Halos, clouds and living ontologies

It would be nice to be blessed with a halo, but I guess I'd rather be elliptically challenged than possessed of a slipped disc.

Halo-less, succor is found imagining the concept cloud that follows me around. Of course we all have one:

A dynamic cognitive-virtual creation that would be a wonder of the universe if it could be seen. Maybe this is why the WWW is such a marvel?

Life is a comic book really, we just don't see the thought bubbles. ...

As of Jan 2008 - this blog's side bar has a sandpit listing tools in which I would love to fully immerse myself. One of these is Protégé. Like so many pieces of this (my) care informatics jig-saw, this - the keystone? - is yet to be picked up.

It is heavy, a specialist tool; built for knowledge engineering not for care engineers.

After decades of excellent work by researchers in expert systems and decision support systems... knowledge management tools like Protégé are making knowledge engineering much more accessible. Web 2 (and Web 3...) is using the semantic web as a foundation and the term semantic web seems to capture the concept cloud (that might be) instantiated in Hodges' model.

I know the links pages may seem a links-fest or even a links-farm, but in LINKS I intra-INTERpersonal the presence of knowledge management is neither incidental or accidental. Conceptual tools and Protégé in particular might provide a means to help thread together:

• caring and learning: the 4Ps and care participants
• informatics
• records
• Hodges' model

When I set about creating the website in 1997 this is what I had in - and out of - mind. Already familiar with Buzan's mind-mapping, Hodges' model was and remains a living ontology. A tool to capture and freeze concepts and reasoning at selected critical intervals. This living dynamic vision was just what I needed, to blow the dust off Brian's model, sat there languishing on the shelf. Better a living ontology than a model sleeping in the recessed cloisters of the more mature student's memory. As far as Protégé is concerned though, I've yet to fully raise my right foot, never mind complete the first step (and listen into the literature) perhaps I may never.

Maybe for living ontologies this is where communities come in - so please look after your halo!

Image source: http://www.simon-templar.de/