It is well known that a change in the way human knowledge is represented in
software can trigger a major change in business practices. For example, the
invention of Hypertext Markup Language (html) has triggered the development of
the Web, and of successful Web-based businesses.
It is difficult for a professional in charge of a digital library collection to
specify all the future ways in which items from the collection will be assembled
and billed for. Even if such a specification is possible, it is not always easy
to communicate the spec to programmers, and to check that the program they write
in fact implements the spec. Add to this that the spec changes as new items are
added to the collection, and as the collection is put to new uses on demand from
consumers, and we have a major software engineering problem.
The Internet Knowledge Manager is designed to solve this problem, by opening up a
new way of using the Internet. The IKM allows a professional, who has a rights and
billing policy for a digital library in mind, to specify an agent that implements
the policy, using his or her own English terminology and an ordinary Web browser.
Thus, the IKM adds a new way in which human knowledge can be represented in software,
and it could trigger new ways of doing business on the Web.
The IKM is available for use inside IBM at http://ikm1.watson.ibm.com
By: Adrian Walker
Published in: RC21078 in 1998
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