OntologWiki: ChristopherSpottiswoode/OntologyChemistry WorkingDraft

Difference (from revision 39 to 40)

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''The gradually-growing form of ChristopherSpottiswoode's'' ... {nid 2Z72}

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As set out on 2011_10_18 at on http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit/Suggestions, the suggested theme or topic is: {nid 2Z76}

As set out on 2011_10_18 on http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit/Suggestions, the suggested theme or topic is: {nid 2Z76}

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* To start bootstrapping a new ecosystem built using a new ontology-based paradigm for Internet-based Information System architecting, engineering and delivery. {nid 2Z77}

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The suggested process is: {nid 2Z78}

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* To implement that bootstrap and connect it to the open market, the Ontolog Community might consider adopting, refining, concisely specifying and issuing under its own banner what it might choose to label ''The Grand Challenge of Ontology Chemistry''. Ontology Summit 2012 might be an excellent occasion for finalizing and issuing the Challenge. {nid 2Z79}

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* ChristopherSpottiswoode is starting a series of posts to the Ontolog Forum addressing some of the many aspects of the proposal. He hopes that Community critique and involvement will lead firstly to more relevant and adequate coverage of the issues, and in due course to the organization and execution of the Challenge. {nid 2Z7B}

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The suggested kind of people we should engage: {nid 2Z7C}

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* We would need an organization to mount and run the Challenge. As background, study the excellent presentation for Ontology Summit 2011 (see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_24) by the X PRIZE Foundation's Christopher Frangione: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2011/2011-03-24_Grand-Challenges/Revolution-Through-Competition_X-PRIZE_--EileenBartholomew-ChristopherFrangione_20110324.pptx. {nid 2Z7D}

• We would need an organization to mount and run the Challenge. As background, study the excellent presentation for Ontology Summit 2011 (see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_24) by the X PRIZE Foundation's Christopher Frangione: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2011/2011-03-24_Grand-Challenges/Revolution-Through-Competition_X-PRIZE_--EileenBartholomew-ChristopherFrangione_20110324.pptx. {nid 2Z7D}

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= Preamble {nid 2Z7E} =

= Some confidently foreseeable outcomes {nid 2ZWS} =

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The full project whose next steps are seriously presented here as a Grand Challenge candidate is a proposition of enormous intended impact. But a first glance may well leave it seeming mind-boggling in its ambition, its pretentiousness, its sheer folly. {nid 2Z7F}

Ontology will take centre stage in the design and deployment of all networked applications. {nid 2ZWT}

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By contrast it has been playing merely peripheral roles up till now. But the advance will accord with the expectations and gut feelings of ontologists. Your instincts and skills will more fully come into their own. {nid 2ZWU}

On the other hand, the effect on Software Engineering will be dramatic and revolutionary, with large-scale displacement of techniques, renewal of applications and advances into new domains of application. {nid 2ZWV}

Fortunately, such change will be welcomed, in due course by almost all concerned, as a move towards a more natural simplicity. It is not change that repels, but confusion. {nid 2ZWW}

This page indicates how those impacts will derive directly from building on the connection between abstraction and communication (The abstract is what communicating partners, or different times for the same person, have in common). Rational data federation will be implicit. Relevant information, however complex the situation, will more easily be brought to bear on whatever the matter in hand. {nid 2ZWX}

Not surprisingly therefore, beyond the mere technology of it, the effects on life and society will be profound. {nid 2ZWY}

In a nutshell, by properly grasping the nettle of complexity we shall collectively exploit it better, to the many-dimensioned enrichment of all. {nid 2ZWZ}

= Some notes of caution obviously need sounding {nid 2Z7E} =

The full project whose next steps are seriously presented here as a Grand Challenge candidate is clearly a proposition of enormous intended impact. But a first glance may well leave it seeming mind-boggling in its ambition, its pretentiousness, its sheer folly. {nid 2Z7F}

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So one major objective in these pages is to convince you that the project is feasible, with the envisaged Ontolog Community-managed steps even within a practical Grand Challenge timeframe. {nid 2Z7H}

So one major objective in these pages is to convince you that the project is both desirable and feasible, with the envisaged Ontolog Community-managed steps even within a practical Grand Challenge timeframe. {nid 2Z7H}

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At the same time I shall try to convey to what extent both the project's proposed ''modus operandi'' and its targeted outcome should also embody, and even strongly reinforce and augment, the checks and balances civilization has evolved against the rightly-feared human tendencies partly confessed-to above. {nid 2Z7I}

At the same time I shall try to convey to what extent the full project's very ''modus operandi'', in an ongoing way, should strongly reinforce and augment the checks and balances that nature and civilization have evolved against the rightly-feared human tendencies partly confessed-to above. {nid 2Z7I}

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Thus there is a paradoxically-compatible combination of new paradigm with ancient wisdom, of revolution and evolution, of hope and realism, of enthusiasm and caution, that is captured in the long-standing slogan for the full project: '''"Ride The Mainstream!"''' {nid 2Z7J}

Thus, and in many other ways too, there is a paradoxically-compatible combination of new paradigm with ancient wisdom, of revolution and evolution, of hope and realism, of enthusiasm and caution, that is captured in the long-standing slogan for the full project: '''"Ride The Mainstream!"''' {nid 2Z7J}

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'''Step 1:''' The Ontolog Community thrashes out the issues as set out here (on the wiki for continual updating), maybe with one or more F2F workshops, and decides whether to proceed with the evolving plan. (Timing: by end 2011?) Then if so: {nid 2Z7L}

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'''Step 2:''' An Ontolog Community-derived team further defines and organizes, locates funds (leveraging the USPs such as those still only introduced at http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2011-10/msg00160.html#nid044, with soundbites and elevator pitches still to be gathered on this wiki), then mounts, launches and executes the Grand Challenge. (Timing: launch or some earlier clear stage at Ontology Summit 2012?) {nid 2Z7M}

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The outcome would be a starter "Application Operating System" (AOS) able to function as qualitatively-better hosting platform or environment for carefully-chosen initial kinds of Internet-based application. Those kinds will include the further diversification and evolution of the AOS itself, notably in its own architecture-canonical collaborative or social-network mode. A short timeframe may be envisaged, thanks to the Challenge product / AOS boot product's fully architecture-canonical ontology-based design. (Timing: 1 further year, with review at Ontology Summit 2013?) {nid 2Z7N}

The outcome would be a programmed product, an "Application Operating System" (AOS), able to function as qualitatively-better development environment and hosting platform for carefully-chosen initial kinds of Internet-based application. Those kinds will include the further diversification and evolution of the AOS itself, notably in its own architecture-canonical collaborative or social-network mode. {nid 2ZX0}

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This Step 2 is the "tightly circumscribed project" introduced at the beginning of http://TheMainstream.info, the home page of a rather old and very incomplete website on the project involved here. {nid 2Z7O}

A short timeframe may be envisaged, thanks to two key factors: {nid 2ZX1}

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* At this stage the AOS is merely a "Boot" or "Seed" product, to bootstrap or generate the growth foreseen as Step 3; and {nid 2ZX2}
* Even the Boot AOS has a fully architecture-canonical and ontology-based design. {nid 2Z7N}

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The evolving and burgeoning ecosystem now well established in the Internet wild continues as a fully democratic and self-managed universal marketplace, now targeting ''all'' Internet-based applications. (Timing: into the future, with ever more variations of the AOS, always interoperable.) {nid 2Z7Q}

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= An outline of the AOS, its requirements, and resulting ecosystem {nid 2Z7R} =

'''Step 3:''' The simpler and more natural way of working within the new ecosystem rapidly attracts ever more users. They bootstrap the ever fuller new ecosystem into ever more application domains, and with ever more extensive creation and evolution of compatible new techniques. Since that will also apply to the AOS itself as well as to an ever-growing component market, that growth could be truly exponential for the foreseeable future. {nid 2Z7P}

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The evolving and burgeoning ecosystem now well established in the Internet wild continues as a fully democratic and self-managed universal marketplace, now targeting ''all'' Internet-based applications. (Timing: ongoing.) {nid 2Z7Q}

= An introduction to the AOS {nid 2Z7R} =

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But the AOS has functionality far beyond those simple agent roles. Implicit in the mention of the "data at its disposal" it is also a DBMS, and more specifically a Factbase manager. The maintenance of data consistency is another basic AOS function, with many implications such as user dialog and UI management, both local and remote. {nid 2Z7W}

But the AOS has functionality far beyond those simple agent roles. As we shall see shortly, implicit in the mention of the "data at its disposal" it is also a DBMS, and more specifically a Factbase manager. The maintenance of data consistency is another basic AOS function, with many implications such as user dialog and UI management, both local and remote. {nid 2Z7W}

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More details will be added once further introduction has been added as posts to the Ontolog Forum. {nid 2Z7Y}

The entire design finds great support in this recent statement by Dan Brickley as reported at http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_12_01#nid2ZTD : {nid 2ZX3}

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= A note on the organization of further information on the subject here on the Ontolog wiki {nid 2Z7Z} =

: danbri: on the 'do we need rdf' question, .... we see two trends: (1) people who use RDF, find frustration with the fiddly details of the spec (datatypes, etc.). Perhaps such things are just inherently annoying. There needs to be a rule, but the rule is arbitrary. (2) people who don't use RDF explicitly, often drift towards a data model that is very RDF-like, because RDF didn't appear from nowhere. Graph-shaped data is a very common pattern (cf. Kingsley on EAV). Hence all recent talk on 'social graph', 'interest graph', etc. {nid 2ZX4}

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This page (and future pages below it) will be reserved for hopefully concise specifications of the AOS and the Ontology Chemistry architecture with a view to the mooted Grand Challenge. {nid 2Z80}

The common accessibility of graph-shaped data was a major consideration in the technical design from its very inception in 1987 (as related at http://jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/SpottBioComp.html#Y1987. You could also follow that year's link re "context" for further background very relevant here). {nid 2ZX5}

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Each time there is a significant change to this page there will be a post to the Forum introducing it, perhaps with sometimes extensive introductory material which would otherwise clutter up the specifications here. {nid 2Z81}

But except for toy problems data graphs - and of course the information they reflect - have a habit of becoming spaghetti pictures. The pattern followed here for simplifying that complexity according to user-relevance is to contextualize it, or organize it in terms of some meaningful conception of 'context'. {nid 2ZX6}

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Each of the first few (at least) of those Forum posts will be in one of the 3 threads whose opening posts were linked to at the top of this page. Each thread indicates a theme that will continually recur as the whole picture is gradually pencilled-in, and will hopefully help focus discussion in the thread on constructive filling-out and refinement of the specifications on and below this page. {nid 2Z82}

But as Pat Hayes rightly insisted here (http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2008-01/msg00385.html), 'context' has to be defined in such a way that dumb computer programs can interpret it usefully and reliably. That definition is one of the objectives of the following section. {nid 2ZX7}

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Thus the first Forum post in that line was in the 'What's "Ontology Chemistry"?' thread. It is now archived at http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2011-11/msg00127.html. It pursued the Chemistry metaphor by painting a picture of certain key features of the AOS' function in the life of a user. It revolved mainly around the Ontology Chemistry view of "context", a central concept in the entire architecture but still to be defined precisely in a technically-implementable way. That precise definition will be started in a coming post to the "foundation and method" thread. {nid 2Z83}

Any consensus emerging as we proceed, on either content or approach, will then be pruned to a minimal form and transferred to this more permanent and hopefully still concise record. That will be very dependent on your input, both as to the technicalities and as to whatever chords the introductory themes might strike with you the readers. So your input on all such matters will be eagerly sought as we proceed. {nid 2Z84}

= The AOS in action (and outline specification of the Challenge target product) {nid 2ZX8} =

ChristopherSpottiswoode/OntologyChemistry WorkingDraft

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