[xtm-wg] GPS : unique thought strikes back ?

["Bernard Vatant" <b.vatant@wanadoo.fr>]

I'm amazed and somehow afraid to see the persistence of "global" and
"universal" metaphors.
The "GPS for the Web" is bound to be, as far as I understand it, the
marketing line for XTM.
I would like to say again, even it's too late, why I found it
unsustainable, both from technical  and philosophical viewpoints.

Apart from the fact it forgets the applications outside the Web, as already
pointed at, this image tends to carry the conception that the Web is some
metric space (i.e. where you can define such a thing as a "distance"
between "points") in which one could define some absolute coordinates
system where every point  would have a definite position, and that XTM will
give tools to do that.
This conception is obviously wrong, given the multidimensional, elusive and
moving nature of the Web.
We got therefore a tagline that is technically unsustainable, which
undangers the credibility of the concept among "techies".

Lurking behind the metaphor is a somehow more pernicious trap, the same one
can find in such projects as Open Directory, SUO, CYC etc ... that there
could be a *universal* or *global* frame for knowledge representation, and
of course *we* have found The Tool to achieve this Paradigm, Graal,
Philosophical Stone, Theory of Everything, Universal Ontology ... Gads! I
hope this "unique thought" conception is not really in the mind background
of people here. If it's the case anyway, just count me out : I had
understood that the real strength of TM was to allow different views on the
same universe, and that the line I'll keep communicate on with newbies. I
imagine various TM representations of my mountains here : a geophysical
map, a cultural historical map, an economic map, a touristic map, a
wildlife map, a sportive map ... each carrying its own concepts, view of
the world and organization of the same sharable information chunks ... and
each with its own metric (if any) and coordinates for any objet.
There is more in it I guess than 44°35' N - 06°30' E

Should not  the term have been so overloaded, "style sheets for knowledge"
was not that bad after all.
At least, it shows the capacity of TM to manage the diversity of viewpoints
and presentations, an important feature we've lost with GPS. Too bad ...
Hope we won't get stuck forever in any metaphor anyway ...






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