ViewpointS: Towards a Collective Brain

Abstract

Tracing knowledge acquisition and linking learning events to interaction between peers is a major challenge of our times. We have conceived, designed and evaluated a new paradigm for constructing and using collective knowledge by Web interactions that we called ViewpointS. By exploiting the similarity with Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), we conjecture that it may be metaphorically considered a Collective Brain, especially effective in the case of trans-disciplinary representations. Far from being without doubts, in the paper we present the reasons (and the limits) of our proposal that aims to become a useful integrating tool for future quantitative explorations of individual as well as collective learning at different degrees of granularity. We are therefore challenging each of the current approaches: the logical one in the semantic Web, the statistical one in mining and deep learning, the social one in recommender systems based on authority and trust; not in each of their own preferred field of operation, rather in their integration weaknesses far from the holistic and dynamic behavior of the human brain.

Collective and Informal Learning in the ViewpointS Interactive Medium

“…The clear separation between the storing of the traces in the knowledge graph (KG) and their interpretation within a knowledge map (KM) through a chosen perspective enhances individual autonomy with respect to the others' opinions. For more details, the reader may refer to Lemoisson et al [25][26][27].…”

Serendipitous Learning Fostered by Brain State Assessment and Collective Wisdom

“…This section first briefly recalls the ViewpointS 5 framework and formalism for building collective knowledge in the metaphor of the brain (a detailed description can be found in [1][2][3] but also [17,18] and then illustrates through an imaginary toy example the specific interest of ViewpointS for facilitating serendipitous learning.…”

VWA: ViewpointS Web Application to Assess Collective Knowledge Building

“…The ViewpointS paradigm previously presented in [8][9][10] builds up upon trust towards 'peers', would they be humans, databases or mining algorithms. A community of human agents combines in a fully transparent and trackable way their own knowledge and feelings with declarations extracted from the Web.…”

“…The formalism adopted in the ViewpointS paradigm is briefly recalled in Sect. 2.1; for more details the reader might refer to [8,9]. The feedback mechanism is presented in Sect.…”

“…b SPD(r i , r j ) returns 'NA' if no path of length <= b link r i to r j ; it returns d <= b otherwise. b SPD has been illustrated in the imaginary case developed in [8].…”