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

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

Murray

Also feel like SWAG is the kind of things of my 20's - more way off in the
past than your's I'm afraid ;-)
I sent them some comments/questions about their intended total lack of
process rules  - Re : "we are all a bunch of joyful friends, let's change
the world bla bla bla ..." does not make sense. A group needs rules hmm ...
we've been through that lately, haven't we ? But as far as I understand,
they don't intend any form of universality or authoritative ontology. Just
one more tool. Maybe some of them are not completely aware of the fact it's
*only a tool*. BTW : is everybody aware in XTM community that XTM is *only
a tool* ?

Anyway : If by some miracle this thing comes to the point to be an
effective and stable process, it may be one of these *many* ontologies
useful to refer to for subject indicators. It's funny anyway you quote Cyc
to be "non-universal". Glad to hear that, because I've been considering so
far universality was its very purpose, since "encyclopaedia" means
litteraly "grasping the whole of knowledge". Maybe I should have a closer
look into it for second thoughts, or maybe they should change their name,
otherwise they keep at risk of being merged with *real* totalitarian
ontological attempts under the "encyclopaedia" name, out of basename
merging constraint ;-)

About fuzzyness (fuzziness?) of ontologies. I have another view : (good)
ontologies are pretty accurate *in their scope*. Change scope, change
ontology. What we badly need is tools to operate that change in a
meaningful way, that is signposts warning : "We're crossing a semantical
boarder and pass to another attractor, please fasten seat belts and be
prepared to change of words' meaning". Fuzzyness should be limited to these
boarder areas.

Keep working on your French ... certainEment  :o)

Cheers

Bernard

---------------------------------------
Bernard Vatant
bernard@universimmedia.com
www.universimmedia.com
"Building Knowledge"
---------------------------------------

----- Message d'origine -----
De : Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>
À : <xtm-wg@egroups.com>
Envoyé : mercredi 24 janvier 2001 19:46
Objet : Re: [xtm-wg] Tr: Semantic Web Agreement Group


> 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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