Knowledge Acquisition : The current position

Ten years ago it was stated that "...one of the greatest bottlenecks ... has been eliciting and programming new pieces of information... the theory does not exist in any sort of comprehensive codified form" (Buchanan et al, 1969). By 1983, the field had moved on so that one book could describe itself as marking "... the adolescence of a major new area of science and the birth of a new industry: knowledge engineering" (Hayes-Roth et al, 1983). At this time, "Forearmed with dire tales of the difficulties in store for them, knowledge engineers could be forgiven for embarking on the task of soliciting knowledge with all the optimism of a security interrogator extracting a confession from a diehard terrorist" (Cullen and Bryman, 1988). In this context several researchers attempted to identify a single "magical technique" which could be used to perform knowledge acquisition in all situations. Although some even claimed to have identified it they are generally assumed to be misguided.