Assembling the puzzle

Four pieces have been laid out and what remains to do is the assemblage. Wittgenstein has been introduced as the piece originating from the “theory”. Keeping the criteria of a real application of Wittgenstein (Read, 2007) in mind I have set out to apply his ideas to Open Knowledge Maps ("practice").

Metaphors at work in Open Knowledge Maps

The most salient feature of OKM is how information is presented. Papers are grouped into bubbles of similar content and the user can further explore individual bubbles to see more details. In their paper (Kraker, Kittel, and Enkhbayar; 2016), the developers argue that this visualization comes with cognitive benefits as the mental workload is lowered by leveraging different levels of abstraction. Additionally, I argue, that the true benefit in terms of the cognitive load is due to the metaphoric structure of the knowledge maps. Let us break down the interface and its mechanics using Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory. We usually think of research disciplines and fields as container metaphors (e.g., “to be IN the social sciences”) and similarly the bubbles serve as containers for specific papers. Users can dive into a bubble or research field to explore the elements within. Several orientational metaphors are at work when the proximity of bubbles are indicating the topical relatedness and the introduction of layers (the authors are proposing nesting several layers of topics as a future feature) also fit our natural understanding of research fields as sub- and supercategories. Finally, another structural metaphor is already pointed out by the creators and the name of the tool, namely that of maps and cartography. Humans use maps to navigate space; they can either serve to orientate one in both new and familiar regions and by varying the amount of detail a map can either give an overview of a continent or meticulously describe the alleys of Palermo. Furthermore, it is interesting to point out that the maps produced by OKM are not to be understood as static, objectively true snapshots of the world. While the common understanding and usage of cartographic maps might rely on such an assumption it is important to remember that every two-dimensional map is a projection of a three-dimensional sphere that introduces distortions. If the cartographic metaphor is be taken serious, knowledge maps will take on various projections of concepts depending on the interest and purpose of the user.

The hidden depth grammar of Open Knowledge Maps

As Coeckelbergh pointed out, it is the task of technology games to reveal the hidden depth grammars of technology. While the fundamental mechanics of OKM can be seemingly easy to understand in terms of metaphors, technology games urge us to further question the surface and depth grammars at work. As previously discussed, the metaphor of navigating a map is at work when someone uses OKM to navigate a conceptual knowledge space. But what about the historical, social, and cultural dimensions of navigating with a map? Navigating the seas was a daunting if not impossible task before the introduction of the Mercator projection which finally allowed for the preservation of angles and directions on maps. The meaning, usage, role, and worth of maps changed fundamentally at that point in history. At the same time, as the most common map projection, it is often criticized for over-representing north-western countries. We can see that the apparently simple metaphor of a map already comes loaded with a variety of social, historical, and cultural contexts that need be considered in the case of OKM.
Thinking about OKM in terms of surface and depth grammars can help to understand how and why we practice certain things we do. Why do we traditionally use lists (i.e., Google Scholar and other search engines) instead of bubbles to visualize search results? Which concepts and results are shown to the users and why and maybe even more importantly, which are not displayed and why not? Can users with limited internet connectivity equally access knowledge maps? This list of questions will grow as soon as OKM is understood in terms of its use, its surface grammars, and depth grammars.