Re: Taxonomies, URN's etc..

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hopefully it's becoming clear that I have about an hour early in the 
morning and then however much is left of me at the end of the day, 
usually not very much, except on Wednesday, which is my HumanML Day.

This post is, like Michael Lacy's yesterday, instructive. HumanML is 
probably larger than any of us can easily wrap our heads around, and 
while the tendency is to try to narrow the overall scope down to 
manageable proportions, I would like to suggest that my own mind is 
changing on that. While I haven't yet abandoned the "We're only here 
to make a metalanguage" position, I am beginning to see that that may 
be vainglorious position. In other words, I would rather not get run 
over by a stampede that may just be inevitable.

We'll see.

1. As for the Passport/DigitalMe arena: HumanML will probably first 
tackle the area of Human Identifiers, including physical 
parameters--for personal medical information--and certification, 
whether as a certifier itself, heaven forbid, or as the arbiter of 
such through the auspices of the only totally non-profit, 
non-proprietary, uncentralized, and also, non-governmental and 
therefore unbiased, in legal terminology, repository of information 
authorized by individuals themselves.

To understand that think of Profiling. Whether creating a profile for 
a Human Object that is the representation of a software agent or an 
actual person, HumanML will have a breadth and depth that allows for 
more areas of information than other database-centric systems created 
primarily for authentication of identity purposes such as Len 
described yesterday. As such HumanML will likely play a role. What 
that role will be is far from clear, but that is certainly an area 
that will deserve some dedicated work.

2. I don't know how far Steven got in going through the new material, 
new as far as the OASIS site is concerned, that Ranjeeth uploaded 
Sunday night. We have asked that those who wish to have their 
thoughts included in deliberations about the areas of Frameworks, 
Domains, Applications, Requirements and Deliverables use the thread 
names suggested and give us their thoughts in that way so that we can 
easily get to them for collecting, considering and archiving.

URI and URN questions, as well as namespace questions are not 
specifically included in that group, although they will come up in 
many. As Manos and Sean and some others investigated yesterday, and 
as Karl Best informed us, we have several options in terms of 
establishing our namespace and the resources structure within which 
our XML Schemata and RDF Schemata will function.

One question which came up was longevity, and I suspect that we need 
to establish ties to as many academic and governmental computer 
installations as possible in order to ensure that our DISTRIBUTED 
repository structure will have a life of its own as long as the 
Internet does at least. Tying ourselves to OASIS or any specific 
industry consortium or group or association, is fraught with the 
typical dangers of business in general and the politics of consortia 
in particular. They are actually fairly stable, but while OASIS is a 
bit of an exception, they tend to be braking mechanisms, serving to 
prolong the shelf life of extant business product.

Ciao,
Rex


At 7:31 AM +0100 8/28/01, s.livingstone@btinternet.com wrote:
>I have been catching up on the emails that have been sent to the 
>group and continually trying grasp firm idea of what we are trying 
>to do.
>
>I was a little confused by some parts (glad i've got my thesaurus 
>here) and some parts really caught my attention. The taxonomy area 
>is where i have decided to try to think about first. One post 
>suggested that HumanML would be an improvement on technologies such 
>as Passport and others suggested Music (i know it was just an 
>example).
>
>What got me was the following two points (initially):
>
>1. Beyond human characteristics and social factors etc..., are we 
>also looking at data that build what we regard as personalization on 
>the web today? I.e. Like Passport or DigitalME etc?? If this is true 
>then i missed this part. I read some stuff like it in the taxnonomy 
>section on the web, so more clarification would be good. This is an 
>exciting part for me if in scope !
>
>2. To what extent has it been detrmined that we will classify 
>domains and taxnonomies? I personally think getting the domains to a 
>satisfactory range would be a great start as taxonomy is a heck of a 
>lot of work; and i belive the it would have to be fully extensible 
>anyway.
>
>I read some stuff about URI's and URN's - in the context of HumanML 
>and in the way i think they mean i thkn we wuld use both. I think 
>URI's will be good for web type resources or information stores, but 
>when you start considering human characterisrtics, URN's I woudl se 
>as useful ??
>
>Anyway, i spent a while reading, so i may have missed the boat 
>somewhere and correct me where necessary.
>
>Off to sleep now |)
>Thanks,
>Steven
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>


-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request