XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web

The Topic Maps Attitude

The topic maps paradigm is a step along the road to global knowledge interchange. It may well turn out to have been quite a significant step. Nonetheless, it is very obviously not the last step. If it successfully moves our species forward toward global knowledge interchange, the topic maps paradigm will owe much of its success to the fact that it is resolutely responsive to current technological, economic, and anthropological conditions, and just as resolutely responsive to certain philosophical values and attitudes. Some of these values came from the comparatively young traditions of the markup languages community.^[18] Other values are derived from much older traditions. What follows is a summary of the values and perspectives ...