Whoops, forgot to add my own text:
OK Bill, I know what you
mean. There is already too much to do now!
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
From: Rich Cooper
[mailto:rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009
12:33 PM
To: Rich Cooper
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Ontology
development method - SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION
From: Burkett, William
[USA]
[mailto:burkett_william@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009
12:03 PM
To: Rich Cooper
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Hi, Rich –
Just to complete our
discussion thread here, I appreciate your offers (i.e., “I can send you a copy of the beta …” and “ f you
are interested in MetaSemantics, and have an application you would
…”) but don’t have the time or resources to delve into
anything like this right now.
Thanks,
Bill
From: Rich Cooper
[mailto:rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009
10:40 AM
To: Burkett, William [USA]
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Hi Bill,
My comments are interspersed below,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
From: Burkett, William
[USA]
[mailto:burkett_william@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009
5:44 AM
To: Rich Cooper
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Hi,
Rich –
You’re
quite right, of course, about the social issues (hidden agenda, etc.) that
affect the negotiation process and outcome. It’s usually not technical reasons that get in the way
of good solutions.
Your
patent request looks interesting – that kind of analysis is essential to
the eventual automation of interoperability.
Thanks for your interest. The
discovery process I documented in that URL is the Quadrature cycle of Observing,
Theorizing, Experimenting and Classifying which human beings have used
throughout history to conduct discovery processes like those in a patent
litigation process.
My
own solution is still more people driven. I advocate what I call the
Semantic Prime Directive – application owners should be free to design
and use whatever data structures they feel are appropriate for their
applications and no one has the right to force them to change.
This
protects both their IP and let’s them have what they want. Party A
and Party B must still agree to a schema “contract” to
interoperate. The key in this situation is the mapping and translation
between the local schema and the contract schema.
The individual user (or user prototype)
can and should participate in all four aspects of ontology development,
especially in the political decision making process. If they are
stakeholders, they will be motivated by some of the concerns you mentioned.
For example, I want to get my software under version control to start
refining it for production. To do that risks the IP I have developed over
the last twenty years. I don’t take that material lightly. I
have my employees sign an agreement protecting my IP so that if they steal it
and use it later, I can show grounds for litigation if they are successful in
using my licensed (or trade secret) technology for an application I have not
agreed to.
Every IP owner who intends to commercialize
their product has to go through all that political gerrymandering and
mollycoddling, and all those political science activities with other
stakeholders as needed. The objective of an IP owner is to generate a
revenue stream and market with reasonably low risk of investing in further
development of that market and its processes.
IMO
there has been far too little attention devoted to this subject (though there
are a couple products like MapForce and Contivo Analyst that do this.)
I agree; more attention to this would be
very instructive to many of the Ontologists here.
I
notice from the patent that you’re in Costa Mesa. Are you still there?
And is ELK a company? (if so, your web page link is broken! J)
Yes, Microsoft restarted my server (with
my DON’T checkbox checked anyway) and that changed my IP address, so I
have to get the DNS changed before my web site is up again. Sorry for the
delay in displaying pages just now. I am presently so loaded with work I
haven’t had time to get back to fixing it.
ELK stands for “English Logic
Kernel”, or Elk, which is a concept I’m working on with immediate
applications to patent claim chart generation and analysis. My web site
(when its up) supports automatic generation of claim charts with fully filled
in sections. If you are interested, I can send you a copy of the beta,
which is to be replaced in the next six months by a full production system.
But the site should be back up by this weekend.
I
just left the LA area two years ago and am always interested in companies in
this field in the area.
Bill
I don’t know of many that are into
semantics here in LA, but with UCLA and USC having strong CS departments, and
with Cal Tech and UCI so close to them, there must be a lot of academics
starting small semantics companies about now. Technology develops in
surprisingly straight lines!
If you are interested in MetaSemantics,
and have an application you would like to champion, license, contract for
services, or otherwise implement using Elk, I would be very pleased to discuss
it with you.
-Rich
From: Rich Cooper
[mailto:rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009
6:47 PM
To: Burkett, William [USA]
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Hi Bill,
That explanation makes good sense -
thanks. And it fits with the kinds of constraints we have discussed on
this list and its predecessors for many years now. All conceptualization
is subjective, but some subjects agree on a few classes for the sake of interchange
among the parties. It still provides the subjective context, while
committing only on interface classes among business partners.
Well described, and Party A and Party B
now have to make the political peace that goes with any such agreement. But
if the parties are, for example, Pakistan
and India,
you can imagine how stressful it is on both parties to reach that one central
agreement. It necessarily has to comply with the motivations of all
parties, or it’s bound to break.
But the tool to do it has already been
designed, as published here (note this is an issued patent, please, with all
the rights and appurtenances thereunto):
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7209923.PN.&OS=PN/7209923&RS=PN/7209923
Its getting parties to agree that is most
challenging about designing those interface classes. Few parties seem to
want to move outside their comfort zone to risk new ventures that incur expense
and risk. Negotiation only works some of the time on interfaces, in my
experience.
The IP financial position of the
negotiating parties can be affected also. Interface classes that are
owned by party A and distinct other classes owned by party B lead to all kinds
of negotiating issues on who owns what specifications; which licenses cover
which functionalities, and what market value is placed on each fungible chunk.
So choosing specific (standardized) interface classes and making them
agreed upon for a long time is tougher than it sounds.
In the cell phone sector, with electronic
circuits, software, and systems patents, there are classes of IP that relate to
interfacing with other phones, web sites, instant messaging, and so on.
Those are costly to develop and normally are designed for a specific
requirement, which changes after the interface class is designed.
That’s why companies require legal IP protection - to ensure their
investments are likely to take off and do well. So the depth and
complexity of negotiation processes is also dependent on the economic and
market issues of each domain.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
From: Burkett, William
[USA]
[mailto:burkett_william@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009
12:09 PM
To: [ontolog-forum] ; Rich Cooper
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Rich:
This does fall in
the category of language games.
What I mean by
“re-negotiation of meaning” has to do with the use and
interpretation of schemas or types or classes in ontologies.
Party-A and Party-B choose a schema (or set of type or ontology classes) to use
to exchange data; they’ve in a sense “negotiated and agreed to a
contract”. If data created by Party-A per the schema (or
types or ontology classes) is sent to Party-B and Party-B thinks the data
“looks weird” or is erroneous or has some other issue, then Part-B
obviously has a different interpretation of the schema (or types or ontology
classes) than Party-A. “Re-negotiation of meaning”
means either aligning their interpretations of the schema (or type or ontology
class) or revising the schema (etc) to accommodate the different “meaning
needs” of Party-A and Party-B.
A simple analogy in
natural language use is someone from Chicago
saying to me they “want a pop”. I may not understand
what they’re really asking for so after some “negotiation” I
realize they’re asking for a carbonated beverage – what I’d
call a “soda”. After the “negotiation”, we
both then know what “pop” means (and the context in which
it’s likely used.)
The trick is how to
enable data-interoperable software systems to do this quickly and easily.
Bill
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009
11:47 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
Ontology development method
Hi Ferenc,
You wrote:
The key, imo, is finding a way to make the
re-negotiation of meaning in the SW quick and easy
Could you expound your thoughts on this issue? How can meaning be
renegotiated quickly, and who is doing the negotiation?
It seems that your description has to do with language games which John Sowa has
mentioned before several times, but for which none of us have come up with good
examples to help define, analyze or validate the language game concept.
I am interested in using strongly typed objects and classes to minimize
(i.e. factor) the process of substituting plausible uniquely identified things in
the beginning of search, and bind them to validated objects through the
And/Or/Not tree of an object designation _expression_.
Your thoughts on language games and the concept of capturing and
analyzing them are appreciated.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of FERENC KOVACS
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 11:34 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
You may want to read this
http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/
Regards
F
----- Original Message -----
From: "Burkett, William [USA]"
<burkett_william@xxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
I'll jump on this bandwagon, too, concerning the social dimension of
ontologies and ontology development; it's an important and underserved
(imo)
area of exploration. In fact, I'll expand it by pointing out that
human
languages (natural languages as well as artificial languages) are
socially-constructed mechanisms. The meaning of languages is a
kind of
"social contract" (apologies to Rousseau) that is continually
being tuned,
corrected, and re-negotiated. Data, schemas, and ontologies are
all
languages of which this is true. The key, imo, is finding a way
to make the
re-negotiation of meaning in the SW quick and easy.
Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tolk,
Andreas
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 12:45 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
I also agree with this point of view.
Ontologies are a great way to understand such differences in
conceptualization, in particular as they are formal specifications of
conceptualizations. I like the work of Wache on how to build
federations
from such different conceptual views on a problem. The two papers I
normally
recommend are H. Wache, T. Vogele, U. Visser, H. Stuckenschmidt, G.
Schuster, H. Neumann, and S. Hübner, "Ontology-based Integration
of
Information -- a Survey of Existing Approaches," Proceedings of
the
IJCAI-Workshop Ontologies and Information Sharing, Seattle, WA:
2001, pp.
108-117 and H. Wache, "Towards Rule-Based Context Transformation
in
Mediators," in Proceedings of the International Workshop on
Engineering
Federated Information Systems (EFIS), 1999, pp. 107-122.
One of the main advantages of ontological approaches is that they make
such
differences explicit and make them applicable to engineering solutions
as
well. The mediation between viewpoints to avoid conceptual
misalignments of
contributions to an overarching solution is something we see everywhere
popping up, be it service oriented architecture and model based
developments.
Best wishes
Andreas
==================== ;-)
Andreas Tolk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Old
Dominion University
Norfolk,
VA, USA
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Rhyne
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 2:36 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
Hi Doug,
I very much agree with your point of view. A good many of the
difficulties
encountered in projects that I have consulted on are rooted in
misunderstanding
and hidden agendas. The ontology is not just a technical tool, it is
also a
social
and organizational tool.
One of the challenges of this approach, however, is the need for
multiple
ontologies and a way to link them semantically. The different segments
of a
large enterprise will develop individual terms and phrases that they
use to
communicate within the segment. In my experience, there is little hope
of
getting all segments to agree on a single set of terms. But, it appears
to
be
often possible to get agreement on a mapping and sharing of concepts,
provided
there is a crisp and unambiguous definition of the concepts.
There is a small amount of technical work in the area of shared
ontologies
and
ontology mapping that I am familiar with. Can you and others on this
forum
Suggest additional sources?
Thanks,
Jim Rhyne
Software Renovation Consulting
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Doug McDavid
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 3:55 AM
To: paoladimaio10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
Hi Paola --
I'd like to pick up on your point about the social aspects of this
field. Over the years, I have gravitated more over to the social
system aspect of enterprise, and I feel strongly that precision of
language, and understanding of language distinctions, is a critical
element of lubricating the social side of enterprise (better
understanding, disambiguation to everyone's relief, semantic boundary
objects that allow different disciplines and practices to work
together, etc.).
I haven't found much appetite for this kind of discussion on this
particular list. I follow the discussions here quite
closely,
because I think ontology has the potential to become an important wave
of future development of business systems. I would probably be
making
more than the occasional contribution if there were more interest in
these social aspects. Maybe someone receiving this knows of a
discussion going on elsewhere. I admit I haven't done due
diligence
on Ning, LinkedIn, Google Groups, etc.
If there's any interest at all, I could be encouraged to do some
diligence, and possibly set up a discussion group on this topic.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Doug
On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 2:27 AM, Paola Di Maio
<paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> John
>
>>
>> I think that *ideology* is the main obstacle that has
strangled
>> innovation in the SW.
>
> what I noticed is that much of the thinking (setting aside the
ideology
> point) is done by computer scientists
> while in my view sw challenges are not striclty CS per se
>
> Information Management dont particularly count as scientist
either,
>
> On top of that 'social 'science is not taken into account
>
> a bit like having a team of only civil engineers, and no
architects/
> planners
>
> while its' true that infrastructure is really really important, we
would
not
> want our cities to be
> run and governed solely by plumbers and electricians
>
>> If anybody whispers that JSON might be better
>> than RDF, the SW thought police immediately exile them from
the empire.
>
> do you have evidence to that effect?
>
> But just compare two groups that both started at Stanford around
the same time:
>
> Agreed that comparing google with protege to measure success of
the latter
> does not seem fair
> its a different ball game, isnt it ?:-)
>
> PDM
>
--
Doug McDavid
dougmcdavid@xxxxxxxxx
916-549-4600