Mauri Kaipainen

Multiperspective explorability of tag spaces

Mauri Kaipainen, Katrin Niglas, Peeter Normak, Jaagup Kippar

Mauri Kaipainen

KERG

Perspectives to Web 2.0 • cognitive• social• design

Mauri Kaipainen

Competences from:• Cognitive science• Computer science• Education• Statistics

Mauri Kaipainen

Core issue: Ontologies of Web 2.0?

How to make sense of the conceptual polyphony of everyone’s democratic Web 2.0?

Report of work in progress.

Mauri Kaipainen

Focus: Collaborative taggingExamples:• Flickr• YouTube• Del.icio.us• CiteULike=>Collaborative sensemaking =

’definition of conceptualization’

Mauri Kaipainen

Tag space

The accumulation of tags in a collaborative tagging system as shared conceptual space.

Mauri Kaipainen

Tag space as ontology

”An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization” (Gruber 1993)

What dimensions define the tag space?

Mauri Kaipainen

Tag space as ontological space (ontospace)

Mauri Kaipainen

Soft ontology

• Open ended• Non-hierarchical (flat)• Allows constant redefinition

(perspectives)

Elaboration of Aviles...Kaipainen et al. (2003)

Mauri Kaipainen

Soft ontology as matrix

QuickTime™ jaTIFF (LZW) pakkauksen purkuohjelma

tarvitaan elokuvan katselemiseen.

Add tags =ontodimensions

Explore!Give your weights to tags =

perspective

Mauri Kaipainen

Perspective to ontospace

Mauri Kaipainen

Perspective visualizationVisualization of

ontospace from chosen perspective with:

• Multidimensional Scaling (MDS, Kruskal & Wish 1978)

Similarity clustering

Mauri Kaipainen

Multi-Perspective Exploration - Why?• Go ’beyond the information given’ (Bruner

1973)! Hands-on ontology! • Recognizing different views to the ontospace• Explicate and analyse one’s own perspectives,

premises• Share perspectives (Compare to photo

angles!)• Ecology, immersion in conceptual world! (Ulric

Neisser in the era... => Games)

Mauri Kaipainen

Exploration as knowledge building

Neisser’s perceptual cycle (1976)

emphasizes the systemic nature of cognitive ecology

Mauri Kaipainen

Perceptual cycles and shared ontology as object of exploration

Sharedontology

Mauri Kaipainen

Characteristics of the system• Ecology, complex system• Iterative, continuous• Knowledge building

– Social: Shared domain– Individual: Private perspectives

Mauri Kaipainen

Prototype of exploration tool: Perspective by sliders

• Slider interface to explore perspectives

=> Similarity clustering

Mauri Kaipainen

Exploration tool: Content item characterized

Mauri Kaipainen

Soft search

• Consider best hit it with respect to the next-best ones

• Why this result? What if? Try different perspectives

=> Iterative feedback to schema!

Mauri Kaipainen

Soft distinctions

• Explore the effect of taking into account another ontodimension

• Better distinction?

Mauri Kaipainen

Summary: Hands on ontology!• Going ”beyond the information

given” Bruner (1973)• Allows hands on exploration of

ontology• Supports individual knowledge

building

Mauri Kaipainen

Summary: Sharing ontology• Ontospace and the exploration tool

can be built into online applications!

• Individual perspectives made shareable– Understanding the other– Elaborating common concepts

Mauri Kaipainen

Conclusions

How to make sense of conceptual polyphony of ’democratic’ Web 2.0 concepts?

a) Experts’ top down fixed ontology definitions, or

b) Democratic soft ontologies and multiperspective exploration

Mauri Kaipainen

Conclusions

Proposed• Interaction with ontospace as a means

of cognitive-social knowledge building• Repurposing a statistical method to

allow real-time multi-perspective exploration of ontospaces

• Transition from sharing a domain to sharing perspectives

Mauri Kaipainen

Discussion

Multiperspective exploration:• ’Immersion’ to concretized virtual

conceptual spaces?• Exploration ≈ playing around =>

game-like approach to complex information domains

Mauri Kaipainen

Discussion

• Other application areas besides collaborative tagging

• Methodology: Mixed qualitative-quantitative methods (Niglas & Kaipainen in press)

• Political space• Geotagging (Taggin’ Tallinn)• All sensemaking of complex domains!

Mauri Kaipainen

References

http://imke.tlu.ee/mediawiki/index.php?title=Mpx#References

Mauri Kaipainen

Lev ManovichStudia GeneraliaTallinn 08.10.2007

http://www.tlu.ee/imke/manovich/

Mauri Kaipainen

Thank you for attention!

Discussion wiki:http://imke.tlu.ee/mediawiki/index.php?title=Mpx

Email:mauri.kaipainen@tlu.ee