I went to www.knowledgeforum.com to see their demo and spent some time
looking at browser features. Dropping into a bit of
ecological-technical-development geek speak: The structuring of discussion
is interesting to think about, offering simultaneously some supported
self-regulation ("self" being minimally human-and-computer here ) and
signalling communications on "parallel" channels about the form of the
contributions (annotations, build-ons, etc). There is also the selective
viewing of information (multiple windows, annotations that do not appear
independently, rise-above ) that contributes to a synomorph different from
the xmca kind of forum. It's hard to grok just what this means for the
seminar without being truly inside of it, while attempting to use it for the
seminar. The one thing i do expect is that new users will spend considerable
time at first getting to know the KF system.
Perhaps Gordon you can comment on your experience with the learning curve?
So the product, besides changed humans, is a cephalopod-like set of database
entries that is browseable. Its interface is fairly complex, and i wouldn't
actually think that the interface is environmentally deterministic -- there
are probably all kinds of ways people can violate the structuring of
discussions.
I've just got a time-out error on the kf server, and what i was about to
investigate next was whether the discussion ordering was hierarchical --
dividing down peoples contributions -- which would make synthesizing kinds of
contributions (like the kind Jay makes) across many other contributions
difficult. Syntheses would seem to be the kind of contributions that
"experts" may make.
Any comments in this direction would be helpful.
Also search functions were not apparent -- does KF have the abiltiy to search
for text strings?
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