Fwd: Re: [humanmarkup-comment] Outreach

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Volker,

I couldn't find your email in my archives, but Rob Nixon, who is 
chairing our Subcommittee on Artifical Intelligence and Virtual 
Reality, did, including your post on race and your reference to Luigi 
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, which Len Bullard and I both referenced in later 
messages.

I am including all of these posts in this message to remind everyone 
of the interconnectedness, and the limitations of some of the trusted 
servants (me) of this effort. Well Mea Culpa, but the points are:

1) we need to recruit some anthropologists for the task of beginning 
to collect the requirements the Human Markup Language will need to 
address in order to create accurate culturalModules--collections of 
characteristics which describe human cultures past and present.

2) we need more participation by a wider community than we currently 
have in order to pull in diverse interests which can bring to our 
attention areas of human endeavor that we are missing.

3) we need to stimulate more discussion in addition to the 
discussions we need to pursue for the focused goals and objectives we 
are now actually working on.

Ciao,
Rex


>X-From_: rnixon@qdyn.com  Sat Oct 27 09:59:28 2001
>Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 12:01:52 -0500
>From: Rob Nixon <rnixon@qdyn.com>
>Organization: Quantum Dynamics International, Inc.
>X-Accept-Language: en
>To: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
>Subject: Re: [humanmarkup-comment] Outreach
>
>Here you go Rex
>
>Volker Hamann
>arthide@magicvillage.de
>
>To whom it may concern.
>
>HumanML: "The aim is to enhance the fidelity of human communication."
>
>Since i am an anthropologist who often handles html and some other
>codes, i can imagine, your HumanML undertaking is meant as a
>subversive joke. At least the use of 'race' in a draft from your
>websites (see the relevant cut of code below) indicates, you want to
>say that the in oasis involved US companies still record workers and
>employees as black, red, white halfblood or quarterblood. Code lists
>with values for jewish and half jewish?
>
>Scientifically, genetically, anthropologically, zoologically the idea
>of different human races cannot be prooved. Read Luigi Luca
>Cavalli-Sforza (Genetics, Stanford), to understand why humankind is
>not divided into races. Humans are one race among the races of
>hominides.
>
>You may find opponents to this scientific teaching. However, a
>language which aims to be as universal as possible, if i take your
>motto above for better than Brave New World, should not be decorated
>with race ideology, this way or that way. Better leave it out now
>immediately.
>
>The present realisation of the idea of HumanML also in deeper and more
>complex philosophical aspects needs to be criticized from all possible
>sides, to effect its design radically.
>
>Volker Hamann
>
>   The height and weight types should be numbers but have to allow for
>different measurement systems
>   </xhtml:p>
>
>- <xhtml:p>
>   <xhtml:strong>NOTE:</xhtml:strong>
>   The race, hair color, eyeColor, build attributes need code lists for
>values
>   </xhtml:p>
>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>
>
>
>
>
>Rex Brooks wrote:
>
>>  Hi Everyone,
>>
>>  I have been searching my email archives, to no avail for the name and
>>  email address of a gentleman who wrote a few times a month or more
>>  ago. He was the only actual anthropologist, by trade so to speak who
>>  has written to these lists and has since  been quiet. If anyone has
>>  his name, or if he happens to be lurking, I would like to get in
>>  touch with him. As I have been harping on and on, we are now in the
>>  requirements-gathering phase or stage of our work, and it always gets
>>  quiet when people go off to do intensive work on their own, but we
>>  need to keep the discussion fires burning, without indulging in
>>  flames for their own sake, of course, to stretch a metaphor. So what
>  > I would like to do is to get a slightly less formal effort going to
>>  reach out for more participation, and in particular I would like to
>>  start gathering in some anthropologists for the eventual tasks of
>>  creating accurate culturalModules.
>>
>>  If you can help, we would all be the richer for it.
>>
>>  Ciao,
>>  Rex
>>  --
>>  Rex Brooks
>>  GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
>>  W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
>>  Email: rexb@starbourne.com
>>  Tel: 510-849-2309
>>  Fax: By Request
>>
>>  ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>  To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>  > manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>


-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request