Hmmpf, so I have been losing you all in a cloud of words? And yes, it is true,
clouds are indeed as difficult to kick as they are to grasp and embrace... (01)
So in the light of recent posts in this thread please bear with me as I try to
be more comprehensive and explicit (yet still surprisingly succinct, given the
scale of the message) than I was in my post to this thread of April 12, in
response to Amanda's evidently so stimulating reflections. (That post of mine,
so approvingly copying Amanda's too, is now at
http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2009-04/msg00119.html. (It had
used
the "haystack" metaphor where this one has used "cloud".)) (02)
The "Ride The Mainstream!" project has, amongst many others, these traits that
to me make it most pertinently and even clearly relevant to all your posts
following up on Amanda's: (03)
1. The project involves building and deploying an ontology-based software
engineering tool-cum-user-agent, designed to support the full-cycle marketing
of
any Internet-leveraging product, whether ad hoc and entirely user-driven, or
whether UML- or MDA-like scale or professionalism are appropriate (where
"full-cycle marketing" covers every stage from needs awareness through
collaborative consensus-seeking, product design and development, to deployment,
training and support, cycling back to needs awareness). (04)
2. That user agent (maybe even the "market boot product" Metaset 1.0) will
speed up product development by an order of magnitude or more, yet produce
products of higher industrial-strength. (05)
3. That anticipated quality will be thanks to the collaborative development
the
user agent will support and enhance, but thanks primarily to its ontological
basis and the coherence- and consistency-cultivation which is its very modus
operandi. (06)
4. The above together means that that faster marketing cycle will speed up
application migration and system evolution by even greater orders of magnitude. (07)
5. The ontological basis involves ontological structures and disciplines in
describing not only state but also provided-for events and their initial system
effects as seen in the narrow context. Automatically inferred consequences
then
further transform state (eagerly or lazily recording the results, as
appropriate), but also, reflectively, transforming context, producing a
transformed user interface. This is where that fractal nature manifests itself. (08)
6. State includes a definition of user goal, and there will always be multiple
such goals, often highly threaded. A database at any one time, consisting of
goals and their contexts, will in the above interactive mode continually calve
"external goals" in the form of further such databases, context-delimited and
further condensed by reference to Common Knowledge. Those are messages to
other
user agents for them to act upon and respond in kind. That might for example
take the form of a populated database-subset extension of interest to the first
agent's goals, that case constituting.a response to a query. It could also
result in the incorporation of new application functionality, apparently
creatively. (That multi-database messaging process is well modelled, in a
snapshot fashion, by the metaphor of the agates and their interconnecting
channels of the same material! (As in the slides now at
http://TheMainstream.info/RTM.html.)) (09)
7. The above sounds terribly convoluted but is greatly rationalized,
simplified
and managed by reflective components most likely being reused on account of the
high generality that the ontological approach promotes. In effect such
components are implementing patterns - and helping avoid anti-patterns - for
the
simplification of complexity by appropriate abstraction, that is, working
ontologically. (010)
8. That very process will induce great refinement of upper or more abstract
components, and will rapidly result in the emergence of useful upper ontologies
with extensive and most likely ever-growing commonality. No great, laborious
or
terribly lengthy process! (011)
9. All the above is to take place in market mode. Now re-read this paragraph
from my above-linked earlier post, addressing Amanda: (012)
>>That heuristic strategy, cultivating emergence, is even implicit in the
>>project's name, evoking the all-inclusive process whereby greater
>commonality,
>>on a niche-wise basis, expressed as applied ontologies/abstractions, is
>>invented/discovered and further leveraged, all in market mode, where the
>>evolutionary Supply/Demand matching captures the fascinating
>>Top-down/Bottom-up duality you see is needed. (Note how those 4 "/"-ed duals
>>correspond.) (013)
10. I am busy programming all the above (in plain C, using low-level Windows
APIs) and could well use some help on that front. I have been taking a long
time, with lengthy diversions into attempted team-expansion like my efforts on
this Forum. That's some the upfront Supply part of that Supply/Demand
matching!
But what I must add is that every time I have had a programming blockage it has
always been resolved, highly architecture-canonically too, by returning to the
philosophical perspectives that have evidently so informed the whole
development. (014)
11. My posts to this Forum have recently explicitly thanked Amanda, Pat H,
John
S and Pat C. Maybe I shall still soon be quoting (with their permission)
useful
contributions by Chris M and Duane N. I am sure those will not be the last.
(My apologies to those whom I have used but omitted in those acknowledgements.)
Special thanks to Peter Yim too, of course! (015)
12. Anyway, you have all greatly encouraged me in my resolve to return now to
concentrating once again on that C coding... And I look forward to more
substantial assistance from at least some of you in due course, maybe even
soon,
perhaps as I invited it in the above-cited slides from my recent Summit-related
foray. You may sometimes think we are very far apart, but we are in fact so
close together already. If only I could express the whole situation better!
This is, after all, The Mainstream, even if not the one you first thought. (016)
13. How can you believe all the above? Go back and explore that cloud, that
haystack; note how everything I have been saying for so long still applies
(except the hoped-for timings...). Ask yourself how many currents of thought
in
our industry have been that straight for so long. Then note how much movement
in our industry has been converging with this line, not the other way around.
You may need some interpretation by myself, it is true, and feel free to
question any of it, but be just a little bit charitable in your interpretation
and above all don't allow yourself to get fixated on any one meaning of your
favourite words, as I might be using them in a different sense. (017)
14. For example, let me clarify of my use of "ontology" words above. It can
be
read in your usual way, but then you might tend to dismiss my use as erroneous,
as I am really just talking "data models"? Not so. It is all part of the
objective of the project as set out at the outset of
http://TheMainstream.info/,
namely: (018)
"To finalize and launch a new information technology architecture and
infrastructure, with a fundamentally philosophical basis so that in widely
practical ways it will help everybody pervasively improve the way democratic
societies function, and in general help individuals realistically set and
pursue
their own goals." (019)
Those individual and collective "Beings" will progressively emerge through
their
refinement during those supported market processes, as in my quote of myself in
point 9 above. So I prefer "Ontology" to distinguish it from your "ontology". (020)
As for your "ontologies", as you know I prefer "Form", short for "conceptual
form", even though for the first decades of this 40+ years project I would use
"abstract system". I absolutely do not wish to tempt any fixation on any one
Form or set of Forms by calling them "ontologies". It's "emergence" of Being,
again, as usual, and thanks again, Amanda, for having re-introduced that word
into this Forum's deliberations! (021)
15. Ah, John S has just come in with this, quoting Ed B: (022)
>EB> ... It will be primarily governed by money and politics, not technical
>excellence, and not knowledge engineering in the field.
>
JS> I very strongly agree. (023)
Clearly, I strongly disagree, as in my recent exchange with Azamat. (024)
But John does continue with what I most strongly support: (025)
JS> The prime example [of big money and politics prevailing] is the Semantic
Web. There are some examples of good ontologies, mostly developed by small
dedicated groups. The rest amply demonstrate the negative progress since
Aristotle. (026)
And I note that Ed B has just recalled Amanda's "emergence" reminder, and noted
how it seems to have triggered general violent agreement. (027)
All the above from me is just more clouds of words? (028)
Ok, if so, bye for now, thanks again to everybody, and get in touch when you
feel ready. Else just wait for it, and that user agent AOS, maybe even still
Metaset 1.0 if not someone else's product somewhere, perhaps prompted by some
of
my many words, will make it all clear, surprisingly soon after all, in
culmination of a very small-scale project by the standards bandied about on
this
Forum. (029)
But if not, and we might have the glimmerings of a joint project emerging,
let's
discuss it, here or offline. (030)
Anyway, please excuse my impatience,
and warm regards to all!
Christopher (031)
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