Ontology: data, intention, information, knowledge
The model has four ontological layers, each derivable from the layers below given the appropriate inputs.
Data is the substrate — events, recorded, immutable, append-only. Not objective in the view-from-nowhere sense: every event has an emitter, and the substrate is the perspective-laden record of past emissions. The objectivity that's available is weaker and more honest — any qualified observer can in principle re-engage the same recorded events, but they're never engaging neutral data.
Intention is a vector originating at a perspective-point. It has direction (what it is about), magnitude (how strongly it points), and origin (whose perspective). It has no view from nowhere; every intention-vector starts at a located perspective.
Information is what happens when intention-vectors interact with the data substrate. The same data engaged by different intentions produces different information. This is the layer where what something means lives.
Knowledge is the relationship between a perspective and the information it has produced through intentional engagement with data. Knowledge is not a stored thing; it is a relationship state.
Stated formally:
K = experience(P, I) where I = project(Q, F | P)
A perspective P (itself a function of trajectory through time) formulates an intention-query Q which projects the data field F into an information shape I, and knowledge is the experiential engagement of that perspective with that information shape.
Knowledge bases are misnomers
A consequence worth stating up front: knowledge bases are misnomers. The system stores data and traces of past intentional acts (recorded questions, notes, decisions, which themselves become further data). It does not store knowledge. It enables knowledge to be produced when engaged from a particular perspective. The "knowledge" of a knowledge base is always potential, never actual, until activated by a perspective.
The system's job is never to be right about what something means — meaning is not in the system. Its job is to faithfully represent data, faithfully record intentions, and faithfully compute projections such that perspectives engaging with those projections are well-equipped to produce knowledge.
None of the pages that follow can claim the system knows. They describe the conditions under which knowledge is produced.