A Differential Notion of Place for Local Search
Vlad Tanasescu John Domingue
KMi – The Open University
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1908 655412
v.tanasescu@open.ac.uk
vladtn@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
For extracting the characteristics a specific geographic entity, and
notably a place, we propose to use dynamic Extreme Tagging
Systems in combination with the classic approach of static KR
models like ontologies, thesauri and gazetteers. Indeed, we argue
that in local search, the what that is queried is implicitly about
places. However existing knowledge representation (KR) models,
such as ontologies based on logical theories, conceptual spaces,
affordance or other, cannot capture in isolation all aspects of the
meaning of a place. Therefore we propose to use a combination of
them based on the underlying notion of differences, linked
elements of meaning without commitment to any KR model.
Mapping to elements of different KR models can be made later to
follow the requirements of a given task, supported by a KR
representation of the elements that support this task. We show the
usefulness of the approach for local search by applying it to the
notion of place defined as a location that supports a homogeneous
affordance field, i.e. the spatial area which allows me the do a
particular thing, while allowing the homogeneity of movement,
meaning that the previous field is not interrupted by any
boundaries.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
I.2.4 [Artificial Intelligence]: Knowledge Representation
Formalisms and Methods – semantic networks, representation
languages, Web-based services, Spatial databases and GIS.
General Terms
Algorithms, Reliability, Experimentation, Human Factors,
Theory.
Keywords
Local search, knowledge representation, differences, affordances,
multi-representation, image schemata, conceptual spaces, extreme
tagging, Wordnet, similarity, AI.
1. INTRODUCTION
Local search, i.e. the retrieval of geo-located elements for
everyday use [2] – to be distinguished from text queries without
geographical scope as well as from professional GIS usage –
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LocWeb 2008, April 22, 2008, Beijing, China.
Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-160-6/08/04…$5.00.
KMi – The Open University
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1908 655014
j.b.domingue@open.ac.uk
constitutes an important percentage of internet searches [1] [3].
The text based nature of local queries imply the same semantic
issues as non geographical text searches: the ambiguity of natural
language, in the query, as well as in the indexed documents,
combined with the lack of knowledge of search engines, leads to
suboptimal results. Moreover, geographic space, i.e. the
environment which supports geographic objects as opposed to
table-top ones, is a domain in which scale, orientation,
boundaries, and cultural conceptions matter to a great extent [4],
making verbal consensus more difficult. Moreover,
representations in this domain have to alternate between the
object and field models [5], between the scientific view of a
measured space and the experienced vision of our common
medium, studied as part of Naïve Geography [6], and must be
able to present multi-representations depending on the activities
involved [7]. Hence, the introduction of the notion of locality in
generic web search makes information retrieval even more
problematic.
To ease the integration of local data query oriented applications
such as geographic web mashups present in an ad hoc way
information relevant to the user. These applications successfully
handle the semantics of a particular domain in a limited context,
e.g. looking for apartments in an area1. However, (i) handling data
heterogeneity still requires considerable manual work as every
additional data source has to be integrated manually, (ii) the lack
of semantics limits the expressivity of queries and the precision of
the results, as the applications generally only allow the filtering of
answers using simple dimensions such as price for the house one
is looking for etc., and (iii) in mashups the results only take into
account a single context and generally do not tackle the
specificities of geographic space beyond point based
representation.
Alongside individual efforts of mashup developers, generic
applications such as Google Local have been built to aggregate
geo-located results in an automatic way. As opposed to mashups,
data is integrated automatically, but this comes at the expense of
the quality of the information retrieved, and of the results’
expressivity. Therefore improving the quality of local search in a
generic web search context is still a necessity.
In order to improve the quality of local search alternative efforts
based on higher semantics have been advocated in the NLP
communities, the Semantic Web and the GIScience ones. Efforts
have been deployed to describe geographic space semantically,
often by building ontological descriptions. However, the simple
definition of geographic entities is more problematic in
geographic space (e.g. a forest or the town centre are vaguely
1
e.g. http://www.housingmaps.com/
defined, context dependent, or can spread over multiple areas)
than in table-top space (e.g. a chair or an apple). Therefore, in
order to build more practical solutions, logic based ontologies
have been merged with allegedly cognitively sounder approaches:
paradigms originating from psychology, cognitive science or
philosophy, such as affordances, image schemata, conceptual
spaces and multi representation models, have been advocated.
However these models have often been applied at the exclusion of
others, revealing only a few aspect of geographic space but failing
to handle all its characteristics.
The notion of place is essential in geography and, we believe, in
local search, not only because the location of the where aspect of
a query is often expressed as a place, named or not [8], but also
because the what aspect itself is essentially about places that
allow users to do things. Therefore the notion needs to be
elucidated. We will argue that the special character of geographic
space is only due to the over fitness of KR concepts to table-top
space elements and to domains such as controlled experimental
environments (i.e. “toy worlds”) or scientific ones (e.g. biology
classifications), and are therefore not adapted to the description of
embodied meaning such as the one relevant to geographic space.
Therefore alternative knowledge representation techniques need
to be used in order to represent the dynamic aspect of real world
meaning, a meaning typically human and social, rather than
purely logical. In previous work we developed the notion of
difference, elements of meaning able to assume different roles in
different KR models, and therefore allowing to move from one to
another [10]. In order to capture meaning outside of any
predefined KR model, and by doing so to express differences, we
extended the technique of tagging to allow tagging the tag
themselves as well as the relationships between them [11].
First we are going to describe the challenges of local search, and
its link with geographic space and the notion of place. Then we
will introduce differences, followed by Extreme Tagging systems
and present an example applied to the notion of place. We will
conclude with a summary of the advantages of the techniques
used as well as indications of future directions.
2. LOCAL SEARCH, SPACE AND PLACE
2.1 The State of Local Search
If literature exists about the nature of geographic terms used in
local search queries [3], to our knowledge, a complete typology of
local queries is still missing. Therefore, to describe local search, a
basic query model is used here, identical to the ones used in [12]
and [13], and to the one proposed by the GeoCLEF 2007 query
parsing task proposal 2 . It consists in a (what, spatial-relation,
where) triple. Hence examples queries are:
• “food near lax”
• “buy food in lax”
• “eat in LA”
• “restaurant near me”
Less obvious examples – such as “the closest restaurant”, “rivers
with vineyards”, etc. [14] –, can be converted to this normal form
– i.e. as “restaurant near my location” and “vineyards near
rivers”.
2
http://ir.shef.ac.uk/geoclef/2007/Query-Parsing.htm
Major web actors are aware of the growing importance of local
search alongside pure document search and local search engines
have been developed by Yahoo!3, Google4, and Microsoft5. All
offer a yellow page style geographic aggregation of business
addresses with several map visualization features. They also
provide a simple natural language query system introduced
through examples showing query patterns. To illustrate the
difficulties encountered when using these systems we tried
Google local with the example query “hotels near lax” (lax
standing for Los Angeles International Airport). The query is
successful in that it returns a list of hotels situated at what appears
as a walking distance from the airport. However the second result
page displayed hotels which were closer than the first result set,
while in the following pages start to appear items which do not
appear to be hotels at all (e.g. the company “Westchester Travel
Service”, which indeed displays Los Angeles hotels on its home
page, and is classified in a yellow page website as “Hotel Motel &
Resort Reservations in Los Angeles, California”). We also notice
that trying “restaurant near lax”, returns precise results, but that
switching from “restaurant” to “bistro” or “eatery” returned
results which were as close or even closer but which were not
included in the “restaurant” result set: the system did not take into
account that an “eatery” was the same as a “restaurant” and that a
“bistro” was similar in essential aspects as well.
Another query, “sushi near lax”, returned good results, and even
the query “great sushi near lax” did not return restaurants situated
more than 22 miles from the airport, and traditional American
food restaurant as it did in 2005 [15]6. However, by switching the
query to “wine near lax” we were oriented toward specialized
wine shops – some of which more than 42 miles away from the
airport – neglecting the fact that, given the cultural importance of
wine in western culture, and in California, a bottle of wine could
probably be obtained in any drinking place or restaurant.
Finally, the attempt of improving the results by adding keywords
to the query, e.g. “buy wine near lax”, was unsuccessful as the
results only returned pages that mentioned the word “buy”.
It seems obvious that with a bit of semantics, e.g. the knowledge
that a restaurant serves wines, and that eateries are restaurants too,
the results could be greatly improved. Even without changing the
retrieval system, adding relevant keywords to the query, e.g.
“restaurants and eateries and bistros near lax”, or sending several
queries in parallel and aggregating the results, would lead to
better precision. In order to achieve this in the general case,
however, we need to understand the semantics of geographic
space, and of place, and to represent it in a machine-processable
way.
2.2 Representing Spatial Semantics
Currently, the most common means of expressing high level
semantics is the use of logic based ontologies. In this sense, an
ontology is “a logical theory accounting for the intended meaning
of a formal vocabulary” [9]. The apparent universality and
3
http://local.yahoo.com
4
http://local.google.com
5
http://www.live.com
6
Such improvements for queries involving very specific
keywords are certainly due to the increase of the quantity of
available documents
versatility of this definition has lead many researchers to advocate
their use in a geospatial context (e.g. [16][17]). However some
expressed scepticism (e.g. [18]), originating from the fact that, if
ideally “meaning” expressed by ontologies would provide the
long sought for “glue” between geospatial communities by
capturing their practices and conceptualisations, and ease the
alignment of heterogeneous elements, the actual use of ontologies
for spatial knowledge representation quickly leads to issues which
seem difficult to overcome. These issues are related to object
representation in geographic space when trying to handle
vagueness [19] as well as cultural and subjective discrepancies
(e.g. [6] [20]).
To overcome these difficulties alternative KR models such as
affordances, image schemata, conceptual spaces and multi
representation models, have been advocated. Each of these
models have specific components that are used to describe aspects
of knowledge. We are going to describe them in turn, starting
with logic based ontologies.
Logic based ontologies describe a domain by using categories and
by defining relations between them. Categories have attributes
and are related by is-a relationships to form taxonomies. Instances
are individuals belonging to a category. Moreover, some ontology
languages provide procedures, functions, axioms and (production)
rules.
Multi representation models promote the notion of context-
dependent identity. Indeed, instead of linking an entity to a unique
set of categories with fixed sets of attributes, multiple
representations are provided depending on the context. These
representations are not only visual (e.g. an airport being
represented geometrically as a point at world scale and a complex
structure at a closer scale) but also concerns the attributes, which
can change depending on the particular representation dictated by
the context [21].
Conceptual spaces, as introduced by Gärdenfors [22], present
individuals as points in geometric multi dimensional quality
spaces. As an example, a particular colour is represented as a
point in the three dimensions of the primary colours. This
representation allows to easily measure similarity between two
individuals as the distance between two individual points.
Image schemata are described as “a small number of parts and
relations, by virtue of which it can structure indefinitely many
perceptions, images, and events” [23], and are basically a small
set of structures which support relations. Examples are container,
balance, compulsion, blockage, counterforce, etc. Schemas can be
combined to create complex structures. For example a crossroad
is composed of two paths, which are themselves based on the
image schemata links and support.
Affordances are an essential concept of ecological psychology
[24]: they are possibilities for action latent in an environment. As
actions have to be carried by someone, the users’ capabilities
have an important role in the definition of an affordance (e.g. a
wall does not afford to be climbed if I am not tall or fit enough or
do not have a ladder).
Most of these paradigms are only superficially compatible with
ontology languages (e.g. quale in DOLCE [27] are inspired by
conceptual spaces, but constitute a minimal part of the underlying
theory) and integrations tends to disregard the specificities of the
paradigm (Gibson’s affordances for example, are often
assimilated to functions, or their meaning is limited to an HCI
environment, or the concept of direct perception is disregarded).
Therefore alternative KR models are often used in isolation (as
for example conceptual spaces in [25] or in [26]). This
unfortunately reveals their own expressive limits, as it is for
example quite difficult to emulate is-a hierarchies with conceptual
spaces.
Given the usefulness, as well as the intrinsic variety of the notion
of place, several of these models have been applied to it in order
to present a coherent description.
2.3 The Notion of Place
There is a consensus on the fact that a place is related to a
location, a spatial footprint, and that places, as locations, can be
nested. However, once this basic fact has been established, places
appear to be used in very diverse ways in natural language [32],
probably too many to be categorized. For some authors, the roots
of this variety can be traced to the origins of our sense of place,
that meaning that each particular place has for an individual.
Jordan et al. [28] for example, quoting Curry [29], argue that
places do not have predefined boundaries but that a place is a
“location that has been given shape and form by people”. The
diversity of the meanings of place simply reflects the complex
genealogy of the sense of place, i.e. the ways by which we
transform a simple undifferentiated location into a place:
• Naming operations: giving a name to a new place is a
process of appropriation (e.g. New Hampshire in the
USA).
• Applying Typologies: applying geographic categories to
things (e.g. stream, suburb, etc.) makes them place-like.
• Making/Picking up a Symbol: a metonymical operation
(e.g. the pyramids for Egypt).
• Telling Stories: a place described by what happened
there (e.g. battles, past life events, etc)
• Doing Things: places become tangible through activities
(e.g. everyday routines, or things we do when arriving
to a new town)
It is reasonable to think that the sense of place comes from a
combination of these activities. For example a territory which has
been given a name from a distance, will be more a place if a
typology can be applied to it – e.g. if it is rocky –, even more a
place if stories are told about it (e.g. ghost ones), and even more if
human start using it for activities such as commerce. If this notion
of place seems a bit remote from the common experience of place
it is because most places have already been
named/categorized/used for us in the process of building a culture
and a society and that most individuals do not have a word to say
in this process [30]. However, these elements are reactivated
when we find ourselves in alien environment, travelling or after a
life event.
This genealogy of the sense of place is useful in order to
understand why a place can be vague, why it does not always
have to be based on a geographic category, that it can be created
ad hoc as categories can, depending on the context. Given this
genealogy, places also appear as essentially human, naming being
a way of encompassing what is named, at least indirectly on a
map, applying typologies requiring a particular culture and maybe
language [20], picking up symbols implies political or cultural
interests, as do telling stories, and doing things implies human
activities and the human ability to move around objects. Given
these various origins difficulties that arise in categorizing the
notion of place in an ontology, as described in [31][32] seem
more than understandable. Even when these origins are not taken
into account, existing ontology languages such as OWL seem to
be inappropriate [33] to the description of existing places and
need to be complemented in order to capture the human and
inherent dynamism of the notion.
To include all these elements Jordan et al. [28] have proposed the
description of a place as a network of affordances, as the location
where given affordances are presented to us, but the extreme
variety of affordances to take into account has been found
problematic. A multi paradigm approach to the description of
geographic object has been advocated by Kuhn [34], combining
image schemata as supports for affordances, approach which can
be applied to the notion of place. We will build on these two
approaches in the next section to present an alternative notion of
place.
2.4 Local Search as Search for Places
According to the previous genealogy one can see that a place is a)
experienced, which implies that all aspects of human experience
can get attached to it, through direct experiment, cognitive
picking of categories or landmarks, or indirect narrations, etc. and
b) explored, geographic space and places are only accessible
through movement, and therefore everything that modifies the
capacity to move, such as public transportation in a town, or
disability in a home, has an impact on the sense of place. Our
hypothesis is that the spatial footprint of a place is to be linked
with the experiences a location allows, establishing a tension
which is the place itself. In other words the location is constitutive
of a place in so far that it is recognized as a homogeneous
affordance field and that it allows the homogeneity of movement.
For example, a restaurant allows to eat as long as you are inside
its walls, or sitting immediately outside at a table. The separation
made by the walls of the restaurant building are secondary
compared to the notion of affordance field and to the fact that I
can easily move from inside to outside, but as soon as I move
beyond a given limit, e.g. out of sight, I find myself in a place
which presents different affordances, i.e. which is not a restaurant
anymore. Another example is the unity of a country as a place,
even if it’s geographic extension is constituted by multiple islands
(e.g. Italy). The sense of place is maintained by the fact that my
movement is homogeneous, i.e. that there exist relatively
homogeneous ways to go from one island to another, or from
mainland to the island, in terms of speed, frequency, price, etc,
and that I can expect similar affordances, such as infrastructures,
habits, or maybe languages, in all parts of the country. We believe
the combination of both factors is important as only movement
allows to provide the feeling of affordances as a field, while on
table top space, affordances are supported by quasi punctual
objects. It also provides us with an articulation between the two
spaces. For example my house is a place where I can sleep since it
contains (punctual) objects which allow me to lie down, and that
my movement is only marginally interrupted by boundaries inside
its walls. The feeling aspect of the notion of place, for example
the one of safety, which certainly contributes to my perception of
affordances – as I would not lie down in a potentially hostile
environement –, is not explored here but supposed to be implicit
in the way people tag things, therefore choosing their affordances.
The notion of place, and a definition of this notion which involves
Copyright is held by the author/owner (s).
LocWeb2008 held at WWW2008, April 22, 2008, Beijing, China ACM
978-1-60558-085-2/08/04
movement and affordances is essential for local search since if the
where part of a local search is closely related to the notion of
place, the what is part of the description of a place as well.
Indeed, when I query for something local, “food” or a
“restaurant”, I am implicitly looking for a place which provides
food, or for a place which is a restaurant. Indeed, asking for food
or drinks nearby does not usually mean where can I find food on
the streets, which would be accidental, and as such could not be
localized, but means I am looking for a place that serves food or
drinks.
3. REPRESENTING MEANING
The meaning of place must embrace all the dimensions that
constitute the sense of place, and, to be operational, still allow to
be represented in the various models of which components can
then be algorithmically manipulated. The notion of differences
aims to fulfil the role of grounding for generic meaning without
the need to commit to a particular KR model. Tagging, and more
particularly Extreme Tagging Systems, i.e. tagging systems
allowing the tagging of tags themselves, allow to represent
meaning with minimal commitment. A tag can then be projected
onto elements of any KR model in order to become operational.
In the next section we briefly explain where the notion of
difference originates from and how it is defined. Then we
introduce Extreme Tagging Systems (ETS) as a way to describe
difference networks and as a knowledge capture tool. ETS are
then used to describe a place.
3.1 Meaning as Differences
Work on differences as a grounding for meaning originates from
Gilles Deleuze’s study of the concepts of Difference and Identity,
from the emergence of collaborative tagging systems in Web 2.0
applications, as well as from work of Jaques Derrida on the
dynamic aspects of his concepts of différance. According to
Deleuze, differences precede identities, as they allow us to make a
distinction between things giving them an identity a posteriori. It
is the differences we can establish between elements of the world
and ideas that allow us to identify them and to establish similarity
statements, and not the opposite. Derrida is interested by the
relations between elements of meaning, and, following the model
of the linguistic sign, describes the process of becoming
something else in order to signify, coined différance. Indeed, as
the nature of the sign is to refer to something else in order to
acquire meaning, any element of meaning itself is linked to other
meanings and only makes sense in this movement towards
something else. In Web 2.0 applications, collaborative tagging
gives the user absolute freedom in the elicitation of a label, or tag,
independently of any pre-established categorisation, or indeed KR
model which would be based on categorisation.
Hence, a difference [10] is defined an element of meaning, atomic
in that it has a specific meaning by itself, but which can also be
reduced to the meanings he is linked to. It is anything that makes
sense, emerging from a background and which can be isolated by
an actual process. A difference cannot be dissociated from the
process which allows it to signify by itself, unlike symbol systems
which signify only thanks to relations between symbols. For
example particular colours, shapes, a distinct word, a sound, an
action, an event, a town etc., exhibit meanings I can understand
immediately if I have the appropriates processes to grasp them,
but it is still can be reduced to other differences. The meaning of a
“restaurant”, once this meaning is acquired, becomes present
immediately, but other differences are linked to it and, for
example, the presence of a building, with tables and a menu in
display will certainly evoke the meaning “restaurant”. Only
differences carry meaning, as, for example, I may not be able to
distinguish as many shades of a colour as an artist, which means
they have no meaning for me, and that they cannot be attached to
other meanings either.
Hence difference-based KR is distinct from symbolic KR in that
differences are not static symbols, but always the result of an
active process. The processes that produce differences, or rather
that are differences, themselves process other differences, other
elements of meaning. These processes can be algorithms
operating on data in an information science context, or chemical
processes operating on modifications of the physical environment
in a biological context, or actions operating on a changing
environment in an ecological psychology context. Independently
of the nature of the process, the result, if detected as meaningful,
is called a difference, and is the production of a snippet of
meaning that can be processed further. Therefore, as differences,
one can follow the trace of meaning from chemical processes
detecting molecular variations to mathematical, logical, cognitive
or even social processes, as an uninterrupted chain of actions and
reactions which transport meaning through differences. They
provide the link which makes logical actions meaningful, but also
social signs, particular actions, designs, environments, etc.
Differences, as processes, cannot be represented directly: they are
a transformation of something into something else, and the simple
description of preconditions/postconditions, inputs or outputs,
tells us little about the actual transformation process. However,
being meaningful, differences can be reflected in a particular KR
paradigm, in the similar way that, for example, an AND gate
executes a process on an electronic board, process which can be
described by a logical formula, and which can be emulated by a
computer, but not represented directly as a process acting on
electrons, as the process just is. In a constrained environment such
as an electronic system, meaning can be captured by one or two
paradigms, such as logical and analogical. Less constrained
environments however, such as those experienced in everyday life
or the ones related to geographic space are complex fluctuant
mosaics of meaningful processes, differences, of which KR
paradigms can only partially and temporarily map in their
diversity.
Finally, if differences, being processes, cannot be represented, we
can represent the links between them as a graph. As an example, a
network of differences describing aspects of Milton Keynes (UK)
City Centre (MK CC) is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1. A network of Differences
Since the notion of difference is dynamic rather than static, the
criterion of applicability of a KR paradigm to the flux of meaning
that are difference becomes the emergence of reasoning
capabilities, and not a representation that may or may not support
some reasoning. Therefore differences have to be projected onto a
particular KR model in a punctual, dynamic and task oriented
way.
3.2 Extreme Tagging Systems and Differences
Extreme Tagging Systems (ETS) are an attempt to use the free
association processes common to tagging, in order to acquire
knowledge [11]. In ETS tags can themselves be tagged, as well as
the relations between them. For example, some image of a car
would be tagged with “car”, and “car” itself with “wheels” and
the relationship between the two with “part-of”. These operations
can be done collaboratively, online, by several users on the same
tag network, or individually on one’s own tag network. Tags are
URIs and can contain for example location data. Filtering
operations allow to query the whole network or to limit it to a
particular user or community of identified users. The tagging can
be done by users on separate websites and the results retrieved
through RDF. To summarize ETS are Semantic Networks [35]
with no particular constraints on the vocabulary during the
creation phase. However some control mechanisms are applied to
the tagging operation itself.
Indeed, when tagging tags, the operation of tagging is meaningful,
i.e. the fact that an intelligent being chooses to tag a tag with
another tag is not arbitrary, and this operation can be linked to the
laws of association of ideas [36]. Connectionists argue that in
analogy with the neural structure of our brain, the stream of
thought, i.e. the way one thought leads to another, seems to follow
certain rules. Therefore, in ETS, taggers are asked to describe the
meaning they give to their tagging activity, i.e. why the
movement from one tag to the other occurs, independently from
the relation they may choose to add after that between two tags.
Association laws that have been selected for ETS are:
• similarity: a tag has been applied because the concepts
are similar (e.g. from pub to bar), although the
similarity is not explored further at this level.
• co-occurrence: a tag has been applied because of the
presence of the two concepts in the real world (e.g. from
car to wheels). We do not investigate further the nature
of the relation, e.g. we do not ask if it is topological,
mereological, temporal, etc.
• sound-co-occurrence: the words are often found
together (e.g. “Japanese restaurant” has a particular
meaning, a tag in itself, but the words “Japanese” and
“restaurant” are sometimes found together, and
therefore I may tag “restaurant” with “Japanese”).
• Cause-effect: e.g. “weapon” and “death”
• sound-similarity: e.g. “pink” and “link”
• opposition: e.g. “life” and “death”, “something” as
opposed to ”nothing”, etc.
The Extreme Tagging activity, consisting in following a stream of
thought while exploring a particular meaning, going from an
element to others, without caring about categories, or being
constrained in any other way by any KR model, appears as a good
candidate to the capture of differences, meaningful relations
before any inclusion in a KR model. A tag is a word, here an
English one, which tries to express the meaning of a particular
difference. It is a natural language representation of a difference
network, not to be mistaken with differences themselves – which
are dynamic processes of meaning production –, but both ETS
networks and difference networks share 1) the characteristic of
avoiding to commit to a KR model, and 2) a network topology.
Moreover by asking users for the association laws used during the
tagging process, we avoid the case where, eventually, “everything
is somehow related to everything”, as the systems allows to know
in what sense something is related to something.
Extreme Tagging has been inspired by social networks.
Tagopedia, the first implementation of an ETS is based on the
Facebook application framework [11]. This allows introducing, if
needed, further regulation mechanisms based on collaboration.
For example weighting allows to increase the importance of tags
which have been applied by many users, as well as to implement a
recommendation system. Also tags from others can be ranked,
and the author of one tag can ask a friend about the meaning of
his or her tag. In this way we try to create some social meaning,
non only a multitude of individual independent ones.
Once some knowledge has been captured by a collaborative
process, several filtering levels are present:
• Timeline: groups of tags added during a same session
are considered to be more related than the others (e.g,
in one session “tank” can be tagged with “fish”, while
in another “tank” can be tagged with “weapon”).
• Personal: only my own tags are considered
• Group: I choose a group and only the tags of this group
are considered
• Friends: only my contacts’ tags are presented.
• Global: all tags are shown.
Here is the representation of the previous difference network,
where nodes represent tags and arcs represent the action of
tagging (cf. Figure 2). Only the association relations are shown,
tagged relations are here not needed and therefore not
represented.
Figure 2. An Extreme Tagging network
One can see that ETS networks do not have to be complete. For
example pizza is also a kind of food, although the diagram does
not indicate it: as the network is evolving constantly this is not a
permanent and therefore not a worrying issue.
ETS are work in progress, however we believe that useful results
can already be extracted from their use, and notably in
conjunction with the notion of place.
3.3 The Meaning of Place
We can now build a representation of place not by trying to fit
elements of place in a given KR model, but by freely describing
the meaning of a place before projecting it on various KR models
depending on the context.
As previously described, our notion of place is a location which
allows homogeneous movement and affordance fields. Therefore,
from our KR toolbox we are going to transform tags, which are
non committed representations of differences, into committed
ones, i.e. into elements of a particular KR model. The choice of
these elements will be dictated by our ability to extract them from
an ETS, as well as by our task. Here a place will be an ontological
geographical category (or a group of categories) which provides
affordances.
One solution to the problem of deciding what a geographical
category or an affordance is, is to use social mechanisms to
annotate the network. Indeed, as we ask each user about the
process of association which makes him or her move from one tag
to another, we can also ask taggers to select the type of a tag from
a list. However as we plan to map to different KR model elements
depending on the context (here, places and local search, mapping
to entities and affordances), this process can be tedious for the
users, and we may have to wait for this information after the
introduction of every new application.
Another solution, as only broad categories are needed, is to use
comprehensive pre-existing ontologies, such as the almost formal
Wordnet to look up the meaning of each term. Our test queries
will be “food near Lax”, and “eat near Lax”. We assume that the
where term, “Lax”, can be discovered from a gazetteer like in
[38], which also allows us to handle nearness relations. Hence, for
the first query, “Food near LAX”, we start with the what term,
Food and notice that it is similar to {sushi} and co-occurs with
{MK CC, restaurant, pub} (cf. Figure 3). Food is not a
geographical category according to Wordnet, i.e. there is no
hypernym which can be related to a geographical entity, and
therefore is it considered as an affordance: what we are looking
for are things that provide food. MK CC cannot be found in
Wordnet and therefore is ignored. Restaurant has building in its
list of hypernyms, which is considered by our algorithm a
geographical entity. Note that the notion of scale is trivially
handled, e.g. if food is linked to buildings but also larger areas
such as named places, both can be returned. Moreover restaurant
has synonyms ({eating house, eating place, eatery}) and
hyponyms ({bistro, brasserie, brewpub,...}) which can be used in
the query. Food also co-occurs with pub, which is similar to bar.
Pub and bar are buildings and have their own synonyms and
hyponyms. Therefore, when looking for food, which is implicitly
looking for a place that provides food, the query can be enriched
with additional terms, the synonyms and hyponyms of the linked
geographic entities, which may be mentioned on the indexed web
pages.

Figure 3 "Food near LAX" query with extensions shown for
“restaurant”.
Regarding the next query, “Eat near Lax”, we also start with the
what term, eat, which according to Wordnet is a verb, and
therefore, in our context, an affordance. It is linked to restaurant
and pub//bar, which are buildings, as well as to pizza, which is in
our context an affordance (as it is not a geographical category).
Note that here, as we are only looking for indications of KR
elements matching, and only have two categories, affordances
and geographical categories, ambiguity is easier to handle
automatically. For example, if we had a query about drink, which
can be a verb and a noun, it is not a geographic category, and
therefore would be considered as an affordance.
Figure 4 "Eat near LAX" query
This approach of using a theory of place to facilitate GIR is
related to [37] in which, for a representation of a place, a set of
associations are requested from the users. However, ETS can be
used for various KR projection. For example if it was useful to
use categories and affordances for the notion of place, a way-
finding task would probably need image schemata providing
structure to a path. This minimal amount of semantics, easy to
capture, can improve the quality of local search by providing
more semantically related words to search for.
4. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Advantages of a technique based on differences expressed
through ETS over the choice of a particular KR model are
multiple. First, by using differences, and therefore delaying any
commitment to a KR model, one can easily adapt the KR
elements used for a particular task. In this way we hope that ad
hoc knowledge based applications, developing ontologies in order
to handle a particular task only, will tend to disappear. Secondly,
by using tags, knowledge can be acquired very quickly, and future
work will investigate ways of acquiring part of the tag network
automatically from textual or other knowledge sources. Moreover,
ETS allow the extraction of subjective knowledge. For example if
the relationship between food and restaurant is somehow generic
and can be found in an ontology, queries about “Fun in LA”, in
which the system would be unable to return relevant results for
fun without the help of a personalised Extreme Tagging network.
We also believe that the use of ETS for local search and the
noticeable improvements will help motivate users to improve their
own tag network, and, by doing so, contribute to the shared
knowledge of their community.
We have described a notion of place based on a new approach to
knowledge capture and representation that avoids the commitment
to a particular model before the apparition of a context. In future
work we would like to experiment with more complex cases and
larger ETS. We are interested in using tags networks to produce
ontologies, rather than to only link to them. Indeed we believe
that a tagging network can give some insight into the meaning of
a concept, such as restaurant, in a given context, but
independently of any task.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the anonymous reviewers which comments helped
improving the quality the paper, and to Olga Streibel for support
and for the always interesting chats and discussions.
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