Hi Cory, (01)
It's a new culture. It will be encouraged and enabled by working more
gracefully and being compently built faster, more accurately with free
means of expression for creative people like music composers, research
scientists, artists and mathematicians to perfect it. This culture,
unlike all previous versions, is world wide being created and
documented by both people and machines - so we don't know what to
compare it to or know where its going next. (02)
Formalizing the concepts is already being done in multiple ways - but
- how can, or how does, the life of a formal set of ontology
specifications start with a stable, constantly updating, baseline? Is
there a regular process of elimination to start a
project/documentation effort? (03)
In the old fashioned deeply rooted field of building architecture, we
start every single project with a set of master specifications (word
documents in folders) and drawing sheets comprised of currently
approved details and sheets that are required for local codes. After
that, every single line, symbol, sign, mark and word on the drawings
is the responsability of the project architect. Where John Sowa state
the chief designer has to understand the whole problem, we have +/-10
people responsible for the same task. (04)
We want to limit the investigations and inventions of a busy or young
project architect. They are not allowed to start from scratch every
time. Many times our specs and details excede the requirements of
industry that they may hastily find online. If our standards excede
the requirements of the owner we change them. but if they fit their
budget and philosophy, we can have everything we know works together
and relax because the building will be sound. (05)
Standards as I see them are always changing. We start every single
project with a full menu of approved words, lines, shapes, sheets,
section numbers and titles. The first step is getting rid of
everything that is not part of this project. The beginning documents
are blocky and barely hold together, but they are reliable and will
keep you out of court. Elegance and beauty in the exection is easier
when you're not reinventing the foundations, details and transitions.
I hope this is how lower level ontology can be or are built also. (06)
How do you start to write a formal ontology? Ignoring funding, what
kinds of documents are equivelent to what old school developers call
"the front end"? (07)
Debbie (08)
On 2/23/07, Cory Casanave <cory-c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Debbie,
> Marketing hype aside I am very encouraged by the "web 2.0" style of
> community involvement. If we see our knowledge base as a community
> resource that evolves with the participation of all the stakeholders and
> as it does so captures, refines and expands their knowledge - we have
> that humanistic coloring book you seem to be calling for. If we can
> then ground that community resource, wherever possible, in well founded
> theory we can start to bring together the hard-edges of formal methods
> with wide-scale involvement. One thing we have been working on lately
> is trying to express architectures more in this way - like a resource
> and, sometimes, like a "wiki" that is part of the communities body of
> knowledge. We can sometimes get caught up in our notations and theories
> and in doing so obscure the essential information.
>
> One thing I have learned about languages and tools is that they are not
> sufficient, they need to be seeded with well developed starting places
> and parts that can be used, refined and integrated. This is the
> attraction of resources like Cyc, Dolce or Wordnet - we don't have to
> start from a blank page. Add to this the body of knowledge in
> architectures, models and domain ontologies and we have a lot to draw
> from - a very rich heritage. Unfortunately the resources are very tied
> to their formalism and not so easily reused across that boundary.
>
> Perhaps we need to find a way to focus on the concepts (as understood by
> real people) that are then formalized in multiple ways, rather than
> assuming life starts with a particular logic/model/theory/design?
>
> Perhaps this also suggests contracting and design is less of a
> "procedure" and more of a culture? How can we encourage and enable that
> culture?
>
> -Cory
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Deborah
> MacPherson
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 5:31 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] vague wish lists VS formal specifications
>
> Every single one of these reasons below is driving my own vague wish for
> a standardized contracting and design procedure.
>
> What if the chief designer is out sick for a month?
>
> It can be difficult and tedious to fill in blanks and answer questions
> outside your area of expertise but its better for users to go through
> some anxiety before the engineers start designing/specifying.
>
> Just a guess and I could be wrong, but maybe everyone is starting out
> with blank sheets and arguing about the same words again every time.
> It needs to be more like a coloring book/dictionary - some lines, nodes,
> and definitions already in place.
>
> Debbie
>
> On 2/23/07, Cory Casanave <cory-c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I going to take position that may get me in real trouble on this list;
>
> > The need to embrace vague wish lists.
> >
> > I have a vague wish: I wish users would state their requirements more
> > precisely. I could even state this as a policy or requirement. Such
> > vague requirements can cause contracts to be paid or not or could land
>
> > you in jail. Of course to the person stating the "wish", it is clear.
> > It has an intent. It may have authority.
> >
> > There are multiple things we can do with such wishes; a) We can state
>
> > them more precisely (Regardless of the language used to do so). B) We
> > can create derivative statements (E.G. If you are going to state
> > requirements better you need to be able to express yourself precisely
> > in some language). C) We can design tests to see if the wish is being
>
> > fulfilled and D) We can create designs proposing to fulfill the wish.
> >
> > In all cases the additional information is with respect to the Vague
> > wish - it is still the speech act that, in the speakers mind, started
> > all this derivative work. This this "fact", as fuzzy as it may be, is
>
> > a crucial part of the linage developed in various formalisms or
> designs.
> > We can't loose this linage or the intent of the speaker in the context
>
> > from which it is stated. So vague wishes have to be integrated as
> > part of the knowledge base and our formal models traceable to them.
> > Hopefully our formal expressions can be interpreted in such a way that
>
> > they speak to the originator such that they can say "Yes, that is
> > exactly what I intended to say - thank you for restating it so well".
> >
> > If our formal expressions can't be interpreted by the casual user as a
>
> > better re-statement of their intent we have no feedback loop -
> > ontologies CAN NOT be buried in the depths of an application, they are
>
> > front-and-center expressions of our knowledge about a domain and can
> > only succeed where they can, at lease, be understood by the domain
> > expert. (I don't mean read in the raw form, any kind of presentation
> > is just fine). To be really useful the domain expert should be able
> > to MAKE statements that are fully precise - because architecture and
> > design is a participatory sport, the more who participate the better.
>
> > So our methods & tools have to help them here, to assist in the
> > process of precise statement.
> >
> > This is not to say there is no room for the professional, there is
> > always room for the great designer who can suck it all in and produce
> > the great result. There is also always room for the expert able to
> > take a vague statement and make it precise (in any language, from law
> > to FOL). But these experts are there to aid in the process, not be
> > the process - so our tools and methods have to embrace the casual user
>
> > and vague statements and help capture these and then more fully
> > develop and refine them to be more precise and to impact the designs
> > that will realize them.
> >
> > So part of the point is that such core intent, no matter how poorly
> > expressed, are the statements that we are refining, formalizing and
> > creating designs to satisfy. The vague wishes are part of the
> > knowledge base. To the person making the statement, all the logics,
> > modeling languages and other formalisms are just tools to capture what
>
> > they were saying all along.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Deborah
> > MacPherson
> > Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 3:41 PM
> > To: [ontolog-forum]
> > Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] vague wish lists VS formal specifications
> >
> > There are probably very few really good chief designers then.
> >
> > Debbie
> >
> > On 2/23/07, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Debbie,
> > >
> > > Yes, but it's necessary to know why the user must participate:
> > >
> > > > I ... want to emphasize the point is to have the end user >
> > > participate in the design process.
> > >
> > > The users' participation is essential to educate the chief designer,
>
> > > who must fully understand the problem.
> > >
> > > The users can never discover all the details of what might be
> > > possible
> >
> > > unless they become technologists -- and in most cases, that is not
> > > practical. Therefore, the chief designer must learn from the user
> > > (without prefiltering by managers, planners, and requirements
> > > surveys).
> > >
> > > John
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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> > >
> >
> >
> > --
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> > Deborah MacPherson
> > www.accuracyandaesthetics.com
> > www.deborahmacpherson.com
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> Deborah MacPherson
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> (09)
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