Zettelkasten Forum


New book - Personal Knowledge Graphs, by Ivo Velitchkov

Reading the recently published book.

Hope it is ok to mention it here.

Comments

  • Perhaps, you share some thoughts and ideas of and about the book. :)

    I am a Zettler

  • How is this different from mind mapping?

  • For some additional context the work can be found through https://personalknowledgegraphs.com/#/page/pkg. It also has portions of the building of the book which exist as a knowledge graph, though it doesn't appear that they put up the entirety of the book as a linked knowledge graph the way they had initially planned. I've read a few parts in draft form, including Flancian's chapter whose ideas are tremendous, but I have yet to read the remainder of the published work.

    [Disclosure: I had submitted and had been accepted to write an early, historical-flavored chapter for this volume, but ultimately fell out, as did many others, over disagreements regarding their editing and/or publishing process. I'm close with Flancian and appreciate his experimental programming work on https://anagora.org/index, which one might call a multi-layered wiki of personal wikis, commonplace books, zettelkasten, diaries, notes, and other similar forms of personal knowledge. If you've got a public, digitally available version of a zettelkasten you'd like to add to his project, do reach out to him to interconnect it with the Agora and others' work there.]

    website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️

    No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. —Umberto Eco

  • edited June 2023

    I began reading the Personal Knowledge Graphs in Kindle format late last night. I haven't yet read Flancian's contribution. I did not see a reference to this site or The Archive.

    Post edited by ZettelDistraction on

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.

  • @Sascha said:
    Perhaps, you share some thoughts and ideas of and about the book. :)

    Sure!
    Finished reading it this afternoon.
    For a layman like me, chapters 1 to 3 are worth the price and the time to read the book.

    One of the ideas that helps "the layman" (myself):

    “One of the main benefits of knowledge graphs is that they allow “maintainers to postpone the definition of a schema, allowing the data–and its scope–to evolve in a more flexible manner than typically possible in a relational setting, particularly for capturing incomplete knowledge” (McComb, 2019).”
    -Page 75, Personal Knowledge Graphs: Connected thinking to boost productivity, creativity and discovery by Ivo Velitchkov, George Anadiotis - https://a.co/5ouCmGn


    "The purpose of a ZK is to take someone else's story and make it your own, while sourcing where your story came from."
    — darrenphillipjones, r/zettelkasten, Reddit

    "This might be one of the most condensed yet impressively precise descriptions I ever read."
    —Sasha fast,[ r/zettelkasten](https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/tcjic5/i_feel_like_i_am_overcomplicating_my_zettelkasten/i0gohiv/?; utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)

    See book contents below.

    Contents

    Foreword Dr. Ashleigh Faith

    Introduction

    Past, present, and future of Personal Knowledge Graphs

    1. Personal Knowledge Graphs -- Why, what, and where to, Ivo Velitchkov
    2. The Personal Knowledge Graph of Niklas Luhmann, Ivo Velitchkov
    3. A framework for evaluating Personal Knowledge Graph tools, Omes Baltes and George Anadiotis

    Concepts, practices and visions

    1. The decisive role of the unintentional part of knowledge in PKGs, Fabrice Gallet
    2. Algorithms of thought, the must-have GPS for navigating the complexity of PKGs?, Fabrice Gallet
    3. Extending the Desktop into a Personal Knowledge Graph with SEN, Gregor Rosenauer

    Use cases, prototypes, and implementations

    1. Graphs aren't the thing, they're the thing that gets us to the thing, Martynas Jusevičius
    2. Leveraging Semantic Web Standards for Personal Knowledge Graphs, Maribel Acosta and Omes Baltes
    3. Images, Personal Knowledge and Multi-Modal Graphs, Margaret Warren
    4. The Agora is a Social Knowledge Graph, Eduardo Ivanec (Flancian)

    Afterword

  • edited June 2023

    My initial impression is subject to revision. Personal Knowledge Graphs is closely related to Zettelkasten in the following ways.

    1. Isolation of the Graph Structure: Personal Knowledge Graphs emphasize the graph structure of knowledge independently from any particular tool or editor, whereas the Zettelkasten method is often tied to specific hardware or software.

    2. Semantic Annotation: Personal Knowledge Graphs could better use advanced semantic annotation methods like RDF (Resource Description Framework). Some Zettelkasten practitioners recommend informal semantic annotation of links.

    3. Interoperability and Reconstruction: Personal Knowledge Graphs may prioritize interoperability between different systems and tools, whereas the Zettelkasten method may be more oriented toward standalone systems.

    4. Linking Across Graphs: Personal Knowledge Graphs might emphasize the potential to link multiple graphs together, assuming appropriate translations or mappings exist. Linking and data transformation might be less central to the Zettelkasten method.

    There is a Knowledge Graph conference that meets at Columbia University, incidentally. https://www.knowledgegraph.tech

    The reader can safely skip most of the gushing forward to the book.

    Ivo Velitchkov's chapters give a decent overview of the subject, relating it to Zettelkasten, specifically the Zettelkasten of Niklas Luhman, and the larger knowledge graphs studied by academics and implemented by commercial enterprises. One application of knowledge graphs is to structure data to be accessible to humans and AI.

    After briefly reviewing the philosophical literature on knowledge, Ivo Velitchkov arrives at a helpful definition of a Personal Knowledge Graph. The definition refers to the user's intention to gain understanding and leaves open whether the intention is realized.

    A confession: I find the term "personal knowledge graph" a little embarrassing, a little glib given the twenty-five hundred-year history of the philosophy of knowledge in the West, the disagreement among philosophers over what knowledge is, and whether it can be defined. I prefer "note graph" since this sidesteps such difficult questions, though "knowledge graph" is an established academic usage.

    Post edited by ZettelDistraction on

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.

  • @ZettelDistraction said:

    A confession: I find the term "personal knowledge graph" a little embarrassing, a little glib given the twenty-five hundred-year history of the philosophy of knowledge in the West, the disagreement among philosophers over what knowledge is, and whether it can be defined. I prefer "note graph" since this sidesteps such difficult questions, though "knowledge graph" is an established academic usage.

    I agree that if we're just talking about formal data structures that have not been intelligently validated as knowledge, then "knowledge graph" is not an appropriate term and would need to be replaced by something like "data graph".

    As for my personal note system, it is a product of rather intense intelligent validation by my brain, so I have no qualms about calling it a personal knowledge base. Like most epistemologists these days, I'm a fallibilist, so "knowledge" stands for "presumed knowledge", and "personal knowledge base" stands for "personal database of presumed knowledge".

    Would I record data that I presumed to be false (incorrect)? Yes, I would, for various reasons, but if I presumed them to be false, I would presumably know and indicate that they were presumably false, so it would still be reasonable to call the resulting database a personal knowledge base in this qualified (fallibilist) sense.

  • @Andy Unfortunately, I haven't benefited from rigorous academic education in philosophy. Is it fair to assume that readers, let alone epistemologists, will understand the phrase "personal knowledge graph" to mean "personal presumed knowledge graph?" Am I barking up the wrong tree?

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.

  • edited June 2023

    @ZettelDistraction said:

    @Andy Unfortunately, I haven't benefited from rigorous academic education in philosophy. Is it fair to assume that readers, let alone epistemologists, will understand the phrase "personal knowledge graph" to mean "personal presumed knowledge graph?" Am I barking up the wrong tree?

    That's a good question. I think your original confession/complaint is reasonable. My aim wasn't to refute it but to share my thinking about it. There are psychologists who study personal epistemology, or how people think about knowledge, so there are some empirical studies that show that people think about knowledge differently and that people's thinking about knowledge changes with education. I expect that the people who choose to read this particular book will be well educated, so I wouldn't be concerned that readers would lack a sufficiently nuanced understanding of "knowledge". I don't think that education in philosophy is necessary to have such a nuanced understanding, because epistemological issues have been debated in English for so many centuries that the issues are reflected in the language itself to some degree—at least that's what Anna Wierzbicka suggested in chapters 7 & 8 of English: Meaning and Culture (Oxford UP, 2006), on the prevalence of English epistemic phrases like "I think" and "I presume" and epistemic adverbs like "probably" and "presumably"—and people can learn about the issues in various academic fields. But as you can probably (see what I did there?) see, my view about the education or cognitive sophistication of readers is rather optimistic; if you have a pessimistic view, then it's reasonable to want to avoid talking about knowledge.

    EDIT: I should mention that I haven't read the book. The way the term "personal knowledge graph" is used in the book may be especially glib in a way that I don't know.

    Post edited by Andy on
  • edited June 2023

    This is the definition that Ivo Velitchkov settles on in Chapter 1 of Personal Knowledge Graphs.

    A graph of data intended to accumulate and convey knowledge of the world, whose nodes represent entities of personal interest and whose edges represent relations between these entities. 1

    [1] Velitchkov, Ivo; Anadiotis, George. Personal Knowledge Graphs: Connected thinking to boost productivity, creativity and discovery (p. 28). Exapt Press.

    I believe this is not bad, and a charitable reading would comport with your suggestion to interpret "knowledge" as "presumed knowledge." However, "knowledge of the world" might be too strong--what about fiction? Suppose someone uses their Zettelkasten to craft a fictional world--or even a Kripkean possible world with an accessibility relation--that is, some domain of discourse referring to some non-actual world. Or they could be doing mathematics--correct me if I am mistaken (my Ph.D. is in mathematics), but no one has ever produced the Standard Model of Arithmetic. The Axiom of Infinity states that such a model exists--in any case, the model's ontological status is a matter of both mathematical and philosophical interest. Grant that the data accumulated in the Zettelkasten is of personal interest to the accumulator.

    Can we say the intention is to "accumulate and convey knowledge of the world"? Either one relaxes the notion of "the world" to include fictional worlds or the exploration of logical space in the case of philosophy (depending on your view of philosophy), or we speak of graphs whose nodes contain data of personal interest and whose edges represent relations between the data contained by these nodes. This leaves open the relationship between the accumulator's representations and "the world." The assumption is the accumulator is interested in and can interpret their nodes' contents. Or most of them.

    Perhaps I am pessimistic.

    Post edited by ZettelDistraction on

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.

  • @ZettelDistraction said:

    However, "knowledge of the world" might be too strong--what about fiction? [...] Or they could be doing mathematics

    Yes, "knowledge of the world" is definitely too strong. Formal knowledge is not necessarily of the world, as you are well positioned to notice as a mathematician.

    or we speak of graphs whose nodes contain data of personal interest and whose edges represent relations between the data contained by these nodes.

    I think this option, "graphs whose nodes contain data...", makes the most sense in context. So I end up agreeing with you: if we accept this revision of the definition in the book, then "personal knowledge graph" is not the right term.

    If Velitchkov wants to speak of a "personal knowledge graph", it's not enough to say that the data are of "personal interest"; he should include something about the presumed success, validity, viability, etc., of the data in question. For example, here's a definition of knowledge that I recently read (I don't claim it's the best definition, but it has a virtue that's missing from Velitchkov's definition that I want to highlight):

    knowledge refers to conceptual structures that epistemic agents, given the range of present experience within their tradition of thought and language, consider viable.

    Ernst von Glasersfeld (1989), "Cognition, construction of knowledge, and teaching", Synthese, 80, 121–140, quoted in: William A. Sandoval, Jeffrey A. Greene, & Ivar Bråten (2016), "Understanding and promoting thinking about knowledge: origins, issues, and future directions of research on epistemic cognition", Review of Research in Education, 40(1), 457–496.

    Building on von Glasersfeld's definition that correctly, in my view, contains the necessary condition of presumed viability, an acceptable definition of "personal knowledge graph" would be something like: "conceptual structures, organized as a graph, that a person considers viable for a given purpose". The criteria of viability are the person's business, and it's not necessary to specify them in a general definition. A common criterion is coherence, which leads to the systematic conception of knowledge that I mentioned recently.

  • @Andy said:
    Building on von Glasersfeld's definition that correctly, in my view, contains the necessary condition of presumed viability, an acceptable definition of "personal knowledge graph" would be something like: "conceptual structures, organized as a graph, that a person considers viable for a given purpose". The criteria of viability are the person's business, and it's not necessary to specify them in a general definition.

    This seems general enough to encompass virtually anything one might want in a Zettelkasten, it weakens the claim of "knowledge of the world" to the knowledge (at least) of one's Zettelkasten, and the subjective viability criteria seem more robust and vital to the individual than "mere" interest. Without viability for a given purpose, Personal Knowledge Graphs might have been titled Personal Velleity Graphs. :trollface: I now better appreciate the systematic conception of knowledge to which you refer.

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.

  • @ZettelDistraction: In retrospect, it seems that the root cause of your complaint was that "knowledge" was undefined or poorly defined in the book, which is definitely a conceptual bug. Well done, bug hunter! I hope a generous bug bounty will be forthcoming.

  • @Andy said:
    @ZettelDistraction: In retrospect, it seems that the root cause of your complaint was that "knowledge" was undefined or poorly defined in the book, which is definitely a conceptual bug. Well done, bug hunter! I hope a generous bug bounty will be forthcoming.

    Oh, dang. I am wondering what @ZettelDistraction will do with my trick out of the hat to bypass the difficult question on what knowledge is (and how it differs from data and information)... :smile:

    I am a Zettler

  • I was inspired to make another attempt at accessing the book's website https://personalknowledgegraphs.com, which I had previously given up trying to access via the web browser that I typically use, because the website is a fragile, unnecessarily complex single-page web app that ignores perfectly serviceable web standards in favor of the bleeding edge and predictably failed to load. (Is this an allegory for their conception of personal knowledge graphs?)

    But after successfully loading the website using a different web browser, I enjoyed reading the chapter abstracts. My impression is that the authors have a lot of interesting but perhaps half-baked ideas.

    In the abstract of the chapter "Graphs aren't the thing, they're the thing that gets us to the thing", Martynas Jusevičius wrote: "Markdown does not support typed links, therefore the relationship semantics cannot be captured." This is incorrect: even if the premise were true, the conclusion would not follow from it, but the premise is arguably false. The conclusion doesn't follow because if you have a note type that implies a certain outgoing link type, the outgoing link type can be inferred automatically from the note type. That's how much of my note system works. And if the semantics of that aren't flexible enough, you can indeed create link types in Markdown. Furthermore, it's not difficult to figure out how to implement more complex Semantic Markdown if you're motivated to do it. Jusevičius's next sentence is: "A vast landscape of Linked Data and SPARQL data sources and software tools are inaccessible to the PKG users." That may be true, but for now I'm unconcerned about not having those tools. What I would like to have is guidance about how to structure Semantic Markdown so that it is interoperable with those tools. Do any of the chapters in this book provide such guidance?

    How can our existing garden-variety personal knowledge bases be prepared for the grand new world of personal knowledge graphs that the authors promise is coming soon or is already in possession of the clever privileged few?

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