Conceptual Content Modeling and Management

Abstract

Focused views on entities of interest — concrete or abstract ones — are often represented by texts, images, speech or other media. Such media views are communicated through visual or audio channels and stored persistently in appropriate containers.

In this paper we extend a computational content-container model into a closely coupled content-concept model intended to capture more of the meaning — and improve the value — of content. Integrated content-concept views on entities are modeled by the notion of assets, and our asset language aims at two goals derived from extensive experiences with entity modeling:

• 1 Expressiveness: according to Peirce [29] and others, entity modeling — and, therefore, also asset modeling — has to cover three different perspectives:

  • an entity’s inherent characteristics (firstness categories);

  • its relationships to other entities (secondness categories);

  • the systematics behind the first two perspectives (thirdness categories).

• 2 Responsiveness: according to Cassirer [8, 47] and others, entity modeling processes, in order to be successful have to be

  • open, i.e., users of an asset language must be able to adapt their asset models according to the requirements of the entity at hand;

  • dynamic in the sense that all aspects of an asset model must be subject to inspection and adaptation at any time.

Our current experiments with asset languages are motivated by the need for a better understanding and integration of content and concepts about application entities. We conclude by outlining a component-based implementation technology for open and dynamic asset systems.