Re: [xtm-wg] Tr: Semantic Web Agreement Group

[Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>]

John Robert Gardner wrote:
> 
> Ditto Jack Park, and . . .
> 
> This may well be an unforgivable observation, but I'm assuming in naming the
> group they _intended_ to pun on the other thing for which SWAG is an [apt?]
> acronym: Stupid, Wild-Assed Guess . . .

You'd think that, but I'm not seeing any indication on their site of any
humour in the name. They seem to take themselves pretty seriously. This
is the kind of youthful idealism I gave up in my twenties. Well, maybe not.

> in due curiosity, not derision,

One of the reasons I'm interested and happy to work with the Cyc ontology
is it's very clear to me, based on writings on the site such as "Hal's 
Legacy", as well as hearing Doug's keynote last August in Montreal, that 
the intention of Cyc is not to make available a *universal* ontology,
furthermore that such a thing is impossible; the variety of human 
experience is far too wide to be captured in a single place. As Steve 
Newcomb has said many times, such a thing would be coercive. The Topic
Map concept is an attempt to provide an egalitarian approach to KM, such
that the posting of one ontology would be simply that: one among many.
The mappings between them will be challenging, but within the technology.

Any organization that attempts to force all of our knowledge into one
mold should be under suspicion of either being dangerously naive or  
megalomaniacal, no offense intended (although I suppose this is not to 
be avoided). There are linguistic, cultural, temporal, and a variety of 
other differences that would seem to obviate any such universality.

I prefer to think of all ontologies as fuzzy, though not in the George
Bush concept of fuzzy. One of the things I've been considering is a 
way to map fuzziness (sort of like a confidence level) in XTM, but so 
far my ideas are themselves fuzzy (though again, not in the George Bush
sense).

Murray

PS. We had Clinton redefining "is" and George W. redefining "fuzzy." Why
can't our politicians leave the territory of meaning alone? Yes, I know...
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim                            <mailto:altheim&#x40;eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, Inc., MS MPK17-102, 1601 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu

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