Social Networks for Knowledge Management
Prabhakar Raghavan, PhD
Vice President
CTO
Verity, Inc.
Dr. Prabhakar peppered his presentation with problems but not solutions. “I don’t have the solutions,” he said, “as there are still issues to be solved”. Starting with the story on Prof. Stanley Milgram’s classic experiment on six degrees of separation, he went on to elaborate on how social network analysis evolved beyond an intellectual curiosty into a legtimate means for people to find information.
Social Networks are connections between people and connections between people and content. It is the process of mapping and measuring the relationship and flows between people, group or other information processing entities. It provides a visual and mathematical analysis of human relationships and helps to identfy the ties both within and without an organisaton.
Examples were presented on how AT&T developed phone call graphs by analysing phone numbers and categorizng them into home, business and fax numbers. Calling circles were identified and special rates were offered to boost usage. With the world wide web, referralweb is a tool that allows you to search and explore social networks – the networks of friends, colleagues, and co-workers – that exist on the web. [Editorial note: check out Friendster for an interesting variant!)
The ideal is to be able to find trusted information from trusted experts, who are likely to help because they are friends of our friends – “trust propagation”. This will be better than “anonymous opinions” from “recommendation systems” as found in Amazon.comfor example. Such a tool, implemented within an organisation will also raise issues of confidentiality - Can someone figure out something they are not supposed to know through a combination of recommendations?
A very interesting discussion followed on Link Analysis, research done by Dr. Prabhakar, his theory that the web has a “bow-tie” structure, that online communities have a signature, and the issue – how can we develop “mechanical eyeballs” that will search through heterogeneous data sources, perform information integration and answer synthesis so that our natural language search can be addressed?
It was certainly a very enlightening presentation!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our next Evening with iKMS will be in January 2004 - keep your eyes open for updates
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Power of Knowledge: Unlocking the Complexities in the Changing World
Sheila Damodaran
Asst Director
Organisational Learning
Singapore Police Force
Very articulate indeed, Ms Sheila Damodaran led us from first principles, through the evolution of systems thinking. 10 years ago, mobile phones were uncommon, 20 years ago, personal computers were just coming onboard, 30 years ago, black and white televsion was high tech, 50 years ago, people were getting used to the automobile … From the bygone era to the industrial age, the key thought at that time was that the universe was explainable. This was done by taking the system apart and studying its individual parts – reductionist thinking.
The limits of the industrial age led to the emergence of the General Systems Theory, where each part can affect the behaviour of the whole and the discovery that subsets have the same properties as the whole. The conclusion was that you cannot take the system apart because of the role it plays – expansionism thinking. Finally, systems thinking brought the understanding of the whole, of which the system is a part, to adress dynamic complexity.
In the language of Systems Thinking, there are circles of causality and there are delays between causes and effects i.e. things do happen, but eventually. We did an intriguing exercise where a group of us tried to lower a hoola hoop to the ground, while lightly resting it on each of our thumbs - but contrary to our intention, the hoop insisted on rising and toppling over! The system as a whole conflicted with our individual intent and perceptions.
This raises the interesting possibility that a lessons learned in a KM system, might actually be perpetuating a mistaken view of the relationship between cause and effect! With the use of Systems Thinking, archetypes have been mapped to address chronic problems – where fixes fail and where the burden of the problem gets shifted, with unintended consequences.
Peter Senge, author of “The Fifth Discipline” took the systems thinking approach and applied it to organisations and introduced the concept of “The Learning Organisation”.
Sheila ended the session by proposing that systems thinking approach is excellent for analysing some of the challenges of complexity that KM tries to address.
Recent Comments