ABSTRACT
Our digital society is influenced and shaped invisibly by instrumentation, but in plain sight, based on reductionist and isolated mental categories which become the basis of dominant ideologies and practices. However, systems of knowledge have long outgrown these restrictions. Chapter 6 will first provide a short examination of the processes associated with cultural heritage and humanities data. This informs an alternative strategy designed to interconnect research and professional knowledge practices using a structure, a ‘graph’, coupled with a dynamic process, designed to change our approach to knowledge systems.
Currently, we are confronted with a massive accumulation of static data which contains inaccuracy, omission, and bias. It is crucial to address these deficiencies and create data that is diverse, inclusive, sensitive to new questions, and that contains historical context and experience. To address complex questions and processes, we need new methods of knowledge creation and representation, supported in a ‘semantic network’, a concept which reflects the world as systems of interdependent relationships. This makes it possible to communicate effectively to different audiences and synthesise knowledge from different sources on an ongoing basis.
