Re: [humanmarkup-comment] Re: HumanMarkup: Paved With Good Intentions

[Kurt Cagle <kurt@kurtcagle.net>]

While we're in chest beating mode here

> However, one of the points raised is that HumanMarkup continues to develop
> tags such as "<happy>". Let's call it the "HappyTag syndrome", shall we?
> Perhaps we can single people out that use HappyTags by calling them
> happytagists, and put them on a happytagist blacklist :-) O.K., perhaps
> not, but I think that the problem does need to be addressed.

I wrote a couple of days ago (my ISP was down yesterday so my apology for
not getting back to any of you sooner on this) an xlink:def construct for
dealing with what is likely to be a recurrent problem, the fact that because
of separate domains we will need to have different schema constructs
associated with specific elements. It is an unconventional use of schema
(I'm fully aware of that), and perhaps I should have used something like
xsi:type here or resolved to a separate namespace (both of which are also
valid approaches) but the point that I was trying to make was that we should
reasonably be including some mechanism for changing schemata on a per
element basis.

However, I'm in agreement with Sean here on the <happy> tag issue itself (I
needed a tag and that was the one Len had most recently mentioned). Emotive
states are very difficult to quantify save in their effects, especially
since its not simply a matter of setting a position on a dial for the happy
emoticon. At the same time, it is worthwhile to consider "happy" from a VR
standpoint as being a labelled configuration consisting of specific actions:
In the avatar *Mara*, happy may mean that the avatar smiles, while in the
avatar *Erdlap 327* it may mean that the reticulator coil turns red and the
sensor module begins bouncing. What I'm trying to say is that we cannot (a
point I've felt for some time) encode emotive states directly, since they
are larger scale collectives of actions (happy is a verb).

On the other issue of endless wrangling and publishing, Sean, none of us are
exactly swimming in time here. I'm writing a book and have about ten
articles I need to get done before the end of this month, not even counting
the work I'm doing for HumanML. I agree that the publishing schedule is
wildly optimistic, and to be honest I should be the one considering
resigning for lack of time. I'm not though, even though I may be at least a
part of the bottleneck; the times are such right now that a slow, steady
progression of ideas may be more significant than lightning fast work.

-- Kurt