Re: [xtm-wg] Reification

["Nikita Ogievetsky" <nogievet@cogx.com>]

This is a brilliant, Bernard!
Here is my little poetic exercise:

First there was a Topic link...

In the Topic Map land a human author acts as his Topic Map's God.
Originally there exists an ocean of ideas, a universe of souls...
A human author peaks up an idea, that he thinks he needs
and "embodies" it. I.e. gives it a Topic body.
Original idea was unconstrained and transparent, could sneak and lurk :-)
Once the author embodies (incarnates) it, the idea all of a sudden gets its
place and its face
within the authors Topic Map. It now has constraints imposed by the author,
etc.
Other Topics can address (see) it and partisipate in associations
(communicate) with it.

Of course the same "idea" can have different "topic bodies" in different
Topic Maps...
I have to look at Hinduism's reincarnation again... it may start making
sense to me ... :-)))

Bellow are my alternative suggestions for "human to machine" reification:

incarnation
personalizion
materializion
embodyment
emtopoment

Thanks,

Nikita.

-------------------------------------------------------
Nikita Ogievetsky,  Cogitech Inc.
Consultant in XML/XSLT/ink/TopicMaps
nogievet@cogx.com  Phone: (917)406-8734
http://www.cogx.com Cogito Ergo XML



----- Original Message -----
From: univers immedia <universimmedia@wanadoo.fr>
To: <xtm-wg@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [xtm-wg] Reification


> Thanks Dan to confirm "from inside" the RDF viewpoint on that matter.
>
> The proposed formulation seems basically to get agreement from Murray,
Paul
> and Dan,
> but some restrictions from Sam given the "semantic overload" and ambiguity
> of the word,
> not to speak of other ones that the very word of reification seems to make
> fly away with no explicit understandable reasons.
>
> So I'll push the reflection a little further on - only personal viewpoint
> again, for what it's worth.
>
> 1. Both RDF and XTM allow two similar reification processes :
> In RDF : a statement can be reified - creating a new object that can be
> used in higher level statements.
> In XTM : an association can be reified - creating a new topic that can be
> used in higher level associations.
>
> "Mutatis mutandis", a RDF statement carries the same type of semantic
> information than a XTM association does,
> e.g. "Shakespeare's Hamlet was edited and commented by author X in 1987
> under ISBN ..."
> Reification of such a statement/association allows to include it at upper
> level, e.g. "comments of Y in publication Z about this commented edition".
>
> If we stick to this syntactic or system level, and to the above
situations,
> we get parallel and very consistent definitions, and my hunch is
convergent
> efforts should quickly find ways to convert a RDF statement into a XTM
> association and the other way round.
>
> 2. RDF sticks for the moment to the above scope in its definition of
> reification.
> XTM sticks its neck a little further, at least in the conceptual model,
> since not only associations can be reified - through fully implemented
> systematic processes - but "any subject" can be reified ...  even for all
> purposes "any RDF statement".
> Which means that on the ground of "who can reify the other", XTM is
clearly
> the winner so far :)
>
> Anyway we'll certainly have to refine subtypes of reification processes,
> since implemented processes creating RDF reified statements or XTM reified
> associations are basically quite different from the "human authoring"
> process defining a Topic "out of real world", even if the result in the
> system is the same type of object. Maybe, for clarity of vocabulary, and
> the very confusion dangers that Sam pointed out, we should keep the
> "reification" term for any internal system process, and introduce another
> word for the "human to machine" process. Suggestions ?
>
> For those being afraid of this highly risky ground : you don't get rid af
a
> word's ambiguities in getting rid of the word. If a word is semantically
> overloaded or ambiguous, try to sort out its different meanings. That is
> exactly : define scopes for those different meanings. That way, you expand
> knowledge, that is : accuracy of language.
>
> Bernard
>
> ----- Message d'origine -----
> De : Dan Brickley <daniel.brickley@bristol.ac.uk>
> À : <xtm-wg@yahoogroups.com>
> Cc : archive <ontologystream@egroups.com>; David Bromberg
> <dbromberg@acappellasoftware.com>
> Envoyé : dimanche 28 janvier 2001 11:08
> Objet : Re: [xtm-wg] Reification
>
>
> > On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Murray Altheim wrote:
> >
> > > Paul Prueitt wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The defintional phrase:
> > > >
> > > >  "Reification is a process through which a computable/addressable
> object - a
> > > > resource - is created in a system, as a proxy for a non
> > > > computable/addressable object"
> > > >
> > > > is perfect.
> > >
> > > Yes, that seems basically in harmony with what we've discussed within
> > > TopicMaps.Org. The editors are currently following up on our recent
> > > discussions in Paris and hope to add the subject explicitly to our
> > > specification for its next publication. As I mentioned, we'd avoided
> > > it in the past due to the somewhat different concept used in RDF.
> >
> > [an RDF lurker writes...]
> >
> > That also seems broadly consistent with RDF's use of 'reification'
> > to create representations of RDF triples/statements. Perhaps the main
> > difference is that the RDF Model+Syntax spec only talks about the
> reification
> > of RDF statements, and not about people/places/topics etc. One problem
> > we have (for RDF anyway) when trying to articulate a broader notion of
> > reification is then in deciding where we draw the representational line
> between
> > 'computable/addressable' objects and those objects that need to be
> > represented via a proxy / stand-in resource. People don't tend to have
> > URIs; mailboxes do. Physical books don't; whatever-it-is-that-URIs-name
> > do. And so on. If our crititeria for deciding when to call it
> > 'reification' is related to our ability to use a URI name for the object
> > directly, the distinction seems somewhat fragile and
> > time-sensitive. Perhaps that's why RDF sticks with a more restrictive
> > use of the term 'reification', only applying it to the reification of
> > statements.
> >
> > Don't know if this helps, but thought I'd chime in with an RDFish
> > perspective.
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > Dan



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