Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Journey to the Center of the Edge (2) - Structure vs. Unstructure From my posting yesterday, the concept of information flowing from the 'Center' to the 'Edge' and back to the 'Center' has become more pragmatic - Dr. Marc Pierson's posting and interest (in the HealthCare field) has opened more thoughts. In a real sense, applying 'C-E-C' is not easy because at the 'Edge' information is generally in an unstructured form and to put it back in 'Center', which thrives on structure can be an arduous task. This dichotomy in form is due to the fact that 'collaboration/communication' which occurs at the 'Edge', is by its nature, unstructured and context-sensitive. Capturing this 'knowledge' in a structured form and depositing it back in the 'Center' for distribution is another perennial problem but is being tackled anyways - Tim Berner Lee's Semantic Web is a good example.   8:00:29 AM