Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation is the systems discipline of encoding what a system knows into a form that the system can manipulate, reason about, and communicate. It is the bridge between information and action: a database schema, an ontology, a logical formalism, or a neural network embedding.

The framing question is whether representation is a mirror of reality or a tool for coordination. The frame problem in epistemology suggests that any representation is necessarily partial: it captures what the designer thought to represent, not what the world actually contains. This makes knowledge representation a political act as much as a technical one. The choice of what to represent and how to represent it determines what the system can see, what it can do, and what it cannot imagine.