Saturday, February 07, 2009 6:51 PM, John wrote:
The group has the *potential* to
> do something important, but there are many email groups like this
> one that have had good participants, but very little *observable* results. (01)
I don't know any other email groups, capable to meet so hard issue as
building the standard ontological scheme. (02)
JS: One thing that facilitates the transfer of ideas into action is *money*.
Again, don't think this makes an ultimate obstacle in moving the project.
Here, in EU, there are many ontological projects, promising to deliver a
sort of standard, and getting multimillion funding. Regardless the quality,
the groups concerned show the ability of organization and determination. And
thanks for the link, funny reading. (03)
Azamat (04)
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Is there something I missed? (05)
> Ron and Azamat,
>
> It's important to have an appropriate balance between talk and action.
>
> RW> It appears that there is very little enthusiasm for real work here.
> > Endless arguments around the edges of each topic seem to be the
> > flavour of the month. There is very little interest is highlighting
> > areas of agreement except to buttress some argument against someone
> > else's ideas.
>
> I sympathize with that complaint.
>
> AA> ... the Forum happened to collect most advanced minds in the
> > sphere of ontology and ontology engineering. With high
> > organization, the Group can solve most challenging tasks,
> > delivering outstanding products.
>
> I agree with the word 'can'. The group has the *potential* to
> do something important, but there are many email groups like this
> one that have had good participants, but very little *observable*
> results. I emphasized the word 'observable', because many ideas
> that people learn from a book, university, or discussion group
> may eventually be transformed into action.
>
> One thing that facilitates the transfer of ideas into action is
> *money*. An enlightened manager with sufficient funding can often
> transform good ideas into outstanding products. But misguided
> managers can produce disasters. And to protect the guilty, I
> won't cite some cases where the same manager pushed a good idea
> to a brilliant success, was promoted to a more powerful position,
> and later pushed some bad ideas to disaster.
>
> AA> In many Russian village, you may find places where few local
> > senior women, babushkas, sit all day talking about nothing.
> > The content and the purpose are of little importance. What is
> > important, the act of exchanging rumors, anecdotes, and gossips,
> > the process of conversation. Usually, these closed country fora
> > led by gabbiest babushkas, full of trivial news.
>
> I don't want to defend everything that the babushki discuss, but
> there have been sociological studies that show the importance of
> seemingly trivial gossip. If you type "gossip sociology" to Google,
> you'll get over a million hits. Following is the first one:
>
> http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19960701-000035.html
> The real slant on gossip
>
> Some excerpts below.
>
> If you just read the published literature, you can gather a great
> deal of important detail that has been well reviewed and edited.
> But you also get a lot of mediocre writing that was reviewed,
> considered moderately acceptable, and never proved to be useful.
>
> But there are several important things you don't get:
>
> 1. Detailed debate that evaluates the ideas and provides personal
> experience about how those ideas worked out in practice.
>
> 2. Disasters, which the people involved almost never want to
> publish and the people who were not involved seldom have
> enough information to analyze and explain.
>
> 3. Guidelines about how to act in similar situations and which
> people to trust, collaborate with, or avoid.
>
> The babushki are ruthless in stating their opinions about all
> such issues that affect their daily lives. Many of those issues
> may be trivial on a grand scale, but they can be critical for
> their village or neighborhood.
>
> We have had a lot of useful "gossip" and information on this list,
> but I agree with Ron that we need to develop a more effective
> way to transfer the good ideas into action.
>
> John
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Focuses on the benefits from gossiping. Gossip in newspaper columns;
> Primary function of gossip; Gossip among preteens. INSET: The high-
> tech grapevine....
>
> "For a real understanding of our social environment, gossip is
> essential," agrees Jack Levin, Ph.D., professor of sociology and
> criminology at Boston's Northeastern University and coauthor of
> _Gossip: The Inside Scoop_. "Its primary function is to help us
> make social comparisons...."
>
> In the more than two dozen on-line rumors Bordia looked at for study of
> how rumors are transmitted via computer, he found that "conversations"
> have a typical pattern: First, they're tentatively introduced,
> generating, a flurry of requests for information. Next, facts and
> personal experiences get shared and the group tries to verify the
> rumor's veracity. Finally, the group breaks up or moves on to another
> topic.
>
> C. Lee Harrington, a professor of sociology at Miami University in
> Ohio, who's conducted her own cybergossip survey, concurs. She says chat
> room enthusiasts, like ordinary gossipers, "attempt to establish the
> veracity of the information they're sharing through references to
> outside sources. They rely on secondary sources, refer to personal
> knowledge and relationships, or, as is the case with entertainment
> gossip, claim to have direct connections to it, accounting for their
> 'inside information.'"
>
>
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