Re: [xtm-wg] Suggested recommendations for Subject Indicators choice

["univers immedia" <universimmedia@wanadoo.fr>]

Jack

Thank you for seconding. I don't follow you anyway on the ground that it
would be somehow in the scope of TopicMaps.Org Charter to build and/or
maintain any ontology, for at least four reasons.
1. You know how I'm *very* reluctant about the notion of *universal*
ontology.
2. Second we are far from having enough human, technical, financial
resources to engage in such a task.
3. There are already many such things around, Cyc, SUO, etc ... and their
very multiplicity will hopefully save us from any universality pretention
from any of them.
4. Topic Maps paradigm needs to be, as I understand it, as
"ontology-neutral" as possible. What semantics are carried by the
conceptual model and the very words used in the syntax is enough - and
maybe already too much to ensure complete neutrality.

OTOH, we could somehow - with not that much work - maintain general
archives of existing authoritative ontologies, on the basis of their
expertise, width and/or depth of scope, and stability (stable URLs or URIs
are a very crucial point), but with no comment about their "semantic
validity".

Bernard

----- Message d'origine -----
De : Jack Park <jackpark@verticalnet.com>
À : <xtm-wg@egroups.com>
Envoyé : lundi 22 janvier 2001 17:34
Objet : Re: [xtm-wg] Suggested recommendations for Subject Indicators
choice


I am most pleased that this topic of discussion came along.  As a brief
response, given that I could not be in Paris to partake of such an
interesting discussion, let me comment that it would seem a reasonable
contribution to the Web in general that XTM somehow become involved in the
creation and maintenance of an archive of public subjects -- a kind of
universal ontology, perhaps.

I tend to believe that concepts, themselves, are not best represented as
points in space.  A dictionary, for example, often has more than one
definition or usage for a given word.  Rather, I suspect that concepts are
akin to basins of attraction such that situation, context, past experience,
and so forth all play a role in the disambiguation of words we use.  Why
mention this in the context of an archive of public subjects?  Perhaps it
is
because I suspect that such an archive will necessarily be a bit more
sophisticated than just URIs of named subjects.  How so? I have no idea.

Jack



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