Extending the design space of ontologization practices: Using bCLEARer as an example

2025-01-30

AI Summary

This study addresses the growing misalignment between ontologization practices and the accelerating pace of information evolution in the digital era. Method: It proposes a digital-evolution-oriented ontologization strategic framework, positioning ontologization within the historical trajectory of information evolution and asserting “digitization as the latest stage of information evolution” as its theoretical foundation. Grounded in three decades of bCLEARer methodology practice, the framework integrates evolutionary cognitive modeling, cross-paradigm design frameworks, and information transition theory to enable co-ontologization of engineering processes and artifacts. Contribution: The work elevates ontologization from a technical tool to an organizational-level strategic lever; systematically identifies its core components; and generates multiple scalable, evolvable ontologization paradigms. These advances deliver a theoretically grounded yet operationally feasible ontologization pathway for digital transformation.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Ontologies
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Analogy
• Search and Optimization: Evolutionary Computation

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Scalable techniques for the creation, curation, publication, maintenance, and consumption of large, Web-based, structured, reusable, knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to outline how the design space for the ontologization process is richer than current practice would suggest. We point out that engineering processes as well as products need to be designed - and identify some components of the design. We investigate the possibility of designing a range of radically new practices, providing examples of the new practices from our work over the last three decades with an outlier methodology, bCLEARer. We also suggest that setting an evolutionary context for ontologization helps one to better understand the nature of these new practices and provides the conceptual scaffolding that shapes fertile processes. Where this evolutionary perspective positions digitalization (the evolutionary emergence of computing technologies) as the latest step in a long evolutionary trail of information transitions. This reframes ontologization as a strategic tool for leveraging the emerging opportunities offered by digitalization.

Problem

• Ontologization
• Evolutionary Perspective
• Digital Technology

Innovation

• Ontologization
• Digital Technology
• Design Innovation