Frameworks for knowledge representation

Chapter 2: This chapter is directed towards the problem of representation and translation across knowledge systems and frameworks, with a particular focus on those used in the emerging world of the semantic web. Knowledge systems are all too frequently characterised in essentialist terms—as though, as the etymology of ‘data’ would suggest, they are merely the housing of neutral empirical givens. In this book we maintain, on the contrary, that systems always carry with them the assumptions of cultures that design and use them—cultures that are, in the very broadest sense, responsible for them. This is the case for knowledge systems in general, as well as the specifics of what has come to be called the ‘semantic web’, and the ontologies, schemas, taxonomies and other representations of knowledge it supports. This chapter begins by setting the scene for modern approaches to knowledge representation, constructing a broad historical frame which both inspired and motived these approaches. It then introduces the semantic web, arguably the most significant of these approaches. It describes both the affordances and challenges of the semantic web, and outlines several key concepts, which will be mobilised in later chapters—semantics, ontologies and commensurability. This chapter also outlines some of the claims and interventions this book intends to make about both the semantic web specifically, and knowledge representation, management and use generally.