Re: Base Schema-Address and Re: [humanmarkup-comment] [humanmarkup TC]Assorted meeting notes - from Rob

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi, I thought I would acknowledge that I received this and as with my
last previous reply to Len some hours ago, I will have to get to this
tomorrow morning, although to be honest, it will be more like Friday
morning. I don't know if it is my email client, Eudora or my
settings, but I have trouble understanding where each indent was
meant to be for organizational purposes. So if it is possible to get
your work in an out-of-context word processing file as an attachment,
it would help me. That way I would know where you put the idents and
line breaks as opposed to where Eudora put them. I could read it and
then put it back into context. If not, I will just make do.

I remember way  back when I was in school, it seemed like I could
just blow through those insane reading lists and it all just
magically stuck. Now I have to have my mind clear and ready, then
carefully read through it all. Ponder it, and boy am I ponderous
these days. Then I can discuss it.

I will catch up eventually.

Ciao,
Rex

At 1:56 PM -0600 5/20/02, cognite@zianet.com wrote:
>Intro.
>
>Now the HumanML committee has moved [from "phase 0", discussion] into
>the stage of actual schema design for HumanML.
>
>Thus saith Rob Nixon:
>
>At 11:38 AM 19-05-2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>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
>...>speak in the
>>languages of physics, mathematics, and systems sciences,
>...
>>  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:
>>
>... [marvelous exposition, q.v., referred to in part below]....
>
>Per Rex Brooks and Ranjeeth Thunga's guidance, we've begun jointly
>re-working through the caderie of possible terms for HumanML. Today in
>our conferenced telephone meeting note was taken that since our problem
>is handling the "human" which is invariably also contextual, a shallow
>list of terms such as suitable for some other markup endeavors is
>patently insufficient. How, then, to proceed to bring contextualization
>into our base of primaries (cf. primitives)?
>
>The following analysis of the first term under discussion, ADDRESS, sets
>it up as RELATIONAL, with CONTEXT CONDITIONS.
>
>It turns out to be amazingly consonant with Rob Nixon's concurrent
>discussion of the second term, ARTIFACT.
>
>Rob's point j) describes how an ARTIFACT is "manufactured" ... "out of
>the knowledge and information field of the individual or the group". His
>points g) and h), speaking of 'trajectories' zooming "through the
>knowledge and experience 'space' of the individual perceiver" [who is,
>themself,] "a node in a cultural and social network...with (feedback
>loops) interconnecting the artifact nodes and beliefs) among the
>interacting individuals" propose the interesting idea of "momentum"
>within a dynamic net.
>
>When an ADDRESS is a special case of an ARTIFACT, as I'd opined in our
>phone meeting, Rob's description of ARTIFACTs in terms of nets are thus
>illustrated by the concrete "semantic-net-portions" for ADDRESS set out
>below.  Elaboration on contextualizable nets follows, and then some
>questions to work from.
>
>
>comments re humanML base schema term or "region" of meaning:
>
>			c. by author:  S. Candelaria de Ram, 15 May
>2002
>--------------------
>contents:
>	0. Intro
>		dialog, point of departure
>		TOC
>		bridge
>	I. analysis for ADDRESS, working term currently under discussion
>		working notes
>			REF, sample current apps' "address records"
>
>convention for expressing context in [processing] rule by using x
>----/C ----> y
>
>			generalities extracted
>
>contact method ---/situational conditioning
>---> contact location specifier(s)
>
>referror [signifior] ----/situation including current ROLES
>----> reference NAME(s) or DESCRIPTION(s) [sign/symbol]  [of REFERENT,
>signifie']
>
>			discussion points, A B C
>				pan-culture
>				agency of processes
>				ADDRESS as special case of next term ARTIFACT
>	II. general theory for implementation (of contextualized
>relational nets)
>		approach background, dependency graphs
>		REFs, hetnets, ghetnets [grounded] heterogeneous
>nets, v. semantic nets
>	III.  Schema Design, development questions, A - H...
>		(nature and interrelation of HumanML PRIMARIES and SECONDARIES;
>		ancillaries; uniformity/content-direction issues)
>
>--------------------
>
>The following analysis is open for plenty of discussion.  The questions
>in the last section particularly are directed toward large-scope issues
>of design for making a COHERENT SCHEME.
>
>================
>I. analysis for ADDRESS, working term currently under discussion
>
>working notes:
>
>	REFERENCE for comparisons: Dan Conolly's
>	www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/pim/contact.n3
>	which discusses MS vcard, MSOutlookContacts.n3, q.v.
>
>	convention:  / for in-condition-of or CONTEXT specification, as
>		used in linguistic rules like this:
>			PRONOUN.demonstrative --> these / near & plural
>
>				this / near & singular
>
>			  those / far & plural
>
>			   that / far & singular
>		These conditionals may be formulated alternatively,
>for instance
>		as logic rules or equivalently as nodes/links in a
>reasoner net..
>
>
>	generalities extracted:
>
>		contact method ---/situational conditioning --->
>contact location specifier(s)
>
>			e.g., computer browser ---/connectivity etc.
>...---> website address
>
>	as domain name or IP number and optional directory location
>				Note implicit action from computers
>on both sides.
>			e.g., postal mail ----/situational
>conditioning ----> postal address
>				Note implicit actions from matrix
>culture and service agents on both sides;
>				multiple postal addresses (office,
>home, vacation home) and contact
>methods usable for
>				different times, relations between
>communicants (interlocutors).
>			e.g., shank's mares ----/situational
>conditioning ----> geophysical
>access provisions and landmarks
>				Note relevance in some conditions,
>agency involved both sides.
>
>		referror [signifior] ----/situation including current
>ROLES ---->
>reference NAME(s) or DESCRIPTION(s) [sign/symbol]  [of REFERENT, signifie']
>
>			e.g., names such as first-name, ..., last-name
>			e.g., role names such as Mom, Sir
>			e.g., email alias
>
>	discussion points:
>
>A.	The generalities might be treated as PRIMARY/BASE/1o terms. They are
>pretty much
>pan-culture.
>
>The examples given (with "e.g.,") are specific to certain situations
>of use or application.  Logically, that would push them to SECONDARY,
>application-specific -- or maybe [partially] SHARED-by-secondaries?
>(Cf. the shared portions of gcc and other software suites.)
>
>
>B.	Process is involved in utilizing ADDRESS; application for communication
>therefore renders it neither solely noun nor verb. Whereas a node alone
>is non-relational, THESE DESCRIPTIONS ARE RELATIONAL, AND
>CONTEXT-CONDITIONED.  The "contact location" portion is the ADDRESS.
>AGENCY is implicit in its functional significance.  An ADDRESS can't be
>an address unless it is interpreted in real-world activity (NB
>logicians) as a location for contacting [somebody].  Process in this case
>requires agency.
>
>Is it correct that mutuality enters in here in all cases, or not?
>
>
>C.	related working term:  ARTIFACT
>
>comment: A particular ADDRESS is an [instance of an] ARTIFACT. ADDRESS is a
>kind of
>ARTIFACT (cf. ISA, AKO, subclass). In having to do with significant
>(maybe even purposive) activity it differs from being a plain location.
>It has co-operative significance: That "human" social property ;).
>
>================
>II. general theory for implementation
>
>A. As noted above, this analysis of sets a term such as ADDRESS
>up as RELATIONAL, with CONTEXT CONDITIONS.
>
>That seems to be what we need. Whether this is necessarily
>Object-Oriented is not clear, but it certainly would seem to be
>codifiable using contextual reasoning representable as traversal of
>enhanced nets or dependency graphs. ("Net traversal" is a way of looking
>at proof sequences, though the proofs need not be in classical logic,
>obviously.)
>
>B. -- No doubt this approach is being influenced by prior work on things
>like the "hetnets" that were developed just for such problems. (Hetnets
>have heterogeneous links; grounded hetnet Systems are "ghetnets".)
>Hetnets, for example, have been used for [reasoners] reasoning from a
>mixture of knowledge and beliefs and thus employing typed links such as
>strict/defeasible.
>
>[The most accessible reference is probably this one on hetnets:
>
>Ballim, Afzal, Sylvia Candelaria de Ram, and Dan Fass. 1990. Reasoning
>using Inheritance from a Mixture of Knowledge and Beliefs.
>Lecture Notes in Computer Science series No. 444 (Lecture Notes in
>Artificial Intelligence sub-series). Springer-Verlag, Berlin & NY.]
>
>The most relevant is in process of conversion to HTML from troff -ms,
>which is turning out to be non-trivial.  But in the meantime I've
>recovered a Postscript version that can be posted at
>cognitionandcommunication.cognizor.com which for some hours you
>have to get to thru:
>
>http://cognizor.com/CogYCom/index.html
>
>Candelaria de Ram, Sylvia. 1990. Belief/Knowledge Dependency Graphs with
>Sensory Groundings. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on
>Artificial Intelligence Applications of Engineering Design and
>Manufacturing in Industrialized and Developing Countries. Instituto
>Tecnol6gico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico.
>
>NOTE FIGURE 3 in the latter article, which depicts how a complex of
>support steps can be viewed as a whole.  (It is a node incorporating
>both a conclusion and its proof steps. The proof depends on the
>combination rules that link the current state to antecedent values.)
>This shows how a single HumanML term, with its internal structure,
>can be context-bound.
>
>A term, seen as a ghetnet node, is sort of like a deep cross-section
>taken at some point of perspective in a net. The types of things used to
>derive a current value (the affecting conditions of the designated time
>at the time of evaluation -- a process) are comprehended within the
>term. Their inter-relations are expressed by "rules" or "constraints" in
>a reasoner.
>
>In analogy, a physics equation describes certain inter-relations among
>parameters, where those parameters can have ranges of values. (A
>constant has a fixed value; temperature has a starting point and more or
>less continuous values; etc.) The parameters may get evaluated at some
>point on some dimension(s). ( -- We want to do that too, to mark "human"
>states.) In particular situations, there may be values or families of
>values on one or more parameters -- like a ground-voltage on a metal
>cylinder, or for humanML, like a social group's frame of reference:
>"Boundary conditions" is the well-worn descriptor for these in physics.
>By the way, in treating the range of humanML at this point, parameters
>cannot be presumed to be orthogonal (independent of each other).
>
>If the structure of a ghetnet changes, it's different than if the values
>of the conditions do. For instance, the concept of ADDRESS has recently
>expanded to include email addresses. But if the system rules change
>so different kinds of ghetnets will be generated, this is a SYSTEM META-LEVEL
>change.
>
>For real life, the time of evaluation is NOW, whenever that is.  We
>can re-analyze situations with past (or future) DESIGNATED dates ok,
>but are constrained to current evaluation.
>
>In Rob's example where a meta-processor in 2002 is figuring out a book
>accession number for a book in pseudo-1930, even if the clock is wrong,
>the time of evaluation is still NOW, isn't it? So the accession number
>dates from NOW and is not a 1930 date, but rather an attributed
>meta-processor-provenience-PROPERTY with a [dual] timestamp. Sort of
>like our need to tell kids what is imaginary and what's not. In a
>simulation world, plain dates and subsequently-attributed dates are
>still plain attributed-properties. The
>critical distinction would seem to be that there is REAL time and
>attributed time; REAL time is GROUNDED to -- real time.  We're not
>making it up.  It runs on its own.
>
>Rob's idea of "momentum" is not developed in the ghetnet work I did
>earlier, and "might could oughta" be a next step.... It appears to be a
>very powerful concept.
>
>So the "prior cultural experience" has its effect, I guess!
>================
>III.  Schema Design, development questions:
>
>A.  Is this contextualized relation kind of structure indeed what we need
>for humanML?
>
>B.  Will other terms have similar contextualized relation form?
>
>C.  Is this the proper level for PRIMARIES?  Are we trying to make them
>pan-culture ("culture-free", universal)?  If so, does this do it?
>
>D.  Does anybody have any example(s) that would tell what level(s) might
>be appropriate for SECONDARIES?  Didn't we say sometime that they would
>differ according to their application purposes and might have
>derivatives themselves?
>
>E.  What about this idea of a SHARED pool of [optional] parameters suitable
>for purposes like transitions that take up PRIMARIES for use in
>[more specific]
>SECONDARIES or ...?  In what ways do these differ from the GLOBAL
>attributes mentioned in today's discussion, and/or are they the same?
>
>F.  Will SECONDARIES use the PRIMARIES' [contextualized relation] form?
>Will all SECONDARIES use the it?
>
>G.  Are there other forms that will also apply?  Or are TERM DEFINITIONS
>uniformly of the same form?  Is this affected by their implementation?
>Should form(s) be according to HumanML "rule"?  Per demands of
>[SECONDARY] domain?
>
>H.  hundreds more probably...but that's ok, as the mission of humanML
>is directed toward elaboration!
>
>SC
>
>Thus saith Rob:
>
>At 11:38 AM 19-05-2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>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 “naïve” 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------------
>>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>>manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>
>>
>>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>


--