Abstraction & Maps

Today I've assisted to an UML training really interesting. It's almost incredible how can we abstract of the real problem and model almost any situation and its solution with so few different artifacts. Even if we are talking on stem-cells, embedded software or business processes we can apply the same language and methodology and try to figure out and model the situation. And when a person familiar with this language aproaches to such a description interpret the real problem although he can not be an expert with the domain in question. Maybe is the next step in communication. First, human beings started showing each other physical things to try to communicate. They showed how two stone have to be crashed in order to produce fire. A bit, or a lot, later they where able to talk about things they have not in front of them, and they invented the language. Some ages after they (not yet we?) were able to have a conversation on a topic not physical but abstract, like an triangle. Know we have a language to precisely communicate the knowledge acquired in a domain in a small picture...

On saturday I went to the new faculty's library of Geography, History and Philosophy and saw in the screen of a person that was surfing the Internet, as actually was I, something like a knowledge map. It is worth it to try to investigate it and figure out what is it all about.