I would like to propose interpreting stages of understanding in terms of user's knowledge of the virtues/vices of two approaches to relating things in our search and re-search as we stumble toward knowledge. The two approaches I have in mind are formal (structured/classified) and informal (unstructured/associative). Starting with informal approaches, and moving in the formal direction, relevant behaviors include:

• naming documents, including colon-type or slash-type naming conventions;
• putting documents in piles (e.g., documents on a desktop, or a

computer desktop) tagging objects;

• tagging a document (this used to be possible in MS Word, but I

can't find it in my latest version.) grouping tags (by association);

• tagging a group of documents with the same tag;
• putting a group of documents into a "folder" with a name;
• creating a group of tags (which are associated with a disparate set

of documents);

• defining tags in terms of the kind of document they are used to

identify (classificatory or associative)

• naming a group of tags;
• defining tag group names (associative or classificatory)
• tagging words (relating words semantically) .... this is the stage

I'm working on with the Wordsmyth personal thesaurus for tagging associations among words that are part of someone's personal background or personal interest.

• defining semantic relations among word meanings (associative or

classificatory) And then ...

• finding things that are named by related words

And finally ...

• constructing topic maps

I think the best use case for Topic Maps would be to hide most of these activities and wrap them into a smooth path from naming documents to finding them by association among the words used in the document title.