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ON VISUALIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION: THE ROLE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 12-48

The paper touches upon the issue of knowledge and information visualization, and the epistemological status of this process in terms of progressive development and application of smart technologies. The issue of visualization in general, and the visualization of knowledge in particular, is a controversial question. Due to this reason, there exist a number of approaches to the understanding of visualization mechanisms. However, with all the variety of approaches, their similarity is found in the sense that visualization of knowledge is the subjective need of a person to clarify the content of knowledge and make it meaningful for him/her and others. To visualize knowledge means “to know”, “to recognize”, “to decipher” what it is filled with. Without such a component, cognition or knowledge (as a result of knowledge) does not exist. However, under the conditions of active use of smart technologies, a person faces an ever-increasing amount of information and the improvement of methods for its processing, storage and distribution. There is a need to clarify the issue of the similarity or difference of the nature of visualization of knowledge and information. This problem can be solved by the identification of the nature and characteristics of information and knowledge. During the course of the research, a number of philosophical and scientific concepts are considered. The appeal to the philosophical concepts of Plato and Aristotle allows drawing an analogy regarding the nature of information and knowledge through the diversification of differences in the nature of the world of ideas (eidos) and the world of things. It is stated that the resulting model comes across paradoxical consequences, which consist in the fact that information and knowledge are of different nature: objective and subjective, one of which loses its essence in the attempt to connect them with each other. It turns out that interaction is possible only when the nature of one of the phenomena is transformed into the nature of the other, and this does not allow modeling the process of interaction between knowledge and information in a clear form. A parallel is drawn with modern scientific approaches in the field of natural sciences and computer science (Heisenberg, Shannon, Wiener), which come to similar results in studying the nature of information and knowledge, which see the information basis (model) of the world, similar to the Platonic world of ideas, in mathematical programs. It turns out that knowledge has a subjective nature, a person forms knowledge, and visualization is a natural form and stage of the process of cognition. Information has an objective nature, therefore, acts as an appropriate basis of our world. Visualization in this regard is not a natural form of the functioning of information, in contrast to knowledge, because it exists independently of a person. It becomes possible to visualize information only when it is transformed into knowledge and changes its nature. Smart technologies present the process of inverse knowledge, during the course of which the subject as a source of knowledge forms intentions of the external world in relation to its meanings. Smart technologies, whose main function is that their developers are assigned the function of the subject, direct the cognitive process in the opposite direction: from the subject to the external world, trying to transform knowledge into information (the most vivid example of such a transformation is artificial intelligence). In this case, visualization does not play such a significant role as in knowledge.

Keywords: visualization, knowledge, information, epistemology, idea, thing, smart technologies

REVISITING THE ISSUE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGY AND VISUALIZATION: DOES SMART EDUCATION LEAD TO SMART EPISTEMOLOGY? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 9-35

The article discusses how the use of smart technologies affects educational and cognitive processes, how semiotically and epistemologically presented the assessments of the role of smart technologies in relation to the phenomena of education and cognition are. By smart technologies, the authors understand modern, basically informational, technologies of various profiles, the main task of which is to perform semiotically and epistemologically the functions of a subject, to replace a person in various spheres of life (where and as far as possible). The authors note that, in assessing the role of smart technologies, some criteria are often ignored and the role and importance of others are exaggerated. To summarize, it can be argued that the quantitative criteria for the application of smart technologies prevail over the qualitative ones, thus allowing the substitution of the essential characteristics of smart technologies to be less significant (secondary), which gives rise to certain unjustified expectations and effects. In particular, the authors analyzed one of these pseudo-effects: the educational situation, when a student is studying a particular discipline within the framework of online learning (smart technologies make this possible), begins to be semiotically visualized as epistemological. This is due to the fact that the online learning format puts a person in front of the need to “discover” knowledge independently for themselves, without having the appropriate methodological training and full-time support from the teacher. The problem is that, in a large number of studies, this situation is viewed as a definite achievement, but, as further evaluation of the results of smart learning shows, students whose methodological training is already associated with a certain methodological “baggage” cope with this role while most students only worsen their learning outcomes. It is noted that, epistemologically, such a characteristic of smart technologies as a functional replacement of a subject is directly correlated with the position of a number of constructivist trends in epistemology and cognitive sciences, according to which “knowledge without a subject” is allowed. The combination of the designated parameters of smart technologies application in education and epistemology allows a number of researchers to admit the conclusion about the possibility of the formation of smart education and smart epistemology as “objectless” ways of learning knowledge and cognition. It is shown that such a scenario is permissible, if not to separate the concepts of information and knowledge, the processes of cognition and information. It is shown that, if this requirement is ignored, the concepts of knowledge and knowledge itself lose their meanings, because knowledge as a process is a way of relating knowledge and information, which is impossible in an outer-subject form. It is concluded that smart technologies, in the context of their application in education and epistemology, should be considered as an additional tool, whose function can be reduced to performing routine, but not heuristic, creative basic actions that remain the subject’s priority.

Keywords: smart-technologies, epistemology, education, cognition, subject

TERMINOLOGICAL PLANNING IN THE CONTEXT OF SMART EDUCATION: THE ROLE OF THE CONCEPT AS A WAY OF KNOWLEDGE VISUALIZATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 4 (34). P. 28-62

The article deals with the problem of defining a term in the theories of terminological planning and the influence of the identified approaches on the organization of a student’s terminological work in the context of smart education. The aim of the article is to determine, in the context of smart education, the ways of a student’s terminological work depending on the interpretation of the term in the considered theories of terminological planning (General Theory of Terminology (GTT), Communication Theory of Terminology (CTT), Sociocognitive Theory of Terminology (STT), Frame-Based Terminology (FBT)). The article contains three sections: “Smart education: On the concept”, “Theories of terminological planning: The factor of the concept”, “The concept of the term, visualization and smart education”, expressing the authors’ sequence of consideration of the questions posed. The first section analyzes smart education as a concept. The latter is considered as a format of education whose key characteristic, according to the authors, is the maximum degree of the student’s independence in the development of knowledge and modern information technology. The knowledge acquisition system is interpreted through terminological work and terminology designation problems. The authors have established that the concept plays a key role in the definition of the term, since its status determines the status of the term. In the considered theories, there is no single way of understanding the concept and the term, and, consequently, the way of designating the term. The second section characterizes the main theories of terminological planning and features of term understanding and terminological work in them. In GTT, the concept is characterized as a specialized concept, in the context of which the meaning of the term is determined (according to the rule, one concept for one term). CTT uses the term “terminological unit”, which consists of three components: a unit of knowledge (concept), a unit of language (term), a unit of communication (situation). STT uses the concept “unit of understanding”, which can take the form of a category (repeated meanings of concepts) and the form of a concept (unique value). In FBT, the meaning of a term and concept is defined through a frame and its structure, represented by a conceptual component (nouns are used to express the static meanings of the term) and a predicative component (verbs are used to express the dynamic meanings of the term). The third section discusses the role of the concept “term” as a means of visualization, through which the student is able to understand the degree of comprehension of the term when learning. For smart education, it is important that, in the context of GTT, the student should only learn the special meanings of terms and does not take part in their formation; in the context of CTT, STT, FBT (differently in each), the student plays a decisive role in the formation of the meanings of concepts and terms. The key role in terminology designation is played by the mechanisms of visualization and conceptualization, presented as processes of a multi-level alternating change of the considered operations when working with concepts and terms towards greater abstraction of the latter.

Keywords: smart education, term, concept, meaning, terminological planning theories, visualization, conceptualization