be complementing linear reading. Communication problems between documentation producers and documentation users often result from a lack of shared context and common knowledge and so called common sense too. Final users may receive a highly elaborated document, which is the end result of a whole complex set of operations, which have not necessarily been made transparent. Documentation users may be viewed as information consumers, who may later on produce further documents and derivative information packages, coming in the form of memos, abstracts and digests. Computerized theories are based upon simplification processes, so that knowledge, which cannot be represented all that easily may be lost with damage. What remains may be reshaped according to a whole set of computational procedures, which obviously require further levels of simplification.

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Give or create an example out of your experience where being able to keep the linear sequence of documentation and access to topically consistent documentation, which is being enhanced by context declaration, has been or may be of use Rhetorical strategies of relevance: hyperbole, montage, miscellany

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A “topic and communicative context completed sequence of text,” within a certain document, may be productively defined as “documental unit.” A “sequence of text” is a sentence or paragraph within a certain document, to which no communicative context has been attributed yet. A documental unit is the end result of information assimilation and condensation processes and it is the result of a whole set of selection and transformation processes, which are meant to make information presentation effective. A documental unit may easily be indexed and classified, where by classification we mean adopting the notation system of a specific classification model covering a whole range of documents. Both indexing and classifying are “extreme forms of summarization” as EndresNiggermeyer (1998) brilliantly points out. A sequence of text with no further processing is some kind of raw texture meant to undergo further structuring, restructuring up to full configuration and reconfiguration. Documents may be analyzed at different information aggregation levels as they represent the result of various condensation processes of different entity. Documentation experts need to have a detailed information planning ability and information tailoring capacities, which need to include overall information displaying abilities on top of that.

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Enhanced Extraction

Give or create an example out of extraction in a current way first, and in an enhanced way afterwards. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: exegesis, flashback, memoir

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Quoting and citations are very meaningful ways to achieve enhanced extraction, as they are specifically meant to build a context of intertextual relations between and among documents, which are characterized by topical continuity. In continuously moving fields and disciplines and knowledge areas, it may be hard to proceed toward a correct estimate as for the relevance and impact of just one single document. Any document needs therefore to be confronted with a whole variety of topic related pieces of documentation, which have been previously or synchronously produced. Tasks such as exploration among documents meant to provide evaluation criteria based upon relevance assessments, may be realistically performed only after careful examination of each document unit has been completed. A competent documentation reader also in charge of making decision, may want to dedicate some time to concentrate on those specific documentation units, which are declared to be most meaningful, as to verify that this is precisely the case. Summaries, coming in the form of enhanced abstracts, are most useful. Any understanding problem, which may be bound to just one difficult or controversial passage, may often be easily solved by comparing an alternative set of paraphrased sequences, made available along with the document. Documentation amplifying processes, such as reformulation, revision, cataloging and indexing have proved to be most useful as to support learning and information acquisition and absorption.

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Enhanced Extraction

Give or create an example out of documents, which may be accessed, after enhanced extraction has occurred.

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In order to enhance both topic and context visibility within a certain document external links, here called amplifier, may be established between and among different documents. CTML may be viewed as a standard interlanguage for preprogramming and preprocessing documents from the initial stage, therefore stressing and underlining the fundamental role documentation commentators and archivists are requested to playing today. Commentators and archivists as information specialists, are themselves in charge of producing interpretive supports and interpretive maps for navigation. In today’s world of full connectivity cognitively sound ways to map knowledge need to be made available and in many different languages at the same time. In order to create optimized conditions for correct interpretation, higher transparency becomes an inherent part of the documentation production process. CTML may be viewed and used as a conceptual toolkit, based upon a set of devices specifically designed for restructuring and mapping already existing documents. CTML resides upon a whole methodology for enabling high level and high quality performance in documentation management by and large. Many operations may be significantly facilitated, such as keyword identification for document browsers and readers, interpretive enlightening and indicating different information needs, summary production for different purposes, personalized search for highly specific information, combination and linking of different documents and information resources based upon a consistent model. The original choice may then be progressively modified and adapted according to different browsers’ and readers’ cognitive profiles and incremental information seeking or learning needs. Such a strong view about communication is not limited of course to digital documentation planning, as it is meant to be extended to any documentation management environment. Cognitive tools are meant to become an interpretation support toolkit. The system at work may definitely be viewed as a really powerful tool, and then also as a complementing tool for facilitating consistent linking of different kinds of documents, both digitalized ones and those still on paper.

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The very concept of “integrated conceptual environment” is in fact precisely meant to stress the value of compatibility and transportability in today’s world of multiple information sources and resources. A visual interlanguage and a whole visual equipment as here designed is in fact meant to be a portable and flexible tool altogether.

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Enhanced Extraction

Linearly order the very same set of documents, which you have linked up before. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: circumlocution, deconstruction, motif

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Information extraction out of a document, which has been subject to topic and communicative context attribution processes, may ensure the highest level of reliability. Context attachment is a most important process as we know well that extracted items, without any context attached, may lose a lot of their originating meaning. As pieces of documents are transported, they are also in fact transformed. A context classification system such as CTML is, will help substantially as to make sure that originating intention, function and turn taking will be kept all along. It is quite evident that the intention of the reader may very much influence and affect the process of document exploration and exploitation.

On Visualizing Documentation

Current Abstraction: linear abstraction of “conceptual chains” based upon interpretation of an originating document.

Enhanced Abstraction: further conceptual processing of a document where both topic and context are addressed. It is based upon an originating document so that each topical and contextual interpretation may be traced back.

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Once topic and communicative context are made available for each single document, it will be definitely become much easier to search throughout large documentation corpora. It will also be much easier to identify crucial information for fast and accurate decision making. Critical decisions often happen to be made under time pressure today and may be based upon whatever information is available at the time, which may not necessarily be the most relevant information. Information distillation becomes the absolutely highest priority task and may be practically supported throughout the production of an enhanced abstract directly derived from a reliable source therefore becoming some kind of added value surrogate or complementary item. Critical decisions may also be based upon abstracts, which are the result of a precise set of transformations out of a source, which may become subject to interpretation and to a whole set of progressive transformations meant to condense information after all. Anyone involved with decision maker should never forget that reasoning based upon extracts and abstracts resides by all means upon a simplified textual skeletal structure unless enhanced extraction and abstraction processes have in fact been activated as to ensure that crucial elements are not lost.

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Current Abstraction

Give or create an example of abstraction in a current way first…… Rhetorical strategies of relevance: connotation, criticism, denotation

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Current Abstraction

….and in an enhanced way afterwards

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Enhanced search and trigger are only possible if a consistent classification system has been adopted. There is a whole variety of classification schemes widely available, some of which may become standardized. “The sheer density of the collision of classification schemes in our lives calls for a new kind of science, a new set of metaphors, linking traditional social science and computer and information science” as Bowker and Star (1999) brilliantly point out. Enhanced search is meant to save a prospective reader time and effort in finding useful information within a certain document and also to ensure that salient points are not left out. Approaches leading toward multidocument summarization as well as multimedia adaptations have to be considered of crucial relevance.

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Enhanced Search and Trigger

Give or create an example of enhanced search and trigger of the documentation, which you have previously organized accordingly. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: documentary, paraphrase, pastiche

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Visualizing information in CTML means complementing each document and piece of a document with a set of visual cues meant to facilitate most accurate interpretation of a document, based on a consistent and highly reliable screening of the document itself, paragraph by paragraph. Both interpretation and reinterpretation resulting out of such screening will be made available to further users at various levels of detail and at different degrees of accuracy, by complementing each document with context sensitive attachments meant to reduce significantly arbitrariness in interpretation. Arbitrary and random interpretation, if not appropriately handled, may cause major misunderstanding to occur and cause tremendous damage. In order to make sure that certain documents are consistently filed and may therefore be triggered back most effectively, some important conceptual tools for evaluation and analysis need to be provided. Some concepts, which are very important, are here introduced, along with questions, which should be addressed any time a document is being taken into account. They are the following ones: • Topical continuity: is a document showing the same topic and topic derivative concepts so that we can classify it accordingly, and place it together with other documents carrying the same topic along? • Topical density: is a document showing the same topic and derivative concepts frequently, so that we may consider such topic to be really the main one? • Contextual intensity: is the context attributed to a document really carried along throughout the whole document or is it only partially valid, as for one paragraph or just a few paragraphs? • Information conspicuity: is the information presented within a document really clearly displayed or is it only locally and partially visible within a paragraph or just in a few paragraphs? Those questions are most relevant to the decision-making process as they are meant to indicate precise rules to stabilize information contained in a document. Information once finally “stabilized,” which means considered to be valid and fully reliable, becomes then ready to be classified.

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Context Indexing and Stabilization

(TOPICAL CONTINUITY) (TOPICAL DENSITY) (CONTEXTUAL INTENSITY) (INFORMATION CONSPICUITY) Look for topical continuity, topical density, contextual intensity and information conspicuity in the documentation you have previously produced in the course of your previous exercises

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Information visualization definitely resides on the very ability of merging codes and may be viewed as a way to speed up those processes, which would be significantly slower if information were to be conveyed exclusively by natural language. Harmoniously combining codes, getting to know better the potential and the limitation of each code and the advantages of an integrated approach, may be legitimately considered to be a crucial step for advancing those studies, which are aimed toward human machine interface optimization according to cognitively sound theories and behavioral models. Crucial factors such as valuing cognitive differences shown by users diversity in their actual performance need also to be taken into account, as to guarantee for a fully consistent and really flexible approach toward information seeking. CTML may be viewed and used as a whole conceptual tool kit, meant to create optimal conditions for interpretation by higher context transparency, based upon a set of diverse devices meant to design new documents and support restructuring of already existing documents. CTML is dynamic by nature because it is based upon a theoretical framework which views language as an information state subject to continuous changes and transformations according to different context variables and communicative energies and forces at play (Tonfoni, 1996). In order to be able to iconize documents, both appropriately and consistently, will each single information analyst need to placed the document within its own originating context as to allow commentators to be able to extract those precise interpretive clues, which will then have to be encoded and carried on by CTML specific icons. Visualizing information is becoming more and more a crucial domain of research both in cognitive and in computer science today. CTML is also a highly consistent classification system, which provides an interpretation infrastructure for documentation-based decision making. A conceptual infrastructure has been defined by Bowker and Star (1999) in the following ways:

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• A historical process of development of many tools arranged for a wide variety of users and made to work in concert; • A practical match among routines of work practice, technology and wider scale organizational and technical resources; • A rich set of negotiated compromises ranging from epistemology to data entry, that are both available and transparent to communities of users; • A negotiated order in which all of the above recursively can function together. If classification schemes are often invisible since they are part of a certain culture environment and as such they are currently “erased by their naturalization into the routines of life”, a classification system for documentation interpretation needs to be made highly visible as to be fully shared. Important factors in a classification system are parsimony and accuracy of terms and categories, which allow for stability and pervasiveness of the system itself. CTML resides upon a specifically defined and limited, highly technical terminology, which may easily keep fuzziness, redundancy and ambiguity away, therefore ensuring for stability of the system in the long run. If ambiguity and fuzziness had been found to be an inherent aspect of a document to be classified, would then CTML support a whole variety of tools meant to explicitly indicate that such fuzziness does in fact exist.

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Enhanced Data mining

The same event/topic based information may be packaged under completely different assumptions and contextual conditions.

Documental structures resulting from different focusing and selection processes may therefore be the output of radically different decision-making processes. As such they may show significant differences which do affect any data-mining process.

Think about situations in your own experience, which are of relevance to the concept here explained.

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Any kind of interpretation is currently influenced by the interpreter’s opinions, interests, cultural background, expectations and point of view. The kind of interpretation provided may therefore vary substantially among a set of individuals, and even the same individual, if requested to interpret the same document at two different times, may come up with different results. Computational systems designed and developed to make the interpretation process “more objective” have ended up simplifying the issue in ways, which are not satisfactory. An oversimplified solution is a no solution, and only human operators have to be in charge of final decision. In order to make sure that interpretation complexity is accounted for, various context projections need to be considered and contextual consistency of each paragraph of a certain document needs to be measured consistently.

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Various Contexts Projections (Contextual Consistency)

Think of an example where different contexts projections may affect or may have radically affected document interpretation

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As in Bowker and Star (1999), different designers of the classification system have different needs and the shifting ecology of relationships among the disciplines using the classification will necessarily be reflected in the scheme itself since we certainly live “information-dense” lives. Textual thickness within a certain document may easily be measured against information, which needs to be rendered comparable across different documents of course. Textual thickness depends on topical density and contextual intensity; those concepts have previously been defined. Data mining may significantly profit out of standardized formats and standardized records, as the points of drilling for further in-depth search are in fact made visible. In order to use and maintain standardized records, which are the result of a further stage of elaboration, a highly consistent set of data gathering and encoding practices need to be adopted. Standardized information produced accordingly, will have to incorporate a whole theory and model of qualitative reasoning about information. We all know that there are radical local differences in belief, practice and knowledge representation, which need to be made available. CTML provides cues to make those diverse interpretation outputs handy and available in the form of “interpretive attachment” warning readers about such discrepancies and divergencies. The present abstract was produced by Dr. Richard Scotti at George Washington University as a summary derived from a selected set of my writings of mine about CTML. The aim of the present text is to be “topically dense,” where the topic is represented by CTML itself, “contextually intense,” where the context is represented by an audience of engineers and knowledge managers in need to understand what CTML may add on top of a voice-operated system already existing, and “textually thick.”

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INFORMATION CONSPICUITY Topical Density / Contextual Intensity Textual Thickness

Different levels of density

Different levels of intensity

ENHANCED MINING

POINTS OF DRILLING in-depth search

Based upon enhanced processing and reshuffling

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Textual thickness evidently shows because the abstract is really planned to be for engineers in the business of information technology, who need to have clear-cut understanding of the terminology and the issues at stake. Enhanced mining is provided by providing the reader throughout the text with direct access to a website which contains further information made available. “A Voice Operated Context Transport Mark Up Language (CTML, Tonfoni 1999) for Recording and Transporting Critical Aspects of the Context of Documented Communications.” Document retrieval and document recognition are both dependent on information contained in or inferred from the document or its metadata. In general, document recognition is associated with a specific need or intention for recognizing, retrieving and having the document. This paper addresses an additional aspect of a document, which while often fundamental to its understanding, is not normally carried along with it; that is, a description of the context in which it was prepared. An understanding of the context in which a document was prepared could provide valuable information for recognition of documents or parts of documents for specific needs. The purpose of this paper is to describe a project under way at the DPRC to develop a voice-interactive human computer interface (HCI) for the document mark-up language (CTML) developed over the past 15 years by Tonfoni (ref. Tonfoni at http://www.intellectbooks.com/). The mark-up language and associated (computerized) annotation system, which originated as CPP-TRS, consists of a consistent, interdependent set of signs and symbols to be attached during creation of a document to indicate: • Communicative purpose of a document or document part • Communicative style of each sequence of thought or part of a document. • Roles and interplay between the sections or parts of the document The purpose of a voice interface is to help reduce mental loading during creation of a document by providing the user with context-sensitive guidance for selection of the most appropriate signs and symbols to capture his/her intentionality. Illustrations are presented to show (1) how fuzziness and misinterpretation, caused by an absence of consistent interpretative clues, may be effectively controlled using CTML, and (2) how the inclusion of voice HCI adds value and increases system effectiveness.

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Information Conspicuity Various levels of information conspicuity affect search and mining Information conspicuity is the end result, reached as a consequence of a highly consistent process of information visualization, enhanced by encoding clues meant to make the document fully “context sensitive” so that the reader is made aware of nuances of major relevance in a very immediate and unambiguous way. Different kinds of information may be collected and be of direct relevance to the set up of a final document, showing heterogeneous up to nonmatching information structures, which allow for different encoding processes to take place. Encoding based upon a consensually shared classification scheme, may well preserve common sense and also enhance document comparability, confrontation and verification. A consensually established information classification system is meant to facilitate monitoring and to preserve the consistency of information transport from one context into another. Access to information across time and space needs to be made possible still making sure that information distortion has not taken place in the process.

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ENHANCED MINING

AREAS OF CONTEXTUAL CONSISTENCY AND TOPICAL CONTINUITY Based upon enhanced processing and reshuffling in-breadth search

In order to experience contextual consistency and high topical continuity, you may check, search and navigate the following website: http://www.intellectbooks.com/authors/tonfoni Contextually consistent information, tailored according to the designed readership, shows to be also topically continuous. Topical continuity is expressed by the same topic, being in this case, CPP-TRS, the originating system, from which CTML has been derived. Readers are welcome to navigate extensively as to make the most out of their reading. Some redundancy and repetition are meant to facilitate new concepts acquisition and learning.

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Please read carefully the following set of expressions:

GAINING INSIGHTS ASSESSING INSIGHTS SEQUENCES LINEAR ISOLATION CONCEPTUAL DETECTION Each of these statements is meant to be a real trigger for brainstorming. Just allow yourself to ponder each of the items, which are certainly likely to trigger some example, reaction, comment, and many questions out of your own experience. Please take notes about what has been triggered in your memory and see if what you have written may be of relevance to any of the following categories: • • • • • •

Knowledge Managers Knowledge Workers Information Retrieval System Architects Knowledge Classifiers High Capacity Database Architects and Managers AI Application Specialists

Documents coming as a result of collective brainstorming may as well show what is most likely to occur in conversational intercourse. By being able to actually identify discontinuity and granularity levels, within each single paragraph, by encoding observations within each documental unit under analysis will certainly help readers and decision makers interpret and make full sense out of information they are provided.

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HANDLING AND MANAGING NATURAL GRANULARITY IN TEXT

TOPIC |

CONTEXT |

(density)

(intensity)

enhancement in processing and reshuffling

TEXTUAL THICKNESS

INFORMATION CONSPICUITY

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Each document and documental unit has some level of granularity, which means that it is composed of information granules, which may be recognized as independent units which are also interdependent for some specific aspects. The following announcement for a workshop was prepared by Christopher Heikimian at George Washington University as a consequence of accurate reading of a set of documents of mine and of having attended a previous workshop of mine himself. The present text is a good example of successful information reconfiguration and reshuffling based upon a variety of readings on the topic addressed. CTML (Context Transport Mark-up Language), a document annotation system designed by Tonfoni to enhance content and context visibility is a means of information and knowledge classification that can greatly enhance the efficiency of the processes of information retrieval and knowledge conveyance and cognition. Learn how to analyze and exploit the language within the language... the structural architecture of information for purposes of: • • • •

Information and Knowledge Retention Information and Knowledge Classification Contextual Refinement of Stored Information Contiguous Context Linking of Web-Based Information using the CTML system.

CTML workshops established in cooperation with the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Knowledge Management Institute of GWU are being tentatively planned for the following dates: Session A Session B Session C

January XX - XX (m-h), 2000 January XX - XX (m-h), 2000 January XX - XX (m-h), 2000

All sessions will be held between the hours of XX:XX pm and XX:XX pm at the George Washington University Foggy Bottom Campus (Washington, DC). Cost is $XXX.XX per session, $XXX.XX for students.

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Interested parties should respond by fax, e-mail or phone to the following office; CTML Workshop Information/Registration Include name; phone; e-mail; session preference (A,B,C); and payment (if registering) CTML has been created by Dr. Graziella Tonfoni. Dr. Tonfoni is internationally known for her contributions to textual theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and multimedia education. She has been a visiting scholar at MIT and at Harvard University, and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and George Washington University. She is currently a Research Professor of Computational Linguistics at the University of Bologna, Italy. Dr. Tonfoni has authored 3 books and numerous papers addressing the concepts underlying CTML.

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Each document, as for the way it was first generated, shows a whole variety of styles and functions as well as a variety of topics and subtopics. Reshuffling is an advanced process of information reconfiguration, which is based upon communicative context recognition for each single piece of the document. Once different communicative contexts have been identified, different documental units may be easily packaged and consistently labeled. Information in this way being reorganized within the same document as to allow for a further layer of visibility to be then made possible and available for fast and accurate document access, interpretation and use. Reshuffling operations are based on the documentation operator or operating team’s capacity of capturing the overall meaning structure out of a certain set of documents and upon their ability to condense information throughout a whole set of transformation stages, which may entail and demand the adoption of diverse stylistic resolutions. In other words, a paragraph examined in its own originating style may be found to be eligible for a reformulation, which will make it more readable after all. Reformulation may occur either locally, which means that a certain paragraph will undergo stylistic change or generally, which means that stylistic change may affect even the entire document. Reshuffling information within a certain document in order to make sure that the most consistent context is attached to it, is most important today, since loss of context due to continuous changes is likely to occur also leading toward loss of meaning and of most meaningful links. In order to be able to maintain those meaningful links, which have been established, making contextual information available, even if still dynamically changing over time, is of major relevance. Any information reshuffling process may be deeply affected by a set of choices. A certain document may in fact be found not to be adequately “informative” and therefore to be in need to be expanded, or it may be found not to be adequately “indicative” and therefore to be in need to be complemented with links to other documents, or it may be found not to be adequately “critical” and therefore in need to be complemented with short reviews and comments. It may also be found not to be adequately “aggregative,” and therefore in need to be amplified with references and citations of a variety of other documental sources, some of which may be textual whereas others may not be textual ones.

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Enhanced Gatekeeping vs Traditional Gatekeeping Strategies - Authoritative Source - Expert Centered - Frequency of Access

Enhanced gatekeeping is based on qualitative reasoning upon information packaging and repackaging throughout a set of transitional stages Any document may be adequately described as an only temporarily defined information territory, which may be subject to even abrupt changes and modifications according to new information coming in continuously as a consequence of the highly interconnected world, we live in today. Since information continuously flowing is exceeding and overwhelming, enhanced gatekeeping strategies are of major relevance. Enhanced gatekeeping needs today to be still based upon traditional gatekeeping, which is based upon authoritative sources identification. Expert centered opinion making needs to be based upon verification. Frequency of access to a certain source, maintained as to be always fully reliable should also be verified. Qualitative reasoning upon information should also be incorporated in the form of a most needed skilled capacity and overall sensitivity, which may only be evolved and developed throughout accurate training and case-based reasoning and previous examples provided.

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In order to fully understand what specialized training for a documentation expert and a crew of experts may be, the movie production analogy is well suited. In producing a movie it is most important to think and plan very carefully about duration and relationships between facts and events to be narrated, including time for perception. Some events may just be represented by one single shot, some others will be better represented by a sequence. We could “theoretically” conceive a movie, which is as long as actual facts and events narrated are, but this is never really the case. Compression techniques, special links and other kinds of devices are actually used to make sure that the movie time frame is consistent and definitely different than the actual time being represented. Those techniques are ellipsis, compression, and insertions of various kinds. Noel Burch describes these techniques very effectively with the term “decoupage.” “El découpage es la operaciòn que consiste en descomponer una acciòn (relato) en planos (y en sequencias), de manera màs o menos precisa antes del rodaje.” ... “Desde el punto de vista formal, un film es una sucesiòn de trozos de tiempo y de trozos de espacio. El découpage es, pues, la resultante, la convergencia de un découpage del espacio (màs bien una sucesiòn de découpages del espacio) realizado en el momento del rodaje, y de un découpage del tiempo previsto en parte del rodaje y concluido en el montage” (from: Burch N., 1979, Praxis del cine, Fundamentos, Madrid). In producing a document, analogous techniques such as information reshuffling, which has been previously illustrated and gatekeeping, which is presented in the next pages are actually applied. Both reshuffling and gatekeeping are for documentation production, what découpage is for movie production. Just like a movie has a certain rhythm, which is precisely determined by choices made in shots and sequences arrangements, a document also has a certain rhythm, which is determined by stylistic choices made in reshuffling information, and in reorganizing it consistently with a consensually agreed upon gatekeeping system. The two following schemes visually represent stylistic choices made, filtering information coming in a variety of formats. Only information organized according to the stylistic choices made will be displayed in the final document.

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Enhanced Gatekeeping (1)

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Enhanced Gatekeeping (2)

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Just like in the movie production, all sorts of visual effects may be created, which obviously modify and affect the plot organization in radical ways, a whole set of textual operations may be performed upon documentation, which are meant to affect the content organization and perception. In the movie narration there may be repetition of an event according to different points of view. A good example is Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, where the same crime is narrated in many ways according to the various protagonists. On the contrary, a fact, which has occurred many times, may have just one narrative. In organizing documentation we may see that all sorts of special effects are in fact produced and the same event displayed may undergo a whole variety of changes, affecting more or less radically the final perception of the whole content displayed, which may be subject to radical reconfiguration. In the following pages some operations, which may be performed upon each single paragraph, are illustrated and visually represented. Just like in a movie production set up, a whole set of questions should be addressed. A document, just like a movie, is in fact meant to produce a set of effects, which will cause a certain set of reactions to occur on the readers’ side. All of this should be absolutely evident to the documentation producer, who is in some way a sort of movie producer, in charge of making major decisions about the kind of information to be displayed and to what extent.

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Qualitative Reasoning upon Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (1)

WHAT IT IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHAT IT SHOWS WHAT IT IS MEANT TO SHOW

PERCEIVE WHAT USERS SEE ARE SHOWN WHAT USERS LOOK FOR WHAT USERS WANT TO SEE (NEED) WHAT USERS DO NOT WANT TO SEE (NEED)

WHAT IS VISIBLE WHAT IS MADE VISIBLE/NOT MADE VISIBLE WHAT IS LEFT VISIBLE/NOT LEFT VISIBLE

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Qualitative Reasoning upon Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (2)

WHAT IS PRESENTED OFFERED WHAT IS PROJECTED GUESSED

MODELLING/STABILIZING CHECKING/REVISING

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Enhanced gatekeeping also provides special interpretive platforms for most effective information accessing and use together with (1) information about what those special interpretive platforms are for; (2) information about topics; (3) information about contexts. Special interpretive platforms are about why – by whom – how – when – what for – some information should be accessed and used. Powerful analogies, which have been drawn between the process of movie production and the process of document production, are now further extended, because they have proved to be most productive as for capturing the essence of documentation too. Let us now analyze editing and cutting techniques in a movie as to transfer analogically some of the basic features into the domain of editing and cutting documentation. Assembling sequences in a movie implies first of all selecting some spots and sequences among many others. Simultaneous images are most of the times the end result of superimposition. Assembling means activating a whole set of dynamic processes. Sergei M. Eisenstein conceives a movie as a highly articulated discourse and his analysis upon assembling it is about describing it very precisely. A movie is based upon a chain of syntagmatic structures; which we may define as “movie units,” as they may be deconstructed and declassified according to a set of elements and variables such as light – color – contrast, which may be progressively “manipulated” at each given time in order to enhance expressive effects.

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Each movie unit may therefore undergo a whole set of transformations of different kinds. Each movie unit shows a certain relationship with whatever fact or event is meant to represent, which may also be analyzed separately from the whole movie as a single shot, so that the dynamics is temporarily eliminated. We may extend those observations to document production as well. Assembling information sequences for document production implies first of all selection of some information spots and sequences among many others, which are still available. This is what is currently covered by the very expression of “information transitional stages.” In order to be able to proceed toward consistent selection so called “qualitative monitoring of information through enhanced gatekeeping” is illustrated from scheme 1 up to scheme 6. Readers who will turn pages and go through the whole set of schemes very rapidly, will be able to cause and perceive special effects, triggered by pages in motion. In other words, the same scheme will look like moving progressively page by page. • What do these visual schemes really want to indicate? • What is being represented is documentation assembly. According to a different kind of selection as for information, which is indicated and marked at each given time and page, will a new version of a certain document be progressively become visible. In other terms, if the selected kind of information is “narration,” will only narrative information be introduced as part of the information assembly process. If the selected kind of information is “description,” will only descriptive information be introduced. By changing the typology of information to be selected and prioritized at each given time, will each version of the same document become slightly different, in ways, which are transparent, because all these operations may be traced back by turning pages back and forth. On the other hand each document we are being exposed to, may be considered as the end result of a certain set of “manipulations,” which will be all traced back.

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (1) I N F O R M A T I O N T R A N S I T I O N A L S T A T E S

Qualitative monitoring of information may easily occur when a stable information classification system has been adopted and is currently used. In such case will the document undergo a whole variety of information transitional stages, which may easily be recognized and monitored. A classification may provide cause and effect explanations and arrange them in relations to one another.

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (2)

With no common agreement as for how to annotate and mark up text, documentation comparison and merging may just occur on a random basis. An information classification system is therefore not only convenient, but also very much needed, as it allows complex and most useful contextual knowledge integration, all the way throughout the entire document life cycle. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: interruption, inversion, irony

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (3)

Partial erasure of previously valid information may enhance visibility of new information which may have become valid as a result of an updating process. There exists in fact a whole “economy of knowledge” as Bowker and Star (1999) have very appropriately defined it, “that articulates clearance and erasure and ensures that only relevant features of the object -document- being classified are remembered.”

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (4)

Any exchange of information as to be fully traced back stage by stage requires a whole set of encoding and decoding moves as for time, context and place shifts. An information classification system may enable information analysts to trace back each encoding and decoding progressive change as to make sure that each information transitional stage occurred is indeed fully consistent with the new conditions and the new knowledge acquired in the process.

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (5)

The invisibility of interpretive infrastructure makes information visualization within a document a task to be achieved as a consequence of a whole discovery process. Full transparency in the process of new knowledge naturalization within a certain document is the real motivating element as to proceed toward full and shared acceptance of a final interpretation by a community of decision makers, in need to turn information into action and practice. In the process of progressive change within a certain document, which is undergoing a whole set of transitional stages and modifications, the trajectory describing the new knowledge acquisition and naturalization process within the document needs to be made visible. Anomalies and perturbations in the flow of information may easily occur when some disconfirming and highly contradictory information element actually interrupts the flow of expectations. Such element is destined to cause a new information transitional state to occur, which was not expected.

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Qualitative Monitoring of Information through Enhanced Gatekeeping (6)

Multiple versions of the same document may be provided as to support evidence for progressive changes performed in time. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: jargon, loop, point of view

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An accurate report is the result of accurate transport of one or more conversational interactions into documental format. An information analyst needs to think documentally as to be able to represent documentally facts and events. In order to be able to produce documents, which may really be of relevance to decision makers, should documentation analysts in charge of producing strategic reports be able to “think documentally,” which means in “knowledge rich ways” and in “highly interconnected ways.” Fluency of style in the document is one of the most important features, definitely meant to facilitate understanding. Documentation analysts in charge of producing further and most elaborated versions, may produce a whole variety of items also called variants, if they feel that more than just one output, incorporating different perspectives and points of view, may be adequate as to cope with the complexity of facts to be narrated and explained. Documents are after all the output result of documental representation skills and capacities and more possible interpretive version as for some complex events need to be seen as a strength and not at all be considered a weakness. Consistent packaging and delivery of documentation resides upon the effective ability on the information analysts’ side to check the very level of accuracy, which could be reached in transporting verbally conveyed information and convert it into written forms and formats. A conversational interaction, meant to have a certain aim, may be more or less radically distorted if appropriate care is not given to the context, in which such interaction has actually taken place. CTML may also be used as a mark-up language for context-sensitive packaging of information. The originating communicative context, in which a document was first generated, needs to be accessible, as to allow for full visibility of different com-

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municative operations, which were performed or needed to be performed upon the same document, both globally and locally, synchronously and asynchronously. Currently occurring operations, each document is likely to undergo, during its life cycle, are visually represented and finally conveyed as an attachment to each document stored. Once a consistently interpreted and appropriately packaged document or piece of a document is available along with its own originating context, it may then be reconfigured many times and more or less radically transformed, still without loosing the intended meaning. Fuzziness and misinterpretation caused by lack of consistent clues for interpretation as for the originating contextual conditions, may this way have been radically reduced and even eliminated, thanks to a consistently shared and robust system for accurate encoding of communicative contextual elements at play. A document comes from “somewhere in time and space and leads toward somewhere else”: it may therefore be defined as a piece of information which has been derived from an information flow, dynamically evolving, then converted into a more stable form (Tonfoni 1996, 1998). Enhanced encoding procedures for supporting accurate decision making are based upon conveying effectively those relevant clues, which altogether represent context throughout a combination of specific icons, which are of four kinds: • document annotation signs: meant to indicate the communicative function or type of a document or piece of a document; • document annotation symbols: meant to indicate the communicative style of a document or piece of a document; • document annotation turn-taking symbols: meant to indicate roles and interplay between the document producer and the document reader; • document annotation amplifier symbols: meant for constructing wider areas of documents, which show topical continuity and context consistency. By topical continuity, we mean to indicate documents focusing on the same topic, which may be either literally extracted as linear sequences out of a document, or abstracted as a result of accurate interpretation and further adaptation at a conceptual level. By contextual consistency, we mean to indicate documents showing the same communicative context, which is explicitly declared, to be easily retrieved.

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A context enhancing mark-up language Document annotation signs, which represent the various communicative functions, a document may convey, paragraph by paragraph, are the following ones: Square: for an informative document or piece of a document, which carries information about a specific event or fact, to be linked up with another document or set of documents made available, in order to extend topical continuity and context consistency. Square within a Square: for a summary of a certain document, which has been produced to reinforce contextual consistency between an original document and its own abstract. Frame: for a document or piece of document, which is found to be analogous in content to other documents and previously stored cases, is meant to reinforce contextual consistency between and among different documents. Triangle: for a memory and history generated out of a certain document, meant to establish topical continuity with background information, which has not been previously introduced, because not available in a documental format. Circle: for a main concept conveyed by a certain document, which has been abstracted as to be linked to other documents showing topical continuity. It is meant to reinforce topical keywords identification and to effectively link together documents, which show the same keyword. Grouped Semicircles: for main concepts, which are abstracted out of an originating document, and meant to establish both topical continuity and context consistency between the originating document and a set of topical keywords. Semicircle: for a locally identified concept, abstracted out of a piece of document and meant to reinforce context consistency by establishing further links to other documents, which show the same keyword. Inscribed Arcs: for indicating the need for an upgrade and update of a certain document; it indicates that a revision process is likely to occur, though it does not declare if such revision will be a major or a minor one.

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Opened Text Space: for indicating that an upgrade and update has indeed occurred within a certain document; it indicates that the document has now reached a new revision state as a consequence, though it does not declare if the revision has been a major or a minor one. Right Triangle: for a comment made to a certain document or piece of a document, coming in a non documental format, where more contextual information is needed, which has to be derived from other external sources, not previously available, based on topical continuity. Document annotation symbols are meant to indicate communicative intentions and styles, more locally within a certain document, means sentence by sentence. They are particularly useful as to show contributions made by individuals to the creation of a certain document and may be easily incorporated within the final document output, as to provide further clues, which may significantly add to clarity in interpretation. Document annotation symbols, which represent different modes of information packaging, activated at different times or at the same time, may be combined and used dynamically for repackaging purposes, because they effectively indicate transitional states within the same document, by declaring explicitly the nature of those changes, which have occurred or are likely to occur next. They are the following ones: Describe: from Latin describo: write around. It means complementing the original document or piece of a document with as much information as maybe found interesting to add, without any specific constraints. It is represented by a spiral, which starts from a central point – the middle point of the spiral indicating the original document – and proceeds toward expanding the document at various degrees, linking it with other documents or pieces of documents or information coming in from different sources and found to be relevant to facilitate the originating document interpretation. Define: from Latin definio: put limits. It means complementing the document with limited information about a very defined topic, which has been previously selected and identified as the most relevant one, which is represented by the middle point of the square.

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It indicates that there is a specific need to incorporate specific information about a relevant document or piece of a document, which is made available and implies accurate and most selective focusing on a very limited package of highly specific information. Narrate: from Latin narro: tell the story. It means complementing the document with various facts and events, which have been referred to in the originating context, by following a logical and chronological order. It indicates a set of major points or facts representing different diachronic stages, which are strictly linked up together in a sequence. Point out: take a single point out of a story chain. It means isolating a specific event or fact among those reported within a single document, focusing on just that one, and adding more detailed information, by expanding it significantly, as to have it linked with other documents, which have been found to be of relevance to that point. Explain: from Latin explano: unwrap, open up. It means that facts and reasons are given as to support interpretation of a certain event within a certain document or piece of a document. The document producer may start by indicating the originating cause and proceed toward showing the effects or start with effects and go back to the cause, according to what is found to be more significant. Regress: from Latin regredior: go back. It means that more information about a certain topic, presented within the document, is absolutely needed as to gain a deeper understanding. It represents a specific topic focusing process and an in depth information expansion, which is activated only for that precise topic. The document reader may want to consider if further information is needed on that and ask for availability of further resources. Inform: from Latin informo: put into shape, shape up. It means that any document is the result of some information packaging and that the very specific document indicated is packaged in the most unconstrained way, therefore subject to many and various kinds of repackaging. It leads toward two different kinds of further specification, which are respectively conveyed by the “inform synthetically” and the “inform analytically” indication.

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“inform synthetically” means departing from a larger document or set of documents and proceed toward a summary related to a specific topic, identified as being the most relevant one emerging from the originating document. “inform analytically” means departing from a given document or limited set of documents as to expand toward further documents or add more information, which needs to be previously converted into the form of a document, which is not available yet. Reformulate: from Latin reformo/reformulo: change shape and shape again. It means changing the kind of information packaging, which was adopted before and substituting a certain information request with a different one, still related to the same document. It may turn into a more or less radical transformation of the originating document, according to a precisely defined request or set of requests. Express: from Latin exprimo: push out and press out. It means adding personal opinions and individual feelings related to facts and events within a certain document; it indicates the most subjective mode of information packaging, which is openly seen as bound to very personal evaluations, judgements and emotional states. Document annotation turn-taking symbols are meant to define the mode of accessing and reading the document, requested at each given time; they are suggested by the document producer to be followed by the document user; they are the following ones: Major Scale: it shows that literal interpretation is needed and that those pieces of documents indicated and marked off, should be extracted and quoted literally, the way they were first packaged. Minor Scale: it shows that accurate interpretation may need a further process of abstraction and that pieces of documents indicated and marked off, may undergo significant reconfiguration processes, up to abstraction. Open or Unsaturated Rhythm: it shows that accessing the document may lead the user toward incomplete interpretation of those facts and events, which are presented. It is meant to suggest that the user access more documents and various kinds of sources, which are made available.

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Tight or Saturated Rhythm: it shows that accessing the document will lead the user toward complete interpretation of those facts and events, which are presented. It is meant to suggest that the user sticks to the interpretation provided, though access to other sources is still available, as to support evidence. Document annotation amplifier symbols come last and may be added only after the previously illustrated ones have been used; they apply to larger documentation territories and indicate specific operations, which are to be performed as to connect sets of documents, which have been previously encoded and accurately stored. They are the following ones: Choose: it is meant to represent the dynamic process of first identifying and then deciding between optional contexts for interpretation, which are mutually exclusive, given a certain set of documents. Identify: it is meant to represent definition of a more specific context, within a broader context for interpretation of a set of documents; it naturally occurs before “search” and “select”. Search: it is meant to represent the dynamic process of choosing among different contexts for interpretation of a set of documents, which are many and compatible as to find the most appropriate one. Select: it is meant to represent multiple contexts, which may evolve either synchronously or asynchronously and may be modified, once a certain decision-making process has been performed, as to be stored and kept as an example. Copy/Replicate: it is meant to represent the dynamic process of duplication and repetition of a certain context, which, if lost, would affect understanding and accurate interpretation of a set of events and facts, described and explained by a set of documents. Ahead: it is meant to represent the progression of a certain set of documents, which are linked together by context consistency or harmoniously shifting contexts.

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Back: it is meant to represent the need to go back to delete and replace the originating context, which has radically shifted, in the course of various transition states, such that, if not eliminated, would indeed affect consistent interpretation of a whole set of documents. Conflict: it is meant to represent an emerging inconsistency and incompatibility between various context attributions to a set of documents, which needs to be cleared as to proceed toward any further interpretation. The whole document annotation system, here illustrated in its various components, may be applied at different layers and at various levels of complexity and is meant to underline the fundamental role and responsibility of the individual encoder and of the encoding team. Just like geographic maps only show those features, which become relevant according to the nature and purpose assigned to the map itself, the same “way of thinking” may be extended to documentation mapping, according to various packaging and repackaging priorities, in continuously shifting contexts. Energy and time dedicated to quite an expensive process, such as enhanced encoding is, may this way become time and cost-effective, because each encoded document will provide an enormous amount of examples, meant to become in-house knowledge, destined to remain extensively available.

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Some contextual concretions are particularly strong and powerful and very stable links may be enacted and activated at any time, even if not intentionally. Special attention needs to be paid such that undesirable links are not established and unwished contextual concretions are not added. Some links may be so powerful as to shift scenario in radical ways: the originating context having been modified in significant ways or even completely changed. If some unwished links are accidentally activated, they need to be accurately identified and eliminated by repositioning, which means by either reassessing the originating context or assessing the new and intended one.

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There exist fuzzy stages in documentation flows, which evolve dynamically. These are stages, which need to be identified first as to be then analyzed at a very precise level and then be represented statically. Once the document has reached a static representation we need to make sure that information conveyed and displayed is reliable, as it has previously been accurately verified. Information technology may contemplate and embed interpretive operations, which are of crucial relevance for decision makers, who also become policy makers. Interpretive clues, which may have been assigned are usually difficult to see, unless they are explicitly indicated. Context classification strictly depends on accurate observation, which may only be reached if highest context sensitivity has been promoted. Accurate analysis of context and of progressive context shifts a certain document has been undergoing requires the document producer’s close attention to relevant details. Any documental unit is in fact subject to evolution and interpretation shifts of various kinds. There are a whole and differentiated variety of moral and political categories for interpretation, which deeply affect the meaning and the structures of information carried by each single paragraph within a document. Encoding tools and interpretive categories need to be sensitive to the interpretative attitudes and conditions by those who are in charge of encoding and interpreting documentation. This is the reason why rhetoric and figures are so important.

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Communicative context in time shift

Rhetorical strategies of relevance: amplification, battology, condensation

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Communicative context progressive and multiple shifts due to multiple participants Verbal communication is subject to particularly strong waves of external and multiple context resonance.

Originating Message

Rhetorical strategies of relevance: cryptography, dialogue, digression

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Conversion of verbal and conversational interactions may result into textual format at different levels of precision. Further stages of transformation occurring need to be accurately reported and contextualized accordingly.

Some interpretive ambiguity which may derive from time and space shifts within a certain document may still be allowed only and exclusively if such ambiguity may be seen as an “interpretive resource” meant to resolve a certain communicative problem which has occurred. Some interpretive shifts may this way serve the purpose of allowing the information analysts different interpretation possibilities, meant to “converge” as for a final interpretive deliverable and output.

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Focal Distance Real Openness Interpretation systems, just like specialized vocabularies, are strictly connected to the specific contexts, in which they were produced. Documents are definitely bound to the nature of those conceptual tools, which have been employed. Each document section and paragraph will therefore reflect the local interpretation system, which has been adopted, in the form of “focal distance.” Focal distance is the relationship between the originating system of belief, which has been adopted by the originating document producer or producing team and its documental output result. There is however no guarantee that a specialized vocabulary and a local interpretation system may coincide with a wider interpretation and classification scheme and system, in the form of “real openness.” Real openness is the relationship between the documental output and the target system of belief which is adopted by information specialists in charge of analyzing the document.

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Parallel and multiple representation systems of the same event or chain of events are therefore generated, which may converge, diverge or split and overlap. Conflicts may arise which should be carefully analyzed before a certain representation system is in fact selected and prioritized. There are also conflicts and discrepancies in attention and priorities, which different individuals may give to context sensitive documents, when they have to finally decide what should be classified, how and when and to which extent. The need for formats, which are intended to become standardized ones, requires and calls for the selection of relevant features and specific criteria for judgment. A whole set of questions should therefore be asked as to make sure that criteria established show an adequate level of reliability and are not just the result of subjective judgment. Only a human operator may proceed toward accurate analysis and final decision making, even if information technology may support a whole set of interpretation tools and conceptual aids for most accurate final encoding. Differently than a “how to do” book, which is aimed toward providing a whole set of specific instructions, is this book, also a textbook, really meant to trigger different ways to think about documentation, meant to enable information analysts to envision documentation within a broader scenario. A whole set of metaphors and analogies have therefore been introduced as a way to make visual perception and visual reasoning possible in the first place. Just as in Bowker and Star (1999), we may certainly add that “if you could say it, you would not need a metaphor. If you could conceptualize it, it would not be a metaphor. If you could explain it, you would not use a metaphor.” You will now be entering a new model of thinking and viewing documentation, which will accompany you for quite a few pages, which is precisely the Envisioning Documentation Flows Model, a visual metaphor to be accurately analyzed as to be fully understood and practically used. In order to position yourself accordingly, read the following paragraphs slowly as to make sure the relevant points made are not missed:

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“… a book is an extension of our memory and imagination, because what is our past other than a set of dreams? Which difference exists between remembering of dreams and remembering of the past? This is what a book does.” (literally translated from: J. L. Borges, El Libro, 1979, published in Borges Oral, Biblioteca Borges, 1995, Madrid, Alianza Editorial) “… each document is an extension of our memory and imagination, because what is an organizational culture other than a set of dreams about possible projects some of which are actualized, whereas some others are not? Which difference exists between remembering of individual dreams and remembering of organizational dreams? This is what documentation is all about.” A document may also be seen as the final result coming out of sharing collective memories and practices, which may have a different structure and therefore require complex textual operations, as to become really homogeneous after all. Information analysts need to be able to identify inconsistencies and to carefully plan on a final delivery, which may reflect complexity and therefore incorporate different perspectives. A document is in some way a repository of information, which needs to be maintained constantly by an individual or a team in charge.

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The Envisioning Documentation Flows Model (The EDF Model)

“en el cine la camara puede fijar un momento pero ese momento ya ha pasado. Lo que traza es un fantasma de ese momento. Ya no tenemos la certeza de si ese momento ha existido fuera de la pelìcula o si la pelìcula es una garantìa de la existencia de ese momento.” (Manoel de Oliveira en la pelìcula “Lisboa Story,” Wim Wenders, 1994). Paraphrasing and transferring these observations into documentation analysis, we may actually write along the same lines that -a paragraph may stabilize an event which is gone. What is conveyed is a representation of a certain event in a certain time. We may neither be sure that this event has really been as described behind

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and beyond the document itself nor may we really be sure that the document may in itself guarantee for the very existence of such event in such time. Documents may not in fact be conceived and seen as pictures, but also dynamically envisioned as movies, dynamically evolving in sequences. Just like sequences in a movie may create an “artificially reconstructed time”, documents may connect fragments of events and facts, which are not necessarily continuous out of a whole information flow. Time in documentation is therefore obviously very much compressed. Documentation, due to the fact that various events and causes are described according to a variety of points of view, needs also be viewed and conceived as “in motion.” Motion is determined by a continuously shifting perspective: just like in movies there are short sequences together with long ones, in documentation there are short and long paragraphs. Short paragraphs may also represent a very long sequence of events and facts just like long paragraphs may represent a few details out of a single event or fact. According to the document producer decision making and choice.

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(The EDF Model)

(1) date

(2) date

(3) date

Narration occurring in documents may be based either upon presentation of facts and events, which have occurred in a sequence, or even simultaneously of course. Due to some obvious discontinuities, paragraphs may be organized just like flashbacks in movies, and all sorts of stylistic resolutions made possible by language syntactic structures and stylistic resolutions may be chosen. Rhetorical strategies of relevance: extenuation, flashback, flashforward

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(The EDF Model)

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Items out of the documentation flow Television programs are characterized by a really wide variety of items and communicative styles. Programs are very diverse and fragmented; nevertheless there are informative spots meant to create some links, which is TV programs schedules and synthetical recapitulations, coming in the form of a synopsis. Along the same lines, there are special items in documentation flows, which are meant to facilitate search for more specific information. Just like in television programs, we may create specific expectations, by making sense out of terms such as news, weather report, comedy, talk show etc., the same is likely to occur in documentation flows where some specific terminology may create very precise expectations. Some items out of the documentation flows are subject to highly standardized models of documentation production such as the following ones:

Reports Abstracts Titles Keywords Notes All of these items may definitely be considered as the output result of a summarization process, where different levels of information condensation have been reached. Reports mostly apply to verbal communicative intercourse, whereas abstracts, titles and keywords are to be referred mostly to written texts.

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Notes may derive out of verbal communication, such as taking notes in the course of some verbal performance or during a speech or in a meeting; they may also be viewed as items added as to complement an already existing document, to facilitate interpretation. Those items, which have been identified and extracted out of a documentation flow, may reflect a certain kind of classification based upon qualitative reasoning and applied to information condensation. They represent somehow a spatial and temporal segmentation of a “documental world,” as they may be considered some sort of conceptual mapping devices. Any documentation management principle today needs to be confronted with a variety of communication models, as each culture operates based upon very different principles and criteria. The Raymond Williams Models of communication (1962) still represents a very solid interpretive platform as to establish a typology of documentation genres, where by genre we mean to indicate what Bowker and Star (1999) describe in terms of “typified communicative action performed by members of an organizational community in response to a recurrent situation, identified both by their socially recognized communicative purpose and by common characteristics of form.” According to Williams (1962) communication models, which we may find, are of four kinds, which are the following ones: • Educational and Institution driven model, where documentation is accurately organized by experts, who are content providers able to guarantee for reliability of information presented; • Authoritarian model, where political power is seen as being in control of the media as to create consensus about which kind of documentation should be circulated as opposed to which kind of documentation should be banned; • Commercial model, where freedom of exchange and entertainment seem to be the leading factors as to establish which kind of documentation should in fact be made available; • Democratic model, where freedom of access together with production and circulation of documentation seem to be the driving forces as to establish that almost all of documentation should be made available.

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According to criteria established by each of these models, various formats and systems of classification are provided and circulated. Given the overwhelming quantity of information provided through a variety of channels, throughout of a whole set of diversified media, coming from a diversity of sources, availability of documentation needs to be complemented by a whole set of tools meant to verify reliability of information displayed. More than ever it is easy to find deception and manipulation, where those who are responsible for the deceptive action, may easily hide and become invisible. Great damage may derive out of deceptive operations performed upon documentation widely available. Verification procedures are of major relevance today, as to ensure reliability of information provided, which may directly affect reasoning upon issues of major relevance. In the following pages one more set of conceptual and visual tools is presented, meant to help verify documentation, by providing a set of categories to be shared, which may help compare and confront observations and results achieved. As a conceptual and visual system on its own, intended and meant to identify manipulations made on purpose upon documentation, we may think of this set of further categories as specifically designed and established to facilitate in-breadth and in-depth search for deception. Scientific and academic deceptive discourse may easily be turned into intentionally modified scientific evaluation corpus design, subject to further textual manipulations. In today world of information explosion, the increasing quantity of scientific publications made available as for the pressure of academic requirements and carrier oriented concerns as well as the exploded number of research grant proposals and immediate reward opportunities provided throughout a variety of channels have deeply affected committees’ attitudes toward individual researcher’s outputs evaluation. Both making and unmaking of a scientific reputation were, before the information affluent society became a reality, strictly subject to verification by well-identified and highly recognizable communities of experts in a specific set of well-defined

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research areas and subfields. Experts in the field were the ones in charge of checking the validity of new findings and relevant data. So called evidence was in fact about providing criteria meant to compare and confront a whole variety of results achieved and check and state reliability of new items with full accuracy. Due to the complexity of research issues and information sources now made fully available and easily accessible, some of which are reliable whereas other ones are not, accurate verification of new claims made and new assumptions adopted and new theories produced, all leading toward new and often diverging directions has become a very hard task to achieve. Exponential growth of committees and subcommittees caused by a highly compartmentalized knowledge organization, leading toward information dissemination up to specialized knowledge fragmentation, has created the conditions for uncertainty and instability to occur in setting up those evaluation criteria, which may be then consensually chosen and agreed upon as to be finally incorporated within a certain scientific community. Among the many derivative side effects of information explosion, which have become most visible in the course of the last ten years of full speed and highest acceleration in new knowledge production, deeply affecting research ethics and academic attitudes, we may certainly mention a higher level of fuzziness in interpretation. Criteria adopted may in fact allow for a higher degree of freedom in information distortion up to data manipulation: conceptual tools originally designed and meant to provide and assess evidence, may in fact be easily turned into tools for deceit. An exponentially grown amount of conferences and conventions taking place at the same time in a variety of locations, in parallel sessions, has created the need for standardized packaging and prepackaging formats, and the demand for short-term publication policies has definitely opened up a whole new market for fast and handy display of results, even before accurate debate and discussions may indeed occur.

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Careful examination of newly introduced theories and both in-breadth and in-depth analysis of results achieved was in fact considered to be one of the main tasks to be performed throughout academic discourse in a whole variety of ways, such as individual academic presentations, more restricted conversations and interactions with research experts, and articles, which were submitted to committees anonymously as to be objectively evaluated. The time frame expected for final publication to occur would allow the author and researcher to update or eliminate parts, which may have been found to be inconsistent between submission time and final printing time. Comments of relevance up to revisions, both marginal and substantial ones, were easily incorporated. Today the already highly compressed time frame for publication is further accelerated by the opportunity, which has been provided, of posting only temporarily achieved and therefore partial results directly on the Web. Single authors are substituted by groups of coauthors asserting that a certain research output is in fact the result of a collective effort. Each individual’s responsibility is therefore much more difficult to be traced back, especially if assertions and assumptions made were found to be partially inconsistent up to fully wrong in the long run. A lack of consistent evaluation criteria creates the ideal conditions for data dissipation, information distortion up to misinterpretation as well as misleading evaluation diffusion. Evidence manipulation through intentional modification of statements, which had been previously made, may easily occur in the form of deceptive claims. Academic deceptive discourse may in fact come as a direct consequence of previous rush in claiming the validity of a certain assertion, later on found not to be accurate or even acceptable and to be then covered up, as the very wrong claim may have not only been disclosed but also been widely circulated already Once a certain result or assumption has been made public in various forms and packaged in many standardized formats, it obviously becomes very difficult to have it discarded. The very tight and immediate connections existing between specialized knowledge providers in academic and research institutions today and the media make it in fact very easy for academic and research communities to reach out the

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public in a highly compressed time span and in most pervasive ways at the same time. Deceptive academic discourse may materialize throughout a whole variety of textual processes, ranging from deceptive or out of context information extraction, moving toward summarization based upon deceptive information tailoring, leading toward wrong decision making. Not relevant details may be focused whereas really relevant points, which have been accurately obscured, may easily pass unnoticed and be fully ignored. Spatially and temporally displaced communicative intercourses and out of context information transport may certainly allow for additional degrees of freedom in manipulation at different levels. Amplification and reduction phenomena may easily occur in the form of deceitfully designed texts and intentionally modified scientific corpora. If a mistaken assumption or a partially up to fully wrong theory has been made public and has been widely disseminated, will the academic community have to confront issues such a potential vs real damage leading of course toward partial loss of credibility up to more general discredit. In order to check intertextual consistency of assumptions made by the same author or coauthoring team, a system meant to assist, supervise and advise a team of experts in the process of verification, has been specifically designed (CDD, Conceptual Deception Detector, Tonfoni, 2001), which may definitely enlighten conflicting elements, and trace back intentionally modified sentences and paragraphs within a certain document or wider corpus of documents. An intentionally modified scientific corpus may be analyzed according to CDD tools, and its complementary specification and annotation system will enable to indicate in full details, how and to which extent and where and when were textual manipulation operations actually performed. Traces of deceptive discourse converted into an intentionally modified corpus design, and single sentences, which have been subject to minor up to major reformulations by a single individual or a team, may be easily made surface.

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Each textual modification occurring in the form of sentence meaning perturbation up to full paragraph turbulence does in fact have propagation effects over the whole corpus, which was designed according to a whole set of “ad hoc” criteria, as to become progressively subject to further textual manipulations. Manipulation propagation effects grow exponentially fast and are meant to explode the already existing gap between the originating mistake they intended to cover up and the actual facts, found later on, to actually disconfirm the basic assumptions, which were previously made. By creating a whole artificial scenario, will the manipulating individual or collaboratively manipulating team actually turn the problem into a bigger one. Modified textual structures will syntactically reflect and semantically refract upon only partially false interpretation, by expanding up to exploding falsification and distortion effects in ways, which they are most likely to loose control upon. The important role, which a conceptual deception detecting system based upon a whole set of cognitive tools may play, will come up in full details in the following pages, where a stabilized terminology complemented by a set of visual representations and definitions will be accurately displayed. What is really important to notice here is that those main fourteen textual operations, which will be progressively illustrated, do not represent deceptive actions only and exclusively. In other words, if consistently used, may these fourteen textual processes represent most important operations for documentation enhancement. Just like a knife, which may serve as a most precious tool in a kitchen, but may also be easily turned into a weapon, may these textual operations, which are here presented, easily serve the purpose of intentional deception. So they are both considered and presented as a part of a conceptual deception detector system, which may easily support documentation digging, meant to discover deceptive action, which may have been performed in the form of textual manipulation. The way those categories are presented and illustrated is in fact meant to promote acquisition of the conceptual deception detector system itself, by providing those very exercises, where readers are asked to become active protagonists and to acquire and stabilize new knowledge in the course of their own practice.

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Main Textual Operations Which May Be Performed upon Documentation UPDATE UPGRADE CONFRONT CONTRAST SPEED UP SLOW DOWN EXPAND EXPLODE REDUCE IMPLODE EXTREMIZE EXAGGERATE MIX GLUE

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UPDATE: cut off information, which is already textually organized and is part of a certain document, found to be obsolete and not valid any longer and which may be replaced by new and valid information locally.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some pseudo-updating operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, as to remove a single piece of information, which is inaccurate, still without checking if removing such information may in fact have side effects on the overall statements and assertions made in the document, which may still remain, even if found inaccurate. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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UPGRADE: add new information, which has been found both relevant and valid and has been textually organized as to become part of a certain already existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some pseudo-upgrading operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, aimed toward inserting an unverified piece of information, which may be inaccurate, nevertheless found of use to support statements made within the document. Obviously pseudo-upgrading operations may cause substantial damage since they are capable of “naturalizing information” without providing evidence for it. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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CONFRONT: compare textually organized information, which comes from different sources and may be found to be part of a different document, as to fully confirm it as consistent and valid.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Confronting operations are meant to detect deception, which may have occurred throughout a variety of documents. They are made possible by checking the validity of a claim or set of claims made and taken for granted throughout the whole set of documents. Confronting documents and single pieces of information, which are found to recursively carry the same statement is a most direct operation to make possible deception surface and to visualize the way it was carried on. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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CONTRAST: compare textually organized information, found to be part of different documents and showing inconsistencies and contradictions, in order to come up with a fully consistent and validated choice.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Contrasting operations are meant to detect deception, which may have occurred in a variety of documents by making inconsistencies of a claim or set of claims surface and become visible. Contrasting documents and single pieces of information, which may look as inconsistent ones, is meant to trace back deception and the way it was carried on. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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SPEED UP: synthesize textually organized information, which is already part of a certain document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some speed up operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, aimed toward diminishing the value and hiding some information, which may be controversial. Some details, which may be found inaccurate, are therefore reduced in size and somehow obscured, but they are not fully eliminated. Give or create an example out of your own experience

On Visualizing Documentation

241

SLOW DOWN: analyze textually organized information, which is already part of a certain document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some slow down operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, aimed toward enhancing the value of a piece of information, which is amplified in size, as to have it look and be perceived as of extraordinary value. Give or create an example out of your own experience

242

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EXPAND: add more textual sequences to already textually organized information, which is part of an existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some expansion operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or upon a set of paragraphs, by adding pieces of information taken out of other sources, which may have neither been verified nor indicated as not verified. Give or create an example out of your own experience

On Visualizing Documentation

243

EXPLODE: add more interpretative clues, coming in the form of concepts and keywords, operating at an abstract level, to textually organized information, which is already part of an existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some explosion operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or upon a whole set of paragraphs, by adding evaluation and judgmental statements and claims, with no further evidence supporting those claims, as to enhance the value of assessments made within the document. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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REDUCE: cut textual sequences out of textually organized information, which is part of an already existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some reduction operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, as to reduce the impact of a certain piece of information, by eliminating it entirely, which means taking it out of the document. Give or create an example out of your own experience

On Visualizing Documentation

245

IMPLODE: cut interpretation clues, coming in the form of concepts and keywords, out of a piece of textually organized information, which is already part of an existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some implosion operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, by taking away those accurate interpretation clues, which were aimed toward providing evidence as for a set of claims and assessments, found to be of major relevance within the document. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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EXTREMIZE: organize a complex interpretation layer, based upon concepts and keywords, which result out of having previously exploded textually organized information, within an existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some extremization operation, after a previous explosion operation has occurred, may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or set of paragraphs, by turning evaluation, assessments and claims, found to have no evidence, into further statements and assessments, therefore converted into pseudo evidence. Give or create an example out of your own experience

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247

EXAGGERATE: organize a more complex and articulated layer, based on one or more textual sequences, added to those already existing textual sequences, which come as the result of having already expanded textually organized information, within an existing document.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some exaggeration operation following upon a previous expansion operation, may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, by adding even more pieces of information, taken out of unverified sources and continuously coming in with no way to trace back the originating information structure. Give or create an example out of your own experience

248

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MIX: merge textually organized information, coming out of different sources and found to be part of different documents, as to support evidence and confirm its reliability.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some mixing operation may have been performed upon a document, be it a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, as to cover up for inconsistencies and lack of evidence for assessments and claims made within the document. Deceptive mixing is based upon fuzzy reformulation of single pieces of information, extracted out of unverified sources, or taken out of context as to be subject to manipulation. Give or create an example out of your own experience

On Visualizing Documentation

249

GLUE: link textually organized information coming out of different sources and found to be part of different documents, as to support evidence and assess its reliability.

Conceptual Deception Detecting Strategy Some gluing operation may have been performed upon a document, either upon a single paragraph or a set of paragraphs, as to cover up for a few inconsistencies and lack of evidence as for assessments and claims made within the document. Deceptive gluing is based upon quotation and citation of pieces of information taken out of context, which have been placed where they may actually look like providing evidence for a statement or claim made within the document. Give or create an example out of your own experience

250

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Please form a group of your colleagues and discuss the following points. Please feel free to refer to the books on the topics under discussion.

Artificial Neural Networks • What are the artificial neural networks (ANNs)? • Why should we study ANNs? • Can ANNs offer special advantages over conventional methods in documentation management? • What are the possible applications of ANNs? • What are the successful applications of ANNs? • How ANNs learn from data as well as environment? • Describe various leaning techniques. • What are the limitations of ANNs? • There are some ANNs simulators available on the WEB. Please download and play with them.

On Visualizing Documentation

251

Please form a group of your colleagues and discuss the following points. Please feel free to refer to the books on the topics under discussion.

Fuzzy Systems • • • • • •

What is the fuzzy logic? What should we use it? What are the practical applications? What are the successful applications? What are the limitations of fuzzy logic? Can we use fuzzy logic in documentation management? How and why?

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Please form a group of your colleagues and discuss the following points. Please feel free to refer to the books on the topics under discussion.

Genetic Algorithms • • • • • •

What are the genetic algorithms (GAs)? Why use GAs? What are the possible and successful applications of GAs? What are the limitations of GAs? Can GAs contribute in the area of documentation management? Some WEB sites provide free access to their GAs simulators. Please download the necessary software and implement any one application you like.

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253

Textual operations, which have been illustrated, are very likely to be found in documentation. These operations may be preformed for good purposes by documentation designers but they may also be used as deceptive strategies by individuals or teams, intentionally working on falsification. It is therefore most important to be able to identify and name those operations as to be able to monitor information flows and to also make sure that final documentation produced is verified and therefore reliable as to proceed toward decision making based upon evidence provided. Qualitative reasoning upon information is a very important ability to be acquired today. In the world of information workload decision makers have to struggle as hard as ever to make sure they may identify and grasp the really meaningful pieces of information, those which may really determine a consistent interpretation of what is under observation and analysis. Critical decisions need to be based upon reliable documents, whose origin and sources have to be verified. Verification processes may be supported and enhanced by current information technologies, but no technology may replace or substitute the fundamental role which only information analysts may play. A special sensitivity to information needs however to be developed as the huge quantity of sources available is no guarantee for real understanding, and just access to those sources is not enough. An exceedingly large amount of information may in fact lower interpretation abilities in significant ways. Special tools need to be provided in the form of cognitive tools, which are meant to enhance discrimination capabilities and both in-depth and in-breadth search capabilities as well. In order to acquire those skills both exercise and practice are definitely needed. New insights and new perceptions may come as a consequence of the new kind of training which this textbook is meant to promote. Context sensitive perception may be seen as an overall sensitivity to information quality, materializing into an augmented capacity to classify and label information consistently. In order to promote this kind of sensitivity, a whole set of visuals has been provided along with a whole set of metaphors, meant to promote analogical reasoning upon a

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whole variety of issues, which are of relevance as to promote new forms of information visualization. Some parts of this textbook may look particularly difficult, because they are not meant to provide a set of “how to do” rules; they are rather meant to trigger those aspects as for our reasoning capacities, which are most likely to be left behind and fully unattended in the information technology world we are currently inhabiting. Practicing along those lines proposed throughout this book may in fact require a real effort, very much like when someone would enter a gymnasium and start practicing again, after a long period of no physical exercise. In order to bring this new learning experience to completion, is the reader invited and then accompanied throughout one more set of exercises as a final path of practice is here provided. In the last section of this textbook, also entitled “a few more exercises,” will readers be lead throughout one more exercising path, which is specifically meant to recapitulate and package knowledge presented in the course of the entire textbook. This way will readers of this book come out of their learning process with a whole package of personal experience packaged within the book itself. They will also have learnt how to apply qualitative reasoning upon information in their daily lives, as to make the most of their own daily experiences. They will in fact have enhanced their documentation perception quite significantly. This has been the intent of the authors of this overall textbook, by all means.

6

Chapter Six

A Few More Exercises

There are certainly questions readers may like to ask Professor Tonfoni after all. So is she now going to provide a set of clarification by using directly the first person as if her voice was in fact coming out of an interview? Readers are here playing the role of interviewers asking for those questions, which they probably have kept in their minds up to the present point and page. “When readers of her books come up to her asking her directly: “why should we all think of writing visually?” then my answer is: “actually you should think of the writing process visually and even more than that – physically – and this is precisely what writing should be about to be really a comprehensive experience in very fulfilling and most meaningful ways.” Expanding on the physics and chemistry analogy, which she uses constantly, it is a fact that throughout her entire work of writing and on writing occurring both in English and in Italian, she certainly wanted intended to introduce visualization as a very important mean and integrating part of the study of writing altogether. Just like physics and chemistry provide us with many and different kinds of visualization models, which are meant to promote a deeper understanding of those phenomena and facts, which could not be seen and explained without a theory behind. Differently than scientific illustration, scientific visualization is about processes, which would not be seen if a shared terminology defining “invisible factors” involved was not appropriately identified first, and then attributed a sound and consistent representation, to be finally consensually accepted. This is precisely why she has worked on carving and then establishing a technical terminology and a whole conceptual apparatus for thinking and rethinking about already written documents and about the documentation writing and reading proc-

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ess altogether. Visualizing cognition and cognitive capabilities active during the writing process is the primary aim to be achieved as it was never taught before. If we look at disciplines, which are based upon the study and analysis of not visible components like physics or chemistry are, we certainly may see how hard it is to think and plan with no physical models available. This is why selection of relevant models is so important as to be able to recognize and name those processes, which would otherwise be very hard to even discover, and would therefore remain unknown. The writing process may gain in clarity and readers, to become also writers, may reach a much deeper understanding throughout whole visual equipment. In order to be able to visualize the many and various aspects of linguistic communication, she has been designing a whole set of physical models of reasoning about natural language, just like readers are used to find in a physics laboratory in schools a whole set of different models meant to accurately represent different kinds of phenomena as to provide practical examples. In order to be able to envision complex and dynamic processes, she has designed different visual schemes and textual representation systems and diagrammatic structures, which are specifically meant to support the thinking, planning and modeling of different kinds of texts, throughout the use of a whole set of shared and agreed upon metaphors. These models are also meant to help solve communication problems and address communication issues, which are strictly bound and fully related to the complexity of cognitive processes involved. Another question may arise, which is the following one: “well, why did you do it –now–? Why was it not done before?” Well, the real answer to this question is that we have –now– the privilege and challenge to be living in that era, during which most important discoveries regarding cognition and the mind are actually made. So basically this kind of knowledge was neither available nor sought before. This is why it was possible for her to access this newly found knowledge as for our cognitive processes and more generally about cognition, pull it out of the highly specialized literature and turn it into a whole system, which may be used practically and effectively in day by day life.

A Few More Exercises

257

If she really wanted to create a comprehensive title for her entire work path, she should probably pick something like “bridging the gap between cognitive research and communication practice in day by day life.” What is in fact the relevance of important discoveries related to cognition and cognitive abilities, if such knowledge is not practically made available to be actually used? This has been the intent of her work and fundamental goal of her research life. Professor Tonfoni feels happy when readers of her books tell her that they finally are able to name consistently and share among each other “things” that they have been doing before, but could not talk about and really share, simply because they did not know how to define them. They would name their communicative actions and textual operations differently or not name them at all, or even name them many times with various and different names, therefore they were not really able to share their own experiences in ways which could make them fully understood. Having now become aware themselves of all those cognitive operations, through a common vocabulary which has been proposed, they may actually finally exchange different views by talking the same language. They may promote and nicely monitor group working activities of different kinds, they finally and clearly may “see” what the cognitive problems of each single individual writer are in fact and help solve those problems. And this is only possible through a preliminary process of self observation, which is meant to creating that kind of awareness, which allows the various elements of cognition to finally surface. As to use another metaphor, I could add that my visual system for recognizing and naming cognitive processes involved into the writing and for defining consistently different kinds of operations on text, is somehow based upon an X-raying of communicative actions, meant to declare the basic nature of each action. One more metaphor is needed, which comes from architecture. We know that architects may, through the use of blueprints, indicate precisely different kinds of operations to be performed as for the construction of the building, by sharing a consensual terminology and consensual tools for designing the building. Along the very same lines, may a writer be seen as a textual architect who cannot jump into

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the actual construction of its text without a previous process of rethinking of text functionalities, as to proceed toward consistent design and planning. Just like architects use a standard set of icons and visual schemes for representing the different stages and spaces of the construction, so many writers be supported with a whole equipment of visual tools as to be able to represent to themselves first and to others next what they are actually trying to accomplish. By sharing a common way to define a whole variety of different processes, will in fact become possible for each individual, involved with some collective writing enterprise, to actually enhance appreciation of diversity as for cognitive styles. No real appreciation is in fact possible without an “in depth” understanding of different stylistic resolutions possible. Visuals, presented and proposed systematically throughout this book, are indeed of different kinds, just as diverse is the nature of those same processes they mean to represent. A visual representation of the multiple and most complex aspects in each text will trigger much deeper and consistent perception, both as for writing and reading processes. Enhancing perception and sensitivity about these very “invisible” aspects of text will create awareness and improve consistently the final result.

A Few More Exercises

259

Describe your learning experience throughout this book.

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Chapter Six

Define the three key paths in this book in a way you feel comfortable with.

Envisioning Documentation

Iconizing Documentation

Visualizing Documentation

A Few More Exercises

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A Few More Exercises

263

Tell us your story about reading this book.

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Point out which part or parts of this book you liked best.

A Few More Exercises

265

Explain why you liked that part or parts better than others.

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Regress on the very concept of “Documentation” and add what has now become for you the new meaning of this term, after having read this book.

A Few More Exercises

267

Inform a next to come reader about the nature of this book.

268

now both synthetically:

and analytically:

Chapter Six

A Few More Exercises

269

Reformulate the information you previously gave about documentation in whatever way, you may choose, i.e., either synthetically or analytically, at your pleasure.

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Express your personal feelings about learning with and throughout this book.

A Few More Exercises

Which attitude would you suggest that the next to come reader should adopt? Choose one please and indicate why.

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Which attitude would you suggest that the next to come reader should adopt? Choose one please and indicate why.

A Few More Exercises

273

Present a story about information workload.

Focus on just one aspect of being overwhelmed by information.

Regress on the meaning of information workload.

Present your feelings and comments upon information workload

You have created an informative text, which may be summarized into just one concept or more.

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…after having accessed the bibliography of this book, you may want to select and organize some items you may like to search for and read later on, by using the amplifier symbols.

A Few More Exercises

275

…you may then comment on each of the item you have searched by continuing using the amplifier symbols…

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A Few More Exercises

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A Few More Exercises

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A Few More Exercises

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The following figure shows the basic structure of a document image classifier. Please understand this figure using the literature on image processing and artificial neural networks.

Document

Document Page

Acquisition Scanner 2D Image Data array

Image Processing

Processing and Data Extraction

Neural Network

Classification

Features Data Vector

Translated Neural Network output Output

Classification Results

7

Chapter Seven Conclusions

The visual apparatus, which has been provided and illustrated in the course of the present book, is meant to support information analysts involved into the process of rethinking about information seeking and documentation management altogether. The visual representation system here provided is based upon a set of precisely defined metaphors meant to become practical tools for reframing the whole problem of information seeking as to facilitate navigation through large documentation territories. What shows very evidently is that not just one single mapping procedure is needed, but rather a set of qualitatively different mapping strategies, leading toward consistent representation of just those areas, within a wider information territory, which are specifically meant to be addressed. A wide literature in the field of management shows that a whole set of methodologies for documentation organization may be adopted as to proceed from a certain knowledge domain exploration toward a first level of abstraction, based upon accurate selection as for what is relevant to be further processed, conceptualized and visually represented and what is in fact not. It is only as a consequence of a precise definition of the information territory to be then represented that some specific decisions may be made about the relevance of more specialized mapping strategies to be then superimposed upon the same information territory. In other words just as a political map will have to reflect the consistent choice of those features and elements which are relevant, as to grasp and retain information about that specific aspect, the same way an information territory mapping model will have to facilitate information seeking and interpretation according to a set of predefined priorities. This is the reason why legends, meant to define and make visible map by map what should be searched and may be found in each of those maps, and how it may be conventionally and consensually be represented case by case. 283

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Understanding the specific function of a topographic map means precisely being able to pose realistic questions about relationships occurring between various phenomena in the specific area represented by that map. Along the same lines, understanding the precise function of a consistently organized and mapped information territory will facilitate tremendously information seeking. According to the conceptual system provided in the course of this book overall control on the information seeking process may be equally shared between the map designer and the map user. The information visualization system here provided is in fact based upon consistent explicitation of those criteria, which have been first selected and then chosen as being the relevant ones. It is quite evident that documentation design and documentation annotation are a twofold process: first comes the determination of the potential users’ requirements, followed by a consistently planned selection as for the kind of content to be mapped and the level of detail to be considered the most relevant one; second comes the arrangement of content, involving explicitation of scale in the organization of information and qualitative reasoning criteria complementing it. Accurate annotation is meant to facilitate consistent information seeking, also meant to speed up any kind of documentation retrieval process. As such, is annotation the result of each individual commentator’s and archivist’s sensitivity and just like any art, it will definitely require very precise skills and practice. Knowledge organization will strongly benefit out of a preorganized model, explicitly indicating a whole set of priorities. If accuracy is a priority as it actually needs to be, then annotation is also a science reflecting accurately defined parameters. Nothing may be left to arbitrary interpretation and being able to refer to an overall model will constitute the only guarantee to keep consistency, accuracy and cohesion within a much broader document database. Readers now coming out of this book reading and book practicing experience are now ready to proceed toward using themselves “the very new pair of glasses,” which this book has provided them with, as to use them in their daily life in documentation management.

Bibliography This book is quite peculiar, as already indicated, as such not so many specific references are provided like it would be expected in more traditional literature. This is also due to the fact that major bibliographies in the field of documentation management are widely available anyway. Nevertheless there are a few and very important references, which indicate readers the need to read more in depth what has been quoted in the course of this book and it is now fully referenced. Beside, some other recent texts are suggested which may have not been quoted throughout the book. These items in the bibliography are precisely the ones marked with (*). These books and papers are specifically meant to be read in order to build a more basic knowledge about documentation matters all together. The list added follows an alphabetical order and all the books and articles appear together. Bowker, G.C. and Star, S.L. (1999), Sorting Things Out, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass. (*) Butcher, H. (1998), Meeting Managers’ Information Needs, Aslib, London. Carey, G. and Snodgrass, M.E. (1999), A Multicultural Dictionary of Literary Terms, McFarland and Co, Inc., North Carolina. Chi, M.T.H., Glaser, R., and Farr, H.J. (1998), The Nature of Expertise, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. (*) Chun, W.C. (1998), Information Management for the Intelligent Organization, 2nd ed., ASIS Monograph Series Information Today, Medford, NJ. Costa, I. (1998), La Esquematica, Paidos, Barcelona. Dupriez, B. (1991), A Dictionary of Literary Devices, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

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Bibliography

Endres Niggermeyer, B. (1998), Summarizing Information, Springer Verlag, Berlin. (*) Finnie, E. (1998), Document Delivery, Aslib, London. Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1983), Mental Models: toward a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference and Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gannon, M.J. and associates (1984), Understanding Global Cultures, Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi. Gannon, M.J. (1998), personal communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD Gentner, D. (1983), “Structure mapping: a theoretical framework for analogy,” Cognitive Science, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 155-170. Hegarty, M., Just, M.A., and Morrison, I.R. (1988), “Mental models of mechanical systems: individual differences in qualitative and quantitative reasoning,” Cognitive Psychology, vol. 20, pp. 191-236. Hofstadter, D. (1995), Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, Basic Books, New York. (*) Hollis, R. (1994), Graphic Design, Thames and Hudson, London. Howlett, R.J. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2001a), Radial Basis Function Networks 1, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Howlett, R.J. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2001b), Radial Basis Function Networks 2, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Jain, L.C. (ed.) (1995), Electronic Technology Directions to the Year 2000, IEEE Computer Society Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. (ed.) (1997), Soft Computing Techniques in Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering Systems, Springer-Verlag, Germany.

Index

287

Jain, L.C. (ed.) (2000a), Evolution of Engineering and Information Systems, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. (ed.) (2000b), Innovative Teaching and Learning: Knowledge-Based Paradigms, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Jain, L.C. and Fukuda, T. (eds.) (1998), Soft Computing for Intelligent Robotic Systems, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Jain, L.C. and Vemuri, R. (eds.) (1998), Industrial Applications of Neural Networks, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C., Johnson, R.P., Takefuji, Y., and Zadeh, L.A. (eds.) (1998), Knowledge-Based Intelligent Techniques in Industry, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. and De Silva, C.W. (eds.) (1999), Intelligent Adaptive Control, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. and Lazzerini, B. (eds.) (1999), Knowledge-Based Intelligent Techniques in Character Recognition, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. and Martin, N.M. (eds.) (1999), Fusion of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic and Evolutionary Computing and their Applications, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C. and Fanelli, A.M. (eds.) (2000), Recent Advances in Artificial Neural Networks: Design and Applications, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C., Halici, U., Hayashi, I., Lee, S.B., and Tsutsui, S. (eds.) (2000), Intelligent Biometric Techniques in Fingerprint and Face Recognition, CRC Press, U.S.A. Jain, L.C., Lazzerini, B., and Halici, U. (eds.) (2000), Innovations in ART Neural Networks, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Jain, L.C. and De Wilde, P. (eds.) (2001), Practical Applications of Computational Intelligence Techniques, Kluwer Academic Publishers, U.S.A.

288

Bibliography

Jain, L.C. and Kacprzyk, J. (eds.) (2002), New Learning Paradigms in Soft Computing, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Jain, L.C., Chen, Z., and Ichalkaranje, N. (eds.) (2002), Intelligent Agents and Their applications, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. (*) Lancaster, F.W. (1998), Indexing and Abstracting in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., Library Association, London. (*) Larsgaard, M.L. (1998), Map Librarianship: an Introduction, 3rd ed., Englewood, Colorado. Lazzerini, B., Dumitrescu, D., and Jain, L.C. (2000), Fuzzy Sets and their Applications to Clustering and Training, CRC Press, U.S.A. Lazzerini, B., Dumitrescu, D., Jain, L.C., and Dumitrescu, A. (2000), Evolutionary Computing and Applications, CRC Press, U.S.A. Lee, D.X. and Thoma, G.R. (accessed 21/3/2001), “Page Layout Classification Technique for Biomedical Documents,” http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/ dilist.html. Lowe, R.K. (1993), “Diagrammatic information: techniques for exploring its mental representation and processing,” Information Design Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 3-17. Marchionini, G. (1995), Information Seeking in Electronic Environments, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Medsker, L. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2000), Recurrent Neural Networks: Design and Applications, CRC Press, U.S.A. (*) Megill, K.A. and Schantz, H.F. (1999), Document Management: New Technologies for the Information Services Manager, Bowker Saur, London.

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(*) Murray, L.K. (1998), Basic Internet for Busy Librarians: a Quick Course for Catching Up, American Library Association, Chicago. OECD (1996), “Adult learning in a new technological era,” OECD Proceedings at the Center for Educational Research and Innovation, pp. 57, Paris. (*) Perkins, D. (1994), The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art, The Getty Trust Publications, Los Angeles. (*) Porter, A.I. and Read, W.K. (eds.) (1998), The Information Revolution: Current and Future Consequences, Ablex Publishing, London. (*) Rosenav, M.D. (1998), Successful Project Management: a Step by Step Approach with Practical Examples, 3rd ed., John Wiley and Sons, New York. Russo, M. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2001), Fuzzy Learning and Applications, CRC Press, U.S.A. Sato, M., Sato, Y. and Jain, L.C. (1997), Fuzzy Clustering Models and Applications, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Seiffert, U. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2002), Self-Organising Neural Networks, Springer-Verlag, Germany. Teodorescu, H.N., Kandel, A., and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (1998), Fuzzy and Neurofuzzy Systems in Medicine, CRC Press, U.S. Teodorescu, H.N., Kandel, A., and Jain, L.C. (eds.), Soft Computing Techniques in Human Related Science, CRC Press, U.S. Teodorescu, H.N. and Jain, L.C. (eds.) (2001), Intelligent Systems and Techniques in Rehabilitation Engineering, CRC Press, U.S. Teodorescu, H.N., Jain, L.C., and Kandel, A. (eds.) (2001), Hardware Implementation of Intelligent Systems, Springer-Verlag, Germany. (*) Schriver, K.A. (1997), Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, John Wiley and Sons, New York.

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(*) Sless, D. (1978), Visual Thinking, Adelaide: Adelaide University. Tonfoni, G. (1991), “Communicative cooperative interaction models: gapfilling processes by reformulation,” in Stati, S., Weigand, E., and Hundsnurscher, F. (eds.), Referate der Dritten Arbeitstagung Dialoganalyse III, pp. 405-414, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tuebingen. Tonfoni, G. (1994a), Writing As a Visual Art, (first English abridged version with J. Richardson, with a foreword by Marvin Minsky), Intellect, U.K. [2nd ed. (2000), Intellect, U.K., and Scarecrow Press, U.S.] Tonfoni, G. (1994b), “CPP-TRS: on using visual cognitive symbols to enhance communication effectiveness,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics: Topical Workshop on Virtual Reality, pp. 136-142, NASA, Lyndon Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, U.S. Tonfoni, G. (1995), “A visual language for representing invisible aspects of natural language,” Intelligent Tutoring Media, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 84-90, Intellect, U.K. Tonfoni, G. (1996a), Communication Patterns and Textual Forms, Intellect, U.K. Tonfoni, G. (1996b), “On visual text planning, processing and programming,” in Tascini, G., Esposito, F., Roberto, V., and Zingaretti, P. (eds.), Machine Learning and Perception, Series in Machine Perception and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 23, pp. 99-106,World Scientific, Singapore. Tonfoni, G. (1996c), “Italy – an “inform–active” learning environment,” Proceedings of the Round Table on Adult Learning and Technology in OECD Countries, pp. 141-163, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Philadelphia, U.S. Tonfoni, G. (1996d), “CPP-TRS for visual text preprocessing,” AI*IA Notizie, vol. IX, no. 2, pp. 35-36, Rome, Italy. Tonfoni, G. (1996e), “A visual news processing environment,” Artificial Intelligence Review, Special Issue on “Integration of Natural Language and Vi-

Index

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sion Processing: Recent Advances,” edited by P. McKevitt, vol. 10, no. 3-4, pp. 33-54, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tonfoni, G. (1996f), “High performance in text processing: the CPP-TRS environment,” Working Notes of the AAAI-96 Fall Symposium on Knowledge Representation Systems Based on Natural Language, pp. 131-135, AAAI -96 Fall Symposium Series, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A. Tonfoni, G. (1997a), “CPP-TRS: a universal grammar for communicative interaction,” in Weigand, E. and Hauenherm, E. (eds.), Dialogue Analysis: Units, Relations and Strategies beyond the Sentence, Sonderdrueck aus Beitrage zur Dialogforschung, vol. 13, pp. 233-249, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tuebingen, Germany. Tonfoni, G. (1997b), “A new paradigm for natural language processing and visual text planning: the CPP-TRS model,” in Carapezza, C., Gambarara, D., and Lo Piparo, F. (eds.), Atti del Ventottesimo Congresso Internazionale della Società di Linguistica Italiana su Linguaggio e Cognizione, pp. 419434, Bulzoni, Rome, Italy. Tonfoni, G. (1997c), “A visual interlanguage for iconizing documents,” Actes du UNESCO Forum International des Sciences Humaines sur le Plurilinguisme dans la Société de l’Information, pp. 50-65, UNESCO Publications, Paris, France. Tonfoni, G. (1997d), “Qualitative reasoning in information processing and visual documentation management,” in Lesmo, L. (ed.), Atti dell’Incontro dei Gruppi di Lavoro dell’Associazione Italiana per l’Intelligenza Artificiale su Apprendimento Automatico e Linguaggio Naturale, pp. 65-68, University of Turin, Italy. Tonfoni, G. (1998a), Information Design: the Knowledge Architect’s Toolkit, Scarecrow Press, U.S. and Intellect, U.K. Tonfoni, G. (1998b), “Cooperative documentation management,” in Bunt, H. (ed.), Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Multilingual Communication, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands.

292

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Tonfoni, G. (1998c), “Intelligent control and monitoring of strategic documentation: a complex system for knowledge miniaturization and text iconization,” Proceedings of the ISIC/CIRA/ISAS 98 Conference, pp. 869-874, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S. Tonfoni, G. (1998d), “Relativity theory of information and communication in natural language,” Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Society, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 322-327. Tonfoni, G. (1999a), “On augmenting documentation reliability through communicative context transport,” Proceedings of the 1999 Symposium on Document Image Understanding Technology, pp. 283-286, SDIUT99, Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. Tonfoni, G. (1999b), “Model based reasoning upon information: CTML, a mark up language for tagging discourse and annotating documents,” Sprache und Datenvererbeitung, International Journal for Language Data Processing, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 59-68, IKS, Bonn, Germany. Tonfoni, G. (2000a), “Bridging the gap between vision and natural language processing; a visual metalanguage for supporting qualitative reasoning in textual design,” Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata, vol. XXXII, no. 1, pp. 3-36, Bulzoni, Roma, Italy. Tonfoni, G. (2000b), “Visualization of textual structures,” in Yazdani, M. and Barker, P. (eds.), Iconic Communication, pp. 92-110, Intellect, U.K. Tonfoni, G. (2000c), “The making of specialised knowledge in information design through visual metaphors and spatial analogies,” Studi Orientali e Linguistici, vol. VII, pp. 235-255, Edizioni CLUEB, Bologna. Tonfoni, G. (2002a), “Quality enhancing conceptual tools for medical decision making,” in Bushko, R.G. (ed.), Future of Health and Technology, Series in HealthTechnology and Informatics, pp. 145-162, IOS Press, Amsterdam. Tonfoni, G. (2002b), “Information transport through dialogue: a system for reducingfuzziness due to cultural and context shifts,” in Bondi, M. (ed.), Pro-

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ceedings of theSymposium of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis, pp. 383-393, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tuebingen. Troina, G. and Walker, N. (accessed 19/3/2001), “Document Classification and Searching – a Neural Network Approach,” http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/ bulletin/bullet87/troina87.htm. Tufte E. (1983), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire, U.S.A. Tufte E. (1990), Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire, U.S.A. Tufte, E. (1998), Visual Explanations. Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, Graphics Press, Cheshire, U.S.A. Van Rooij, A., Jain, L.C., and Johnson, R.P. (1996), Neural Network Training Using Genetic Algorithms, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore, December. Vonk, E., Jain, L.C., and Johnson, R.P. (1997), Automatic Generation of Neural Networks Architecture Using Evolutionary Computing, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore.

Index -Aabridgment, 9 abstraction, current, 169 enhanced, 169 ahead, 141, 214, 279 ambiguity, 9 amplification, 10 analogies, 19, in documents, 149 analogous narrative document planning, 150 artificial neural networks, 250 -Bback, 142, 215, 280 battology, 10 brachylogia, 10

-Ddata mining, enhanced, 179 define, 121, 211, 260 denotation, 11 density in texture, 148 describe, 120, 211, 259 dialect, 11 dialogue, 11 dialogue-conversation, 151 digression, 11 document annotation signs, 210 document rotation, 152 documentary, 11 documentation management, 1, 19 -E-

-Ccaricature, 10 chiaroscuro, 10 choose, 139, 214, 278 circle, 117, 210 circumlocution, 10 collective document perception, 151 condensation, 10 conflict, 143, 215, 281 confront, 235, 238 connotation, 10 contamination, 11 context indexing, 158, and stabilization, 176 context projections, 181 contrast, 235, 239 copy, 140, 214, 277 counter-interruption, 11 criticism, 11 cryptography, 11 current abstraction, 169, 171, 172

EDF model, 224, 226, 227 enhanced abstraction, 169 enhanced datamining, 179 enhanced extraction, 162, 164, 167 enhanced gatekeeping, 193, 195-207 enhanced search and trigger, 174 envisioning, 47, documentation, 81, 260, flows model, 224 exaggerate, 235, 247 exegesis, 12 expand, 235, 242 explain, 124, 212, 265 explanatory document drawing, 150 explode, 235, 243 express, 129, 213, 270 extenuation, 12 extraction, enhanced, 162, 164, 167 extremize, 235, 246

295

296

Index -F-

flashback, 12 flashforward, 12 frame, 115, 210 fuzzy systems, 251 -Ggenetic algorithms, 252 global narrative document planning, 149 glue, 235, 249 grouped semicircles, 116, 210 -Hhyperbole, 12 hypertext, 152

memoir, 13 metaphor, 19, creation, 148 minor scale, 131, 213, 271 miscellany, 13 mix, 235, 248 montage, 13 motif, 14 -Nnarrate, 122, 212, 263 neural networks, 250 -Oopened text space, 119, 211 open rhythm, 132, 213, 272

-Iiconizing documentation, 99, 260 identify, 137, 214, 275 implode, 235, 245 inform, 127, 128, 212, 267, analytically, 127, 213, 268 synthetically, 127, 213, 268 information conspicuity, 183, 185 information design, 38 information reshuffling, 192 inscribed arcs, 118, 210 interruption, 12 inversion, 12 irony, 12 -Jjargon, 13 -Llocal narrative document planning, 149 loop, 13 -Mmajor scale, 130, 213, 271 meaning, 13

-Pparadox, 14 paraphrase, 14 parody, 14 pastiche, 14 pattern recognition, 149 plenum of meaning, 37, 41 point of view, 14 point out, 123, 212, 264 -Qqualitative monitoring, 202-207 qualitative reasoning, 198, 199 -Rreduce, 235, 244 redundancy, 14 reformulate, 126, 213, 269 regress, 125, 212, 266 replicate, 140, 214, 277 right triangle, 114, 211 -Ssaturated rhythm, 132, 214, 272 scrambling, 14

Index

297

search, 136, 214, 274 select, 138, 214, 276 selfcorrection, 15 semicircle, 113, 210 slow down, 235, 241 speed up, 235, 240 square, 110, 210 square within a square, 111, 210 squint, 15 stabilization, 176 -Ttelescoping, 15 textual canvases, 148 textual machines, 153 textual operations, 235 tight rhythm, 133, 214, 272 topical selection, 158

triangle, 112, 210 -Uunsaturated rhythm, 132, 213, 272 update, 235, 236 upgrade, 235, 237 -Vvacuum of meaning, 37, 41, 42 viewing, 47 visualizing, 47, documentation, 145, 260 -Wword chaining, 148 word explosion, 148

The Art and Science of Documentation Management Graziella Tonfoni with Lakhmi Jain This book is intended to improve our ability to create documents that more accurately convey what we really mean to say. As information becomes increasingly accessible through newly-introduced technologies, the human mind seeks a more comprehensive interpretation of the world in which we live. In order to manage this information overload, we must carefully reconsider our attitude towards documentation. While acknowledging the value of the standard guidebooks' hard rules on documentation management, Tonfoni advocates a new approach that promotes additional skills required for consistent decision-making, such as information sensitivity. This book has been conceived as a movie on paper, and as such, can be considered a 'documentary on documentation'. Readers are invited to analyse their own reading experience throughout a set of pages, to become 'interactive on paper'; some space is intentionally provided for practice and annotation. Exercises are included to help readers consolidate new skills, through an innovative ‘learning by seeing’ experience. Since history is based on documentation, every e-mail or memo we write becomes a part of our individual history. This book will be invaluable to those whose careers rest on accuracy, who need to create both succinct and clear reports and presentations. Professor Dr. Graziella Tonfoni is internationally known for her inventions in documentation management, textual theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, communications, training, and multimedia education. Professor Dr. Lakhmi Jain is a Director/Founder of the Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering System Centre in the University of South Australia.

Ambigram on the cover designed and drawn by Douglas Hofstadter

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