Atthestartofthe21stcentury, wearenowwellonthewaytowardsaknowled- intensive society, in which knowledge plays ever more important roles. Thus, research interest should inevitably shift from information to knowledge, with the problems of building, organizing, maintaining and utilizing knowledge - coming centralissues in a wide varietyof ?elds. The 21stCentury COE program "Framework for Systematization and Application of Large-scale Knowledge - sources (COE-LKR)" conducted by the Tokyo Institute of Technology is one of several early attempts worldwide to address these important issues. Inspired...