''Getting the axiomatic ontologies in place _is_ the great task remaining
before us. But this Forum and I have the same problem -- we all talk
about it instead of doing it. ;-)'' (01)
This is the devil work to do, from my humble experience. This most
challenging task for human minds means to create the axiomatic scheme of the
universe. Whar demands no more no less but 'robust' knowledge in fundamental
ontology, pure mathematics, fundamental sciences, information science and
computer science. Besides, you need to overcome the doubt of the innumerable
specialists overnumbering the generalists, very rare phenomenon in our
overspecialized world. Again, no funding organization is willing to fund
some knowledge field, however great and revolutionary, which is out of the
established classification of sciences. The dramatic irony is here that the
ontology, material and formal, gives a core knowledge of the universe, thus
allowing the global classification schemes, while kept aside as an ugly
duckling. Even if you manage to perforate as some inderdisciplinary
research, you can encounter another pisser, now insurmountable difficulty:
wanting the proper experts and reviewers in fundamental ontology and
regional ontologies and ontology engineering. Considering, if you somehow
pull off in this heroic but thankless intelligent deed, creating a
consistent axiomatic ontology of things in the world, than you will sure
become an immortal being.
Cheers,
Azamat Abdoullaev (02)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Barkmeyer" <edbark@xxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Web shortcomings [was Re: ANN:
GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce] (03)
> Ron Wheeler wrote:
>> I am not sure about the value of picking winners and losers.
>
> Well, if you don't, you spend more than half the funding on proposals
> and meetings and position papers and events like the Summit, none of
> which are _results_.
>
>> I think that too much focus is on words and not enough on software
>> engineering.
>>
>> What I want are better tools for building applications that are based on
>> the concepts behind the semantic web.
>
> I think this means "I'm not that interested in finding documents; I want
> decision support tools based on inferencing."
>
>> I would be happy if there were applications that actually could allow a
>> SME to easily describe the relationships between things and tools that
>> would let application developers build user friendly applications that
>> could draw reasonable conclusions based on the relationships.
>
> IMHO, that application of AI technologies is almost unrelated to the
> intent of the Semantic Web. And it seems to me that this is what
> "knowledge engineering" vintage 1990 was about -- decision support. So
> I would prefer not to confuse the Semantic Web with other applications
> of AI. (Others would no doubt prefer to confuse them, so as to enhance
> their probability of getting funding.)
>
> And the supporting AI technologies themselves are not so far advanced
> since 1990. (I'm not convinced that description logics are a great leap
> forward for anything other than information searches.) What we do have
> now is machines that are 200 times faster with searchable memories that
> are 1000 times larger, and that enables AI technologies that were
> impractical in 1990 to become useful for real decision support tools.
>
>> I would like a tool that will make it easy to build simulations and
>> serious games based on simple scenarios added to a base ontology that
>> describes a fair amount of the universe.
>
> And there lies the problem -- the technology is useless without the
> information base.
>
> But whose job is it to build the model of a fair amount of the universe?
> No one gets a Ph.D. for axiomatizing accepted knowledge, unless s/he
> does so in a way that demonstrates some unusual reasoning capability,
> which means that it can't be used by the commonly used reasoners. We
> prefer to grant Ph.D.s for even more technology that is useless because
> there is no information base.
>
> You can start with Pease's SUO or the Cyc SUO, but those are models of
> the universe from 50000 feet, which are not directly useful for any kind
> of decision support. And if you take any two efforts at useful derived
> ontologies, they are likely to be inconsistent with each other.
>
> Getting the axiomatic ontologies in place _is_ the great task remaining
> before us. But this Forum and I have the same problem -- we all talk
> about it instead of doing it. ;-)
>
> -Ed
>
> --
> Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> National Institute of Standards & Technology
> Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694
>
> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
> and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
>
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