Personalized ontologies oflocation
Nick Doty
npdoty@ischool.berkeley.edu
http://npdoty.name

Re-re-iteration of the concept: the dwindling of devices that don’t have geolocation and how
the numbers aren’t very useful to me.
Agenda:Briefly summarize last time
Basis for “personalized location” in geography and philosophy
Challenges in practical implementation

Levels of meaning
Personal ontology Personal
Geographic ontology

Civic address
Latitude/longitude

At homeIn Berkeley, in California,
near San Francisco

3141 College Ave, Berkeley
Universal(37.852,-122.252)

As before, we talked about these different levels of meaning (meaning for people, if not formachines). I think the essential distinction is that some of these are “universal” -- thecategories can be applied no matter who the subject is -- but that top level is “personal” -categories vary from person to person even in the same place.

Universal ontology of location... a solved problem?
Geographic ontologies
Gazetteers
Reverse-geocodingThis is overstating the case, but for a lot of purposes...
These all provide open APIs and free data and there are surely more if you’re willing to payUniversal ontology of location... a solved problem.
Why?
Easy to crowd-source and verify
Large (universal) potential customer base
Straightforward ontological commitments

Why has this part of the problem been solved? Why have these big companies taken it on?

Personal ontology of location
Personalized/contested
places

Where I like to work

PlacesHome; work

SpacesSchool; coffeeshop

These are rough categories of my own making.
You might recognize some of these terms from humanistic geography, which is nocoincidence. I’m going to try to draw out these three levels in different fields:
humanistic geography
philosophy and information sciencelocation-based service use cases

All oversimplifications, but I want to trace some of the history of the study of humangeography

1800sHuman geography

Political geography; economicgeography; population geography
Chorology
Traditional geography (political geography, economic geography, population geography) uses
the chorological method to document distribution of properties across the globe.
Population density (the map) measures a quantified property over space, but doesn’t explainplaces.
Carl Ritter’s work in the 1800s might be the founding of considering the human element ofotherwise physical geography.

1960sHumanistic geography“the move from ‘knowing
about’ places in an objectiveway, their facts and features,to ‘understanding’ places, in amore empathetic way, theircharacter and meanings”—Stephen Daniels, “Place andGeographical Imagination”

Makes sense for us to look at humanistic geography: since the focus of the neogeographer ison the personal collection of data (where I’ve been and the geotagged photos I took there, forexample) and our goal is to make sense of the data that more and more regular folks areeasily able to collect.

1990s

Critical humanistic geography“Places [...] are not so much bounded areas asopen and porous networks of social relations.
[...] identities will be multiple [...] And this in turnimplies that what is to be the dominant imageof any place will be a matter of contestation
and will change over time.”—Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender

1994. Feminist geography.
Also, David Harvey, Marxist geography; geography as a response to capitalism, postmodernism and neoliberalism.

How does humanistic
geography relate toontology and informationscience?

Data“a datum is just a lack of uniformity”— Luciano Floridi

Geospatial location ≡ difference of latitude andlongitude coordinates

Information
General Definition of Information: well-formed,
meaningful data
Genetic neutrality: data can have semantics
independent of any informee— Luciano Floridi
The meaning of location information depends
on the emotional experience of place, not justthe objective facts of space.
Also, I dispute the assumption of genetic neutrality. I think the meaning changes based on
the recipient -- letting my friends know that I’m at a bar means something different to themthan letting my parents know.
(Analogous to reader-response criticism in literary theory.)

What’s the “correct” ontology?
ontological relativity
confirmation holism“Two dogmas of empiricism”, 1951.

“A shift to pragmatism”“For those who want to develop or use
semantical methods, the decisive question is
not the alleged ontological question of theexistence of abstract entities but rather thequestion whether the use of abstract linguistic
forms is expedient and fruitful for the purposes
for which semantical analyses are made.”— Rudolph Carnap
Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology

And this is echoed in the information science literature:
Barry Smith (in an encyclopedia edited by Floridi):“Ontology thus concerns itself not at all with the question of ontological realism, that is with
the question whether its conceptualizations are true of some independently existing reality.
Rather, it is a strictly pragmatic enterprise.”

Use cases
contextual triggers
self-reflection
sharing and privacy

Personal ontology of location
Personalized/contestedplaces

Where I like to work

PlacesHome; work

SpacesSchool; coffeeshop

Spaces: objective data, the difference between coordinates and objective characteristics
Places: common concepts of meaningful place that apply differently to different subjects
Personalized places: our own concepts (since we know the conflicts can be deep or
irresolvable and that any ontology is valid)Spaces

School; coffeeshop

contextual triggers“Show me my grocery list the next time I’m
within 100 feet of a grocery store.”Places

Home; work

contextual triggers“Don’t send me alerts when I’m at school.”

sharing“Nathan is at work in Bethesda, MD.”

self-reflection“You spent the last two weekends at home.”

Places: common concepts of meaningful place that apply differently to different subjects

Personalized/contestedplaces

Where I like to work; TTsharing“Nick is at TT.”

self-reflection“You’ve been spending evenings at productive
places for you.”

Personalized places: our own concepts (since we know the conflicts can be deep or
irresolvable and that any ontology is valid)
You could also imagine sharing that took advantage of the personalized places/categories ofother people. “Don’t let my parents know when I’m somewhere they don’t want me to be.”

Embedded goals

self-reflection“10 points for meeting your personal goal ofusing public transportation more often.”

Games, and how they work -- Foursquare builds in its own value system (go new places,outside of working hours). What if you wanted
Useful for self-reflection.

Problems (usability andsystem design)
How many users will have a good mental model of apersonalized ontology of location?
How can we help users categorize their location
histories on multiple facets (including ones they makeup themselves) without constantly interrogating them?
How can we distinguish purely personal categories
from shared social categories from universal
categories?

Possible solutions

Possible solutions

http://vocab.org

Clearinghouses of shared vocabularies.

Next steps

As a final project, build a version of this ontology, and services to contribute and consume2
37.5,-122.2

Location
HistoryStore
37.5,-122.2

4
37.5,-122.2

73
Nick12

Next steps

37.5,-122.2
Sacks Coffee
Coffeehouse
Favorite
Place to workNickCategorizeYour Location

5Location
Ontology
StoreCoffeehouse
Place to work

MeaOntoLocA

6

Berkeley
California
United States

Meaningful Ontology of Location
Data Flow Diagram

8

Nick Doty • November 6, 20091

2
All location data comesvoluntarily from the user.
Maintaining the user's
privacy is a top priority.

3
Different devices use
different location providers(like Google, Apple orSkyhook) to determine
their geolocation from WiFi
networks or GPS signals.

Geoplanet
Geographic
Ontology

4Latitude/longitude pairs
are the lingua franca ofexisting geolocation
systems.

Yahoo! Fire Eagle is alocation broker that
accepts location fromvarious sources.

5876
The user supplies hisown categories for alocation using a webinterface.

An XML format we define
for describing custom
categories for a location.

Two databases store auser's location history
and their custom location
categories, respectively.

Matching up use cases to those different levels of meaning
What features does an ontology need to support these?
As a final project, build a version of this ontology, and services to contribute and consume

Differendata (usontologyontology
in respo122.2

Location
HistoryStore

Self-reflection
Module37.5,-122.2

Where Have I
Been?

7Nick9122.2
Coffeehouseriteo work
kLocation
Ontology
StoreCoffeehouse
Place to work

Meaningful
Ontology ofLocation
API

10

Next steps
Sharing
ModuleNick is having
coffee.

Ryan

Nick is inBerkeley.

Berkeley
California
United States

Future Third Party
Future Third Party
Modules
FutureThird Party
ModulesModules

The PublicKey

8
Geoplanet
Geographic
Ontology

87

ormat we definebing custom
s for a location.

Two databases store auser's location historyand their custom location
categories, respectively.

9Different types of location
data (user location; customontology; geographicontology) are combined here
in response to API requests.

10Modules we write interact with
the API to satisfy common use
cases: analyzing one's own
location history or selectively
sharing different levels oflocation data.

A web interface provides
statistics; e.g. "Last week you
spent 42% of your time athome and 8 hours in
coffeeshops."

ProcessDataStoreWebInterface

Document

Project-owned pieces
are outlined in blue.

Matching up use cases to those different levels of meaning
What features does an ontology need to support these?
As a final project, build a version of this ontology, and services to contribute and consume

Questions?
npdoty@ischool.berkeley.edu
http://npdoty.nameMythical places