RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-channel

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Scope is a good point. There are factors in any environment which 
affect communications, and that is the context question. So 
information that is not necessarily part of an intentional 
communications session (including unintentional messages), may 
nevertheless have an impact. How that information is received by a 
human or agent and what that information does to the human or agent 
needs to be accounted for. That's the reasoning behind my suggestion 
for sensoryChannel, which absorbs any information available.

So, a communicationChannel is the output channel for transmitting signals.

An example where a sensoryChannel was at play while a 
communicationChanell was operating, was the chat I had going with 
Ranjeeth, while the WTC was collapsing. It had a major effect and we 
discussed it while it was happening, but it was not in and of itself 
a communication to us, though it could be argued that it was a form 
of communication apart from our chat. However, the point is that it 
affected us and our communication.

I admit it is not necessary to put these elements into the base 
schema since they can be simply derived as abstractions from the 
abstract channel element itself. However, while the aim may be to 
keep the base as small as we can, we have this entire spectrum of 
elements which will be used across a multiplicity of secondary 
schemata, and I think it would just be helpful to have a common 
element or set of elements for those so that we can avoid the 
problems of proliferation of possibly conflicting vocabularies in 
secondary schemata that use common elements and needing a secondary 
base schema to cover those so that they are consistent across 
secondary Human Markup Schemata.

I would like to keep the base as small as we can, but if it leads to 
conflicts, it won't be much use.

However, I am quite willing to be led by a consensus on this.

Ciao,
Rex

At 8:10 AM -0500 6/4/02, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>If the scope of HumanML is human communication, sensoryChannel
>describes the means of a human receiving information.
>
>What is the purpose of communicationChannel?  What I wish to
>avoid is opening a very very very large abstraction that
>subsumes all manner of communication.
>
>Channel may be sufficient.
>
>len
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]
>
>
>a sensoryChannel would be a conduit for input information into a
>human object, i.e. an instantiation of the human element
>
>a communicationChannel would be a conduit of message-bearing energy
>
>a signal would be message-bearing energy (which we will still revisit
>in order when we get there, realising that it may be further refined
>by that time.)
>
>While it would be possible to derive these from channel as it is
>written in the straw man, I think it would necessitate a third level
>of abstraction as a secondary base schema, so to speak, so what I
>propose is that we take the time to define some basic, if derived,
>elements to avoid a secondary base schema just for these top level
>derivations. I do think that these distinctions will turn up for many
>of our singular base elements.


--