My difficulty with just waiting until some "large and economically important
community of practice" evolves is, that on the basis of the experience of
the past fifteen years, this process could take several decades, or longer.
If here is any truth to the estimate that lack of semantic interoperability
costs the country $100 billion per year in lost productivity, then it
appears to me to be foolishness to let a few trillion dollars of losses
accumulate rather than to attack the problem directly by creating that
"community of practice" by funding its creation. That is the essence of the
proposal that we fund a consortium of 100 or so participants who will
develop, and then test in their own applications, some foundation ontology
suitable to all of them. The sooner such a community does develop, the
sooner the benefits of a common ontology can begin to be felt. (01)
One might argue with the estimate of losses due to semantic interoperability
- fine, let us try to arrive at an estimate we can believe in. One can also
argue about the likelihood of any given proposal of solving the problem.
Fine with that too. But since the costs are economical, a rational
discussion should include a cost-benefit analysis. Here's one try:
Cost of lack of semantic interoperability: assume 100 billion per year
(0.7% of GDP)
Portion of that cost that could be reduced by a common foundation
ontology: 1/5 (20 billion per year) - the remaining 80% would be the costs
of that associated software that uses the ontology to implement the semantic
interoperability.
Assume probability that any given *plausible* proposal will actually
create the needed foundation ontology: 10%
Result: average value of a plausible project to tackle the problem: 0.1 x
20 B = $2 billion dollars per year.
This assumes very conservatively that there will be *no* benefit accruing
from any new applications, merely the benefit or retrofitting existing
applications.
Assume that a rational businessman would be pleased with a return of 100%
per year on investment:
Result: it is worth spending 2 billion to solve the problem.
This means that it is rational to invest $30 million each on 60
different projects to try to solve the problem, with these conservative
estimates. My modest suggested project is only one such; it would be
rational to try that one, as well as many others. Reduce the benefit
estimates by another factor of ten to accommodate extreme skepticism, and it
is still cost-effective to fund at least 6 such projects. (02)
The problem is that the losses due to inefficiency do not show up as a
line item on managers' budgets, whereas the cost of a project to save those
losses does. We know from much sad experience how difficult it is to get
anyone in a political position to take action to avoid problems, rather than
merely react to problems after they become strikingly obvious to the most
casual observer - and even then one can get unanimous opposition from a
political party to steps needed to address the problem. (03)
It seems that many people are content to accept large ongoing losses if
they can't be convinced by incontrovertible evidence of some high
probability of success for a project to solve the problem. My own view is
that, if one takes a cost/benefit view of the issue, even a project which
seems of modest likelihood for success should be supported when the
projected benefits are very large. (04)
Waiting is not cost-effective. Why lose all that time? Perhaps one might
consider that the USA is in competition with other nations - Europe now,
India and China probably soon. Should we really be content to be a
backwater in ontology technology and let other nations get the jump on us?
$30 million is 10 cents for each person in this country. It is 1/10,000th
of what has already been given to the banks a month ago to please, please do
not go bankrupt. (05)
Pat (06)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (07)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 1:03 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology
>
> Ed,
>
> I could quibble about various points in your note, but I just
> want to endorse the conclusion:
>
> EB> IMNSHO, we should stop talking about reference ontologies
> > until we have a large and economically or politically important
> > community of practice.
> >
> > Then, the value of reference ontologies will become clearer, and
> > there will be motive and money to adopt them or construct them.
>
> John
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> (08)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (09)
|