RE: [humanmarkup-comment] [humanmarkup TC] Assorted meeting notes -from Rob

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Doing this quick so not enough time to be simple.  I'm 
not enthralled with "verbs" in XML Schemas.   They don't 
belong there.  On the other hand, nouns created by an 
XML Schema do have to participate in relationships and 
verbs as business rules, etc., certainly have to be 
considered.  I guess I see schemas almost like property 
sheets; just data objects.

First, be sure these topics can diffentiate a data standard 
from a system specification.  If we mix up these levels, we 
will never emerge.   XML is strictly a naming system that 
includes a structural means to organize names. Insofar as 
verbs can be named, they can be XMLized, but the object model 
of XML is not very good when it comes to doing things like 
DAGs.  So artifacts as "nodes in a network" is a description 
more amenable to RDF possibly.

1.  Meaning, semantic.  Is always assigned regardless of 
time.  It is always system specific, or view specific.

2.  A system may have a cultural description the currency 
of which may correspond to some shared data values but 
this is not required nor explicitly a norm.   That is, 
the context of human communication is always personal, 
or more to the point, rooted to individuals.

3.  An artifact may be a sign or a symbol.  It is 
not a signal except insofar as it is an interruption 
in an observer's view.  One might say it acts in that 
context initially, but I'm not sure that is very useful.  
An artifact is a noun.  It may be a property of some 
process.  (really, an artifact is just a way to group 
a set of non-random assemblies of substances that 
are made by humans.  The term is very vague but was 
put there to include things such as jewelry, clothing, 
etc.).

4.  Building a state machine description of a communication 
is fine.  Choice of choices with rules operating over each 
transition.  Again, not very XML and possibly not very 
relevant to the schema except insofar as the schema describes 
the names and structures of messages/state representations 
passed among nodes in the network.  Differentiate intelligent 
choices (choice of choices:  a well-defined process operates 
over the selection) from interpretable acts, or simple 
observables (we know this person did this, but we cannot 
name the rules of the process, only inspect the outputs 
at some declared set of transitions).

5.  Because meaning is always "assigned", time is a context 
property important to interpretation where interpretation 
requires a view definition.   No argument there. 

Time is independent of instantiation insofar as identity 
based on type is concerned.   Apriori use of a class such 
as book does not infer a place in time, just a set of 
properties for the classification.  Yes, it is important 
not to create "effects from the future" as a side effect 
of instantiation.  Nothing should prohibit it as a kind 
of artifice (time machine novels are what they are).  Time 
itself, is just "previous" and "next" if we deal with 
it linearly.  Time affects instancing based on type if 
the type, not the instance, has evolved and that evolution 
is time-ordered for the purpose of identifying it.  It is 
possible to timestamp an event, classify it as a type of 
incident, and move on to other forms of interpreted 
classification.  For example, an observable or 
reportable event is recorded, an incident declared that 
requires a response (eg, call for service), and later, 
that incident is classified as say, a type of cultural 
act (eg, a crime type, murder, rape, etc.)

6.  Yes.  Addresses if physical addresses have a couple 
of descriptions of value.  Typically, they should be a 
name coordinate system (and there are lots of these; 
compare British city/street/dwelling addresses to 
American addresses for similar constructs) mapped to 
a geoLocation coordinate system.  They have histories 
but these depend on the object associated with the 
address.  For example, people who have lived at an 
address, businesses that occupied that address, materials 
that might be found at that address, etc.  These are 
often tied to alerting systems.   So again, we need 
the context of the view (why is this object a member 
of this set), to discover which history is of interest.

len
  




-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Nixon [mailto:rnixon@qdyn.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 11:39 AM
To: Rex Brooks
Cc: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org;
humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [humanmarkup-comment] [humanmarkup TC] Assorted meeting notes -
from Rob


Hello everyone, sorry for the delay.

Here are a few notes related to the discussion we had during our monthly
HumanML Technical Committee conference call on the 15th.  Many of these
are my thoughts on the subjects discussed, so any "naive" thoughts on the
topics at hand are entirely my responsibility.   I tend to speak in the
languages of physics, mathematics, and systems sciences, so I'm sure that
there are other more appropriate ways to present this material.  There
are also overlaps with the concepts underlying the semantic web approach.

These notes are not meant to send us wildly off course, but rather to
make sure that we have explored our assumptions.

1). ARTIFACTS:

a) The "meaning" assigned to an artifact can change over time.

b) The derived meaning at any given time is associated with the cultural
framework in which it is considered.

c) There can be many parallel (in time) meanings assigned to an artifact,
with each meaning deriving from different cultural (or group) frameworks.

d) It's possible that an Artifact can act as more than a noun in that an
Artifact can act (and I would argue almost always act) as a "signal"
within the perceptual field of the perceiver.

e) As an overly simplistic model, Artifacts can be thought of as the
nodes of a network, with beliefs acting as the connections between the
nodes.  Clusters of these nodes and connections, can be thought of as
context, with the entire network viewed as the knowledge and experience
of the individual perceiver.

f) By treating each network as a surface(of arbitrary dimension) we can
add time into the model as a series of  stacked surfaces with the
"artifact" nodes connected to their corresponding nodes in the surface
"beneath".  The evolution of the meaning of the "Artifacts" over time can
be viewed as a series of vectors, where these vectors may fork, continue
through, or dead end ( as the artifacts may separate into multiple
artifacts upon examination, remain consistent, or actually be lost in the
physical or in memory).  This process can be viewed as a type of Cellular
Automata (CA).

g) These connected series of vectors can be thought of as a trajectory
through the knowledge and experience "space" of the individual
perceiver.  You will also find that there is a type of "momentum"
associated with these trajectories as groups of related "artifacts" and
the connecting beliefs about those artifacts reinforce each other.   It
takes more to shift the perspectives (in relation to the artifacts) as
time goes on if they have been reinforced.

h) It should also be understood that each individual perceiver can be
viewed as a node in a cultural and social network (which is hierarchical
in nature)  with (feedback loops) interconnecting the artifact nodes (
and beliefs ) among the interacting individuals.

i) Artifacts can also act as a pointer to a series of Metaphors, or in
and of itself act as a "Metaphoric" node.

j) In essence a (manufactured) Artifact can also be viewed as the
"condensation" of "meaning" out of the knowledge and information field of
the individual or the group.

k) It is also important to understand that when we are dealing with
"Artifacts" (objects) within Virtual Simulations, the concept of linear
time and cause and effect can no longer be viewed as it has been
traditionally.

If for example I am running a series of simultaneous "Simulations" each
based on a specific time period ( i.e.  1920, 1930, 1940, 1970, 1993,
2002) and I share an (Artifact - a book, a building, a coin) "object"
among them (that contains "Static Data Members", "Static Member
Functions" ) I will run into a problem with potential cause and effect if
we use a simple linear view of time.

The following example should highlight the problem:

If for instance my six simulations utilize a class of object called
"Book", each of the six simulations will contain their own object
"instantiations" of the book class.  You can think of the "Book Class" as
the Archetype of a Book, and each instantiation of the Book Archetype in
each simulation as the "physical manifestation" of the Book Archetype.
In this sense each of the books in the six different simulated periods
have no relation to each other (other than "Bookness") and therefore can
not effect each other.  However, if we include data and functions called
"Static Data Members" or "Static Member Functions" in our Book Class (
Archetype ), then we create a link between ALL instantiations of books in
ALL simulations.

The reason for this is that the Static Data Members and Functions are
associated with the CLASS and not the individual book objects in each
simulation.  So if we had (for what ever reason) static data members
called "Highest Catalogue Number" and "Date Assigned" which were used to
assign the next instantiated books catalogue number in any given
simulation,  all books everywhere in all simulations would access that
"Highest Catalogue Number".   Here is the problem,  let us say for the
sake of argument that when we start our six simultaneous simulations (
ie. Boston - 1920,1930, 1940, 1970, 1993, and 2002 ) that it just so
happens that the first "book" object is instantiated in the 1970
simulation.  The catalogue number "1" is assigned to that book instance,
and the date of "April 5, 1970" is recorded in the Static Data member
called "Date Assigned".

Now it just so happens that since the start of our six simulations the
next instantiation of a book occurs in the 1930 simulation.  The local
simulation sees that there has already been one book assigned, and so it
updates the "Highest Catalogue Number"  to 2.  What it discovers however
is that from it's (the particular simulations perspective) the first book
was assigned 40 years in it's future, so in effect, it has experienced
and effect from the future.  A simple time stamping of events in this
case would lead to chaos and confusion.  Now if we update the Date
Assigned for this second instantiated book to Feb 23, 1930, from the
perspective of the 1970 simulation it has just had it's past changed by
something occurring in the 1930 simulation.

This again is only meant as a simple example of my point.  The goal hear
is not to pick apart the example or to say that no one would ever do
this, or that this would simply be a bug, or to justify that these
effects as being in entirely different times lines.  I am trying to point
out that there can be non-linear, a-temporal effects in simulations and
we must at least consider this as we discuss "artifacts" and "knowledge",
and "meaning".

The concept of time in this venue (and I would argue our own) can only be
viewed as a series of events and not as a single linear sequence we tend
to think of it as.  It would also be possible to set up a series of
complex feedback loops that would involve interactions between the 1930
and 1970 simulations that would be hard if not impossible to explain from
the perspective of VR characters in each of those simulations.

From the perspective of the VR characters, knowledge from the future
would be mysterious and unexplainable.  And from the perspective of the
VR Quantum Theorist, experiencing the bizarre effect of having  the
results of a previously carried out experiment apparently fall into line
with information only more recently taken into count suddenly becomes
understandable.

If our VR simulations are going to model our own weird "experience" they
must incorporate mechanisms of this nature, and therefor require us to at
least explore these concepts as we define a useful XML HumanML dialect.

The previous points have been greatly simplified for clarity ( I hope ).
The goal of the previous points have been to illustrate that the concept
of an "Artifact" as a simple noun is insufficient.   I believe that
rather than viewing an (artifact)/"Signal" as an interruption in a static
field (as was discussed during the meeting), that they should be viewed
as semi-recurrent / semi-stable dynamic "processes" (or eddies) in a
fluid field (where "fluid" describes a dynamic network structure.)

Regarding:

2. ADDRESSES ( as well as many other attributes )

We must allow for multiple concurrent addresses, as well as a historical
list or tree of address ( again as we move forward and backward ) in time
related to VR simulations (leaving out our non-linear time effects
previously discussed).

Again, these are all only points to consider.

Rob




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