The Knowledge Mashup
It’s the world according to YOU. It’s about you getting the information you want want when you want it. It’s about accessing content from open and collaborative sources, then filtering and focusing that content to meet unique documentation, training, and other educational needs. It’s personalized, real-time information delivered directly to your computer devices. That’s the promise of Web 2.0 moving to Web 3.0—automatically accessing and controlling the best information you deem as relevant to your needs. In your world, you are the one who provides context and meaning in the cloud of overwhelming data and disparate information. You are the existentialist of the Information Age who defines real knowledge amongst the chaos and chatter.
That’s the idea behind the Knowledge Mashup. Find the best pieces of information, tag that information, and then structure and sequence it for specific needs. Use a simple object-oriented approach that identifies articles, videos, pictures, and people as independent objects and then give these objects context and navigation by overlaying them with some type of structural paradigm (a list, content map, outline, search filter).
The idea of a knowledge mashup is to bring together disparate but germane resources for a specific topic. The original author of knowledge mashup can tailor these resources and give context to educate, communicate, and impart information. It allows for usage of the best content that is controlled by an author or teacher in providing context and organization. It is a filter on the fire hose on the Internet to direct just the information needed for a specific product, process, instructional aid, or discipline. Among other benefits, it allows the author to be a “guide by the side” of the reader in finding information rather than the all-knowing “sage on the stage.”
A Simple Idea
The idea and practice of a knowledge mashup can be fairly basic, even primitive. Like all mashups, the idea is to take pieces from existing content and pull these pieces together to form a new entity. Because content on the web is the most pervasive and accessible to capture, cut and paste, or link to, a basic knowledge mashup requires little coding or enhanced logic to capture important content. It’s basically identifies germane comments, articles, paragraph from articles, glossary references on Wikipedia, videos on YouTube, or streamed RSS feeds and publishes it based on a required narrative, organization, or paradigm that fits the author’s audience and intent.
In fact, the knowledge mashup is less a “mashing” of content than a “meshing” of topics. It employs the same hyperlinking and single-sourcing practices used by web developers and technical writers for years. But it employs these topic-based management tactics using both open resources and proprietary documentation sets and internal knowledgebases. It also allows the reader to add their own topics and annotation. But like any book, web site, or published material of any type, all this diverse content needs to be given some type of form to impart ideas and provide navigation.
With Web 3.0, the introduction of Semantic Web with markup based on content types will further personalize information based on content and automate distribution techniques. This is the future of knowledge mashups.
Types of Knowledge Mashups
Knowledge mashups can be used for a variety of needs:
- Product documentation
- Product training
- Education
- Travel guide
- Sales
- Marketing
- e-books
My next postings will explore some of the vertical uses of knowledge mashups and drill down into the practices and protocols used to build them.
February 5, 2010
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Michael Hiatt · 
One Comment
Posted in: Cloud Computing, Information Age, Knowledge management, Mashups, Semantic Web, Single-source publishing
One Response
I think that having these pesonalized mashups would be a great benefit for the user. I would like to have customized indformation catered for my needs from a variety of platforms. A lot would depend on the author who is aggregating to ensure that the right information is desseminated to the right audience.
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