(highlight:: "We only understand something new in terms of something we already know"
Summary:
We only understand complex things in terms of something we already know.
Trafficking in complex ideas without tracing them back to simple understandings is a compelling challenge.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I keep coming back to is the quote from Richard Saul Wurman that we only understand complex things in terms of, we only understand something new in terms of something we already know. And that this idea of trafficking and complex ideas, but not always being willing to track them back to the simple thing that we understand, is remains compelling. And I really like that that Wurman quote, because it boils it down really to the fundamental of the kinds of challenges that we're trying to tackle.)
- Time 0:07:45
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(highlight:: Our Ability to Absorb and Make Sense of Information Has Not Kept Pace with Its Publishing Rate
Summary:
Most organizations aim to communicate ideas, facts, and concepts, but with the vast amount of content available, it's difficult for people to absorb and make sense of it all.
This is where algorithms and robots can assist us in determining what to focus on and how to interpret it. However, robots struggle to pick up on visual cues that convey meaning, such as distinguishing between a list of ingredients and a list of steps.
Advanced processing would be needed for them to understand the content beyond just recognizing its structure.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If our goal is to communicate ideas, facts, and concepts, which for most organizations, that's really their goal. And not to publish pages is to communicate information, even the huge amount of content that's now available and the fact that although we can publish a lot more, our capacity to absorb It and make sense of it hasn't grown at all, let alone to keep pace with the amount of content and the amount of information that's being published. We need algorithms, we need the robots to help us figure out what to look at and how to understand it. And those heuristic shortcuts of the way that something sits on a page visually communicates an idea are things that robots are really bad at picking out. So an algorithm knows that I've created an ordered list, but it can't look at that content, not without some advanced processing, and know that that is a list of ingredients instead Of a list of steps.)
- Time 0:10:58
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What is the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SCOS?
Summary:
SCOS, the Simple Knowledge Organization System, is a W3C recommendation for organizing content types like recipes by country and meal type.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So SCOS, the Simple Knowledge Organization System, which is a W3C recommendation for taxonomy in Thasori, for example, is a way that you might encode a hierarchical list of content Types, for instance. So maybe I have recipes, and maybe I have recipes by country of origin, recipes by a meal type.)
- Time 0:24:50
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(highlight:: 2x2 Matrix: The Complexity of an Organizations Information and Its Audeinces Knowledge
Key takeaways:
• Complex subject domains in healthcare and higher education make information accessible to novice audience.
• All organizations deal with complex information that needs to be made available to novice users.
• Civic space also requires understandable information for citizens and residents.
• Some organizations have complex information for expert users.
• Digital systems can range from publications to applications.
• Design for content-heavy systems, not software design.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
While you were talking, I drew a two by two matrix that has in one dimension. Well, you talked about the working in healthcare and higher education. And you mentioned that one of the things that you like about those industries is that they had their complex subject domains that have to be accessible by a novice audience, right? Yeah. All organizations are dealing with complex information of some sort. Some of them need to make that information available to novice users. So I would expect that the civic space would also be like that, right? Like there's all these laws, but they need to be understandable by the citizenry or residents of a place. And then the other end of that axis would be organizations that have complex information, but also have a fairly sophisticated audience, so expert users, right? And then the other dimension of this matrix would be some digital systems are more like publications and some digital systems are more like applications. And I think that what you're talking about is more in the publication side of the spectrum, right? Yeah. Yeah. So this is not software design. This is designed for systems that are very content heavy.)
- Time 0:34:59
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