Accounting is an Area of Knowledge
Monday, February 8, 2021 at 07:34AM
Charlie in Digital Financial Reporting

An Area of Knowledge is a highly organized socially constructed aggregation of shared knowledge for a distinct subject matter.  An area of knowledge has a specialized insider vocabulary, underlying assumptions (axioms, theorems, constraints), and persistent open questions that have not necessarily been resolved (i.e. flexibility is necessary).

The knowledge framework is a device for exploring an areas of knowledge.  Connected knowledge forms knowledge neighborhoods.

All this knowledge can be organized into a human-readable and/or machine-readable knowledge graph. As I have pointed out, XBRL can be used to represent a knowledge graph in both human-readable and machine-readable terms.  Other approaches to representing knowledge exist also such as RDF+OWL+SHACL, Prolog, and graph databases.

Accounting is an area of knowledge.  You can explain aspects of the accounting area of knowledge, such as the nature of a financial report, using a logical theory.  A logical theory can be tested and proven by providing a proof. When all the details are worked out, you have a best practices based proven method.

Here is an easy to understand basic example for personal financial statements.

Welcome to the era of computational professional services and smart regulation!

It is time to properly organize shared accounting knowledge and leverage personal accounting knowledge for profit folks! Welcome to the fourth industrial revolution.

Article originally appeared on XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting (http://xbrl.squarespace.com/).
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