MultiPerspective Media, Explorative Interactions and Soft Ontologies

1
Multi-Perspective Media, Explorative Interactions
and Soft Ontologies

• Mauri Kaipainen, PhD
• Knowledge Environments Research Group KERG
• Tallinn University

2
Outline

• EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
• ABOUT ONTOLOGY AND ONTOLOGIES
• SOFT ONTOLOGIES
• MULTIPERSPECTIVE MEDIA
• APPLICATION AREAS
• SUMMARY

3
ABOUT EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
4
Old media

• Physical medium formatting the presentation of
  content
• Sequential searches
• Top-down communication
• Monoperspective
• Examples Newspaper, book, TV program, LP, film

5
Old New Media

• Digital (virtual) implementations of old media
• Random access (What is it good for?)
• Top-down communication
• Monoperspective
• Examples Web 1, CD, DVD

6
New New media

• Database media, endless number of collages
• Random access -gt Explorative interactions
• Two way communication bottom-up and top-down
• Collaborative communities
• Multiperspective!
• Web 2.0, Wikipedia, Flickr

7
Bottom-up communication

• People contributing
• Content Information, photos, blogs
• Software Components, functionalities, fixes
• Ontologies folksonomies, tags
• Plurality, perspectival ambiquity

8
Implications

• New new media requires re-design and
  re-conseptualization of
• Authorship -gt Joint authorship
• Medium -gt Database
• Ontologies -gt Soft, spatial
• Interaction -gt Explorative multiperspective

9
ABOUT ONTOLOGY AND ONTOLOGIES
10
Ontology in Philosophy

• Study of being or existence (WP)
• Note Bad reputation in postmodern thinking
  Associated with naïve realism

11
Ontologies in Computer science

• An ontology is a specification of a
  conceptualization. (Gruber)

12
Premises about ontology

• Ontologies are
• omnipresent in media
• hard (fixed)
• monoperspectival
• reflect someones values, priorizations,
  beliefs...
• means of power

13
Implicit hard ontologies

• Embedded in the structure, presentation order or
  hierarchy
• Language, vocabularies, terminology, concepts
• Stories cinema, theatre, etc.
• Search engines, e.g. Google

14
Explicit hard ontologies

• Taxonomies Linnaean botanical taxonomy
• Library systems
• Database architectures
• Metadata systems, often hierarchical Semantic
  Web
• Hypertext link structure web pages, sites,
  hypertext

15
SOFT ONTOLOGIES
16
Soft ontology

• Definitions of an information domain in terms of
• a spatial model, defined by
• an open-ended set of numerically expressed
  feature dimensions, of which
• any subset can be used as a perspective of
  projection
• Aviles Collao, Jazmin Diaz-Kommonen, L.
  Kaipainen, M. Pietarila, J. (2003).

17
Purpose of soft ontologies

• Describe domains of information without a single
  fixed perspective, but
• Support multiple perspectives
• Allow multi-perspective media

18
Example of a soft ontology
Ontology
Add dims!
19
Methodological implications

• Soft ontologies allow
• spatio-mathematical projection (e.g.
  multi-dimensional scaling)
• algorithmic (real-time) implementations for
  exploratory interfacing
• other statistical methods and visualizations
• fuzzy set conceptualization (Zdeh 1965)
  category theoretical interpretation (Rosch

20
Supporting analogies

• neuro-modeling support, e.g. self-organizing maps
  (Kohonen 1982)
• cortical maps (Wall 1988, Durbin 1990, Hubel
  Wiesel 1977)

21
Softness?

• Ontological dimensions can be
• Taken into account or ignored
• Added at will (next example), open endedness, 8 -
  dimensionality
• Graded degrees allowed

22
MULTIPERSPECTIVE MEDIA
23
Multi-Perspective Media

• Media particularly designed to support multiple
  equally right/true perspectives to the same
  domain
• Interactive exploration of multiple perspectives,
  not only those fixed by an author

24
Conceptual model of exploring multiple
perspectives

• Perspective projection from multi-dimensional
  ontological space momentary element of
  sense-making
• Multi-perspective exploration the process of
  individual sense-making
• Perspective-sharing Community meaning-building
• Kaipainen, M. Niglas, K. Laanpere, M. Kikkas,
  K. Normak, P. Sillaots, M. (2007)

25
Implementation example Explora tool

• An example implementation
• Slider interface to explore perspectives
• Realtime multi-dimensional scaling visualization
• Browser and search functionalities

26
Explora tool for multi-perspective exploration
27
Explora One dimension taken into account

• Taken into account in ordering. (If possible)
  orthogonal (90) layout of data with respect to
  the viewer

90
28
Explora No perspective

• Ignored, Data in same pile, layout hiding the
  distribution from the spectators view.

29
Explora Egocentric search, an example from
politics
30
Explora Ecocentric map
31
APPLICATION AREAS
32
Application areas

• Locative media collaborative communities
  Taggin Tallinn
• Politics Political maps collaborative
  communities
• Narrative spaces Obsession enactive cinema
  project
• Ethics
• Education Meaning and knowledg building
• Soft graphical search engines
• Content sharing
• Decision making
• Matchmaking (mates, business partners, cars,
  homes...)

33
Politics

• eDemocracy experiment
• Citizens allowed to make initiatives,
  accumulating the dimensionality of the political
  space
• Support asked for initiatives from fellow
  citizens in realtime

34
Taggin Tallinn! Associate a tag to a location
Mauri was here!

• GSM cell
• GPS
• map-click

X
5943.7N 2474.3
35
Tags, blogs and communities

• Position tagged X was here...
• Individual presence
• Coordinates
• Place
• Content link
• Community

• Content community game ontological
  dimension of the city

Blog individual track
36
Hybrid coordinate system of Tallinn

• Soft ontology approach allows blending
• Geographical coordinates tracked by GSM, GPS, or
  manually associated with
• Meaning coordinates emerging from collaborative
  communities

37
My Tallinn
Pille

• Multi-perspective view
• Hybrid geo-experiential map
• Mobile and web interfaces

38
Location-associated content collections
smart phone
39
Community and social software

• New tags are
• distiributedto the community
• peer-evaluated
• moderated
• accepted/rejected
• priorized (competition)
• elaborated jointly

Immediate p2p communication facilitated
40
SUMMARY

• New new media are bottom-up multi-perspective
  database media contributed by people content,
  software and ontologies.
• They create demand for new ontologies and
  interactive concepts
• Multi-perspective exploration is the native mode
  of interacting with new new media
• Soft ontologies are native implementations of
  conceptualizing explorative multi-perspective
  media

41
Live example Explora tool
42
Thanks for attention!

• mauri.kaipainen_at_tlu.ee
• http//www.tlu.ee/mkaipain/

43
References

• Aviles Collao, Jazmin Diaz-Kommonen, L.
  Kaipainen, M. Pietarila, J. (2003). Soft
  Ontologies and Similarity Cluster Tools to
  facilitate Exploration and Discovery of Cultural
  Heritage Resources. IEEE Computer Society Digital
  Library. Proc. DEXA 2003. September 1.-5.2003,
  Prague Czech Republic. P. 75. http//doi.ieeecompu
  tersociety.org/10.1109/DEXA.2003.1232001
• Durbin, R. Mitchison, G. (1990). A dimension
  reduction framework for understanding cortical
  maps. Nature Vol 343, 644-647.
• Hubel, D. H. Wiesel, T. N. (1977). Cortical maps
  for ocular dominance, orientation and retinotopic
  position in primary visual cortex. Proceedings R
  Soc. B 198, 1 - 59.
• Kaipainen, M. Niglas, K. Laanpere, M. Kikkas,
  K. Normak, P. Sillaots, M. (2007). Knowledge
  environments with soft ontologies and
  multiperspective explorability. Expert Systems
  (draft, submitted).
• Kohonen, T. (1982). Self-organized formation of
  topologically correct feature maps. Biological
  Cybernetics 4359-69.
• Rosch, E. Lloyd B. (1978). Cognition and
  Categorization. Hillsdale Erlbaum.
• Wall, J. T. (1988). Variable organization in
  cortical maps of the skin as an indication of the
  lifelong adaptive capabilities of circuits in the
  mammalian brain. TINS, Vol. 11, N0. 12.
• Zadeh, L. A. (1965). Fuzzy sets. Information and
  Control, 8, 338-353.