Quanta
The Organization of Human Knowedge:
Systems for Interdisciplinary Research
Rama Hoetzlein
Master's Thesis, University of California Santa Barbara, June 2007
   
  Chapter Downloads
  Preliminary. Contents, Tables, Figures and Abstract.
  Ch 1. Introduction - Overview of research and summary of the novel contributions.
  Ch 2. Background and Context - Covers the history of knowledge organization, challenges and goals
  Ch 3. Integrative Strategies - Examines semiotics and the challenges of interdisciplinary research
  Ch 4. Databases & Systems - Overview of existing systems from encyclopediae to semantic nets.
  Ch 6. Ontology & Classification - Investigates the challenges of developing ontologies for classification.
  Ch 7. Knowledge Visualization - Presents a brief history of visualization with several novel visualizations.
  Ch 8. Distributed Systems - Discusses a hypothetical low-level protocol for distributed semantic databases
  Ch 9. Quanta Prototype and Future Directions - Summary of the Quanta prototype, limitations, and future directions.
  Appendix & Bibliography.
   
  Transliteracies Paradigm Lecture Series
"Quanta: Knowledge Organization for Interdisciplinary Research". Dec 5th, 2006. UCSB
Presented at the Paradigm Lectures Series hosted by Alan Liu (Department of English).
The complete 2 hr lecture is hosted at the Transliteracies website at UCSB. Click here to visit
   
 

ABSTRACT

Knowledge organization is the problem of arranging and classifying what we collectively know as a society in ways that can be easily understood and communicated to others. The issues addressed in this thesis include the representation
and storage of knowledge, semiotics, ontology, classification, systems for knowledge organization, and the visualization and aesthetics of knowledge systems. The Quanta software system is presented as a generic framework for the integrated storage, organization and visualization of human knowledge in interdisciplinary contexts.

Novel contributions are made to both technical and conceptual aspects of knowledge organization. Technical contributions include a hypergraph structure for the storage and efficient representation of knowledge, comparative zoomable timelines for the visualization of events in time, circle packing with dynamic loading to visualize trees, and a distributed architecture and protocol for social knowledge systems. Conceptual contributions include a new measure of meaning in data systems, the data-semantic ratio, an analysis of the relationship between the semiotic triangle and the datainformation-knowledge triangle, and motivations for knowledge visualization as a field of study.

Topics on the philosophical, social and technical aspects of knowledge organization are considered in historical context with an emphasis on interdisciplinarity.