MEMO ON INFORMATION NETWORKS (INFONETS) (fwd)

peter Murray-rust (p.murray-rust@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk)
Wed, 7 Feb 1996 19:08:36 +0000 (GMT)

This is a very exciting message from Fred Riggs. Fred (as I think I have
already mentioned) saw the value of networked information many years ago.

>From Fred: "I also appreciate your offer to post a glossary based on the
INTERCOCA approach to your list -- is this the CBMT/glossary? I will have
a look at it later if I can retrieve it -- I don't always succeed with my
computer here. I have been working on a revision of my "Turmoil among
Nations" paper to establish interactive links with records for the new
concepts and terms it introduces. I'll send it to you for your list in
the near future. I also intend to post it on my own Web page which I have
just established -- but there's nothing of interest on it yet! I hope
there soon will be. Meanwhile, all best wishes, Fred"

Fred has created a very nice nomenclator (~~ glossary) which describes
his view of modern 'war' as (I hope I'm right) primarily 'civil war'
rather than directly between formal nation states. (You can see why we
need a glossary :-). He has it on a PC and if we can get a copy we could
reformat it it in MARTIF. This would take a few weeks I suspect (NOT
because it's intrinsically difficult, but because we have to learn Martif.
I am sure tha Lesley and I would be interested - anyone else?

When we had made progress we would make it available on Hyper-G so that
everyone could see it, and it would be a rather fitting start to the
Hyperglossary approach. (It's a much better glossary than the PPS one -
that's NOT a critcism of PPS, but we didn't know anything about
terminology then!!).

P.

Fred - to get onto the vsns-pps-glossary list you invoke this magic mantra:

address your mail to:
listproc@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk

NO subject

and the body of the message simply:
subscribe vsns-pps-glossary Fred Riggs

(if you want to unsubscribe you mail
listproc@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk (NOT the list!!)

and the body of the message simply:
unsubscribe

(You'll find there is some techie stuff as well - just delete before
reading :-). Alternatively, you can read the mail archive in a few day's
time.

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Glaxo Research & Dev. (pmr1716@ggr.co.uk); (BioMOO: PeterMR)
Birkbeck College, ubcg09q@cryst.bbk.ac.uk, CBMT/Daresbury mbglx@seqnet.dl.ac.uk
http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/index.html, http://www.dl.ac.uk/CBMT/HOME.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 21:53:58 +0200
From: Fred Riggs <fredr@hawaii.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <intercocta-d@uta.fi>
Subject: MEMO ON INFORMATION NETWORKS (INFONETS)

Colleaguies: for your information I am sending you herewith a copy of my
response to a note from Immanuel Wallerstein concerning his plans for
follow-up on the Gulbenkian Commission report on the future of the social
sciences, which we discussed briefly at our Tampere workshop. As you
will see, the Commission is planning a series of interenational
conferences to discuss the report -- obviously an expensive project for
which, I assume, he is well funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation. For
less than the cost of any one of these conferences, I would imagine, an
excellent INFORMATION NETWORK could be set up. In response to a cordial
response from Wallerstein, I have sent him a follow-up memo and the full
text of my paper on the idea of an INFONET. They will come to you
separately. I have also received materials from UNESCO about the MOST
project and their planned activities, including the development of a
glossary for ETHNICITY, in coperation with INTERCOCTA. I shall be
writing them about this soon and will forward copies to you for your
comments also. However, I am especially optimistic about the
possibilities of a follow-up with Wallerstein because, if he really
becomes interested, I think he has a better chance of finding the
necessary financial support and acting promptly. Please let me hear from
you. Cheers and aloha, Fred

************************************************************

Dear Immanuel:

Good to hear from you again and the series of conferences you have planned
will surely provide a wonderful platform to launch a momentous discourse
on the fundamental problems involving the history, problems and future of
social science -- using this term to identify all studies of human
behavior however it may be subdivided into "disciplines" and "fields."
In the INTERCOCTA project of the International Social Science Council (of
which you are a member, through the ISA) we have been developing plans for
a type of comprehensive INFORMATION NETWORK that can be applied to any
subject field, including "social science." It makes full use of
cyberspace, and hence of INTERNET and the World Wide Web, in order to
sustain continuing dialogue among anyone interested in that field who can
use a computer and modem.

Because of the explosive growth in the utilization of the WWW which is now
taking place, and its hypermedia capabilities, we feel that this emerging
communications technology has a vast potential for revolutionizing the
global reach and impact of every field of knowledge but it needs to be
organized systematically through networks that interact with each other.
Its costs are surely minimal since all data on the network can be
distributed and received free of charge, and very promptly, quite unlike
the "normal" processes bases on face-to-face meetings and hard print
media. Actually, the amount of money needed for one of your planned
conferences would probably cover all the costs of launching and managing a
comprehensive information network (or "INFONET" as we are calling it).

I have a rather lengthy memo on the subject which I can e-mail to you or
send in a more readable format by s-mail. The components of an INFONET
include the following items:

1. Direct and spontaneous interactions among anyone interested in a
subject (e.g. social science), based on three components:

a. face-to-face conversations and conferences (as your starting point)

b. augmented conversations by e-mail, utilizing one or more LIST, like
your ISA list(s) -- you can easily create right now a "SOSCI-L" for social
science based on your report

c. an inter-organizational LIST for representatives of all member
associations of the ISSC, UNESCO, and any research center (e.g. Braudel
Center), university (e.g. SUNY), ad hoc group -- we can create such a
group to organize discussions through our College of Social Sciences at
the Univ. of Hawaii -- to exchange news about who is doing what where and
when to facilite expanding participation in the interactions identified in
1.a and 1.b above.

2. Papers, syllabi, conference reports, etc. can be made quickly
available through the WWW, starting with your report and papers presented
at your conferences, in any languages -- but, presumably, always with
a version in an international language:

a. Full texts of each paper can be made available through a central
Archive, or preferably, I think, through home pages managed by their
authors. The central archive might just post texts for authors who don't
have their own home pages.

b. Abstracts for every text (in its original and international languages)
should be consolidated in the archive as its starting point, following
lists, by subject and author, from which readers can make hypertext jumps
to items that interest them. Every abstract should support hyperlinks to
enable readers to jump to the text -- whether it be posted in the central
archive or in its author's home page. (One advantage for the author of
using a home page is that the draft text can more easily be revised more
easily and quickly. Items can be announced on the SOSCI-L lists and
revisions prompted by the discourse can be made in the Web-texts leading,
eventually, to a formally published hard copy.

3. Supporting Databases of three kinds are called for -- they would all
be interactive by hyperlinks with the papers posted on the archives, i.e.
readers could promptly jump from any link in the original texts to a
supporting link in one of the data bases, and then back again from the
data base to the full text.

a. Bibliographic database -- will provide full citations (with
annotations when available) for all works cited in the archived papers,
augmented by references gleaned from the data base of the International
Commission for Social Science Information and Documentation (Amsterdam and
London) which is part of the ISSC.

b. On-going research data -- information about scholars and research
centers where studies of the relevant field are in progress. The
starting point would be based on contributions by the scholars taking
part in the SOSCI-L lists and posting papers to the Archives. However,
UNESCO, through the DARE project in Ali Kazancigil's Division, could be
used to provide additional entries and to support inquiries that would
expand the number of participants in the infonet, and recruit them into
the lists. New recruits could also be invited to add documents for the
archives and for the Bibliography.

c. A Hyperglossary to support the development of concepts and terms
required for use in the infonet. Each item in this HG would provide
information about a concept used in a paper to be found in the Archive,
and would be drafted by the paper's author -- it would describe (define)
the concept and list terms available to represent it -- it would not
start with a word or phrase to be defined.

An HG editor would be needed to assure consistency of format and linkages
between these records. Each record could be found by clicking on a
hyperlink in the author's paper, and would be related to other concepts by
classification codes and inter-textual references that I discuss in my
memo. Although authors might use different terms (synonyms) for any given
concept, they could easily learn to recognize the other terms in use and
mention them in their own texts to facilitate more precise communication.
The Hyperglossary (HG) would, of course, be the component of special
interest to members of ISSC/COCTA, and counterpart groups in member
associations of the ISSC, such as ISA and IPSA.

Each concept would identify published documents in which the concept had
been used, thereby establishing also the theoretical contexts which
prompted their creation, and enabling readers to gain quick access to the
basic literature of any field. Full citations for these works (with
annotations) could be found by hyperlinks to the Bibliography, and the
identification of researchers through the On-going research database would
facilitate direct interactions with persons using any given concept.
Although authors could prepare HG records for any of their important
concepts, they would be asked to focus on those they consider
problematical, especially new concepts and terms. They should also mark
(as by asterisk) such terms in their abstracts and list them as keywords
(hyperlinks to the HG).

Finally, a good starting point for the development of an INFONET for
social science might involve you and members of the Gulbenkian commission
in an effort to define the most important "socialscience" concepts used
in your report. (If we write SOCIALSCIENCE as a single term, we might
then use it to identify the macro-field that includes all the social
sciences as disciplines). Another early source of socialscience concepts
might be the translators involved in translating your report -- you could
ask them to identify the concepts which gave them the most difficulty, a
sign that precise equivalents in different languages do not exist and
need to be invented.

These ideas are all developed at more length in my memo, which adds a
section on the various uses to which the INFONET can be put, including
not only the obvious support it can provide for anyone interested in the
subject (e.g. socialscience) but also researchers planning papers (who
might be motivated by grants, travel funding, etc.), program development
(as in "courses" planned for "students" interested in the subject), and
professionalization (as by degree programs for those wishing to make a
career in the infonet's subject field). I am sharing this note to you with
participants in our INTERCOCTA-D list which we have recently created to
support the development of ideas discussed at our recent workshop in
Tampere, Finland. I invite any of them who may be interested in this
idea to write me and/or you to elaborate and refine these ideas -- and to
get a copy of my longer memo on the subject.

Great to hear from you and all best wishes. Sincerely, Fred

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FRED W. RIGGS, Professor Emeritus
Political Science Department, University of Hawaii
2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A.
Phone: (808) 956-8123 Fax: (808) 956-6877
e-mail: FREDR@HAWAII.EDU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Century-old Cosmopolitan Club motto:

ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~