Knowledge Mobility: Semantics for the Web as a White Knight for Knowledge-Based Systems
Yolanda Gil · The MIT Press eBooks · 2003
this article, I argue that the interoperation challenge will not be met with current approaches, since they entail trapping knowledge into formal representations that are seldom shareable and often hard to translate, seriously impairing its mobility. I propose an approach to develop knowledge bases that captures at different levels of formality and specificity how each piece of knowledge in the system was derived from original sources, which are often Web sources. If a knowledge base contains a trace of information about how each piece of knowledge was defined, it will be possible to develop interoperation tools that take advantage of this information. The contents of knowledge bases will be more mobile and no longer be confined within a formalism. The Semantic Web will provide an ideal framework for developing knowledge bases in this fashion. We are investigating these issues in the context of TRELLIS, an interactive tool to elicit from users the rationale for choices and decisions as they analyze information that may be complementary or contradictory. Starting from raw information sources, most of them originating on the Web, users are able to specify connections between selected portions of those sources. These connections are initially very high level and informal, and our ultimate goal is to develop a system that will help users to formalize them further