Pat, (01)
Of course you've spoken in the spirit of criticism. No big deal. (02)
Personally, I think it is admirable that Sowa and others are
addressing language understanding, a broader spectrum of reasoning,
and techniques to make these scale logarithmically. The semantic web
is an important line of development, but its current goals are hardly
the last word. The sweet spot for semantic web technology today is
linked data and infrastructure plumbing. For these opportunities there
is usually more than one computing approach can be taken. The burden
of proof is on semantic web advocates to show its relative business
value -- which can be done, depending on application characteristics. (03)
The real driver for semantic solutions are applications where the
ontologies are dynamic, rather than relatively fixed. IARPA's
Blackbook 2 for intelligence analysts comes to mind. Some dynamic
infrastructure, information, process, and/or decision-making
applications can be solved with semantic web technologies as we
currently see them. However, semantic processing at scale remains a
challenge for current semantic web approaches. More to the point,
categories of problem exist that require knowledge representation that
is beyond description logic. Similarly, there are types and
combinations of reasoning needed that similarly are beyond the ken of
current semantic web technologies. (04)
Let's embrace the semantic web for what it can do, and keep an open
mind for more powerful and enabling technologies that will be needed
as we move forward to the next internet. (05)
Mills (06)
BTW, thanks for the reference to MindCite. (07)
On Feb 1, 2009, at 10:43 PM, Pat Hayes wrote: (08)
>
> On Feb 1, 2009, at 1:55 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> ... his standard, and by now getting rather repetitive, passionate and
> almost comically biassed diatribe against RDF and OWL and XML and
> anything to do with the Semantic Web. Of course, his small company is
> free to adopt the operational strategy which suits them best. From
> what I know of VivoMind, their core business does not appear to be
> closely related to the goals of the SWeb. However, other small (and
> some large) companies appear to disagree with him about RDF . As one
> example, take a look at MindCite.
>
> I point this out not in a spirit of criticism but only to provide some
> reassurance to those who might find SW technology of interest. As on
> a number of other topics, John's views are both idiosyncratic and very
> starkly stated, admitting of very little discussion or debate. I am
> not particularly fond of OWL myself, but to attribute all uses of it
> to pointy-haired bosses who have drunk the kool-aid is misleading, and
> indeed something of an insult to a large number of very smart people
> of my acquaintance.
>
> Pat
>
>
>
>
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