Mining the gold of human knowledge

As this conference discusses advanced technologies required to delve into the unexplored or unresolved regions of geographic and temporal spaces, there is one region here on earth whose riches have only barely been tapped. That region is the human mind and its "knowledge mother-load" potential in support of collaborative problem solving. Human knowledge is the "currency of collaboration". Human knowledge is a natural resource that gets richer the more it is tapped. This paper discusses the processing challenges for and a reference architecture for a Human Knowledge Mining (HKM) system. The paper illustrates how the HKM system can be integrated with traditional information mining systems (often mistakenly equated to knowledge management systems) to create multi-disciplinary collaborations within context-specific problem-solving communities. The goal of the paper is to leave its readers with a starter-kit of "knowledge nuggets" that can be used as a down payment for getting started in the emerging field of human knowledge mining.