Ed Barkmeyer wrote:
> John Bottoms wrote:
>
>> Likewise, it seems that implementations of ontological systems
>> will vote with their pocketbooks; which translates to small workable
>> systems (implementable) which provide economic benefit. Where are
>> the "islands of intelligence" that ontologies can provide? Joining
>> the islands comes after working applications (IMHO).
>>
>>
>
> I think this is a very succinct and accurate characterization of the
> success of an emerging technology. I like the "islands of intelligence"
> term.
>
> Because this is IT, we are seeing a many islands of intelligence that
> have little economic value -- they are academic St. Helenas. But,
> particularly in health care and geospatial models, we are beginning to
> see some that do. The function of our communities of practice is to
> produce ontologies that are useful to the communal purposes. And that,
> my friends, is us. We can talk about it, or we can do it. A few can do
> both. (Not me! ;-) )
>
>
If I am interpreting all of this discussion in a reasonable way, I think
that we are getting to an understanding that might actually be useful.
From the discussion, it certainly appears that a single view of the
universe is unlikely to be reached even within this group.
The discussion of a "human sub-species originating in Africa" certainly
points out that it will be difficult in many areas to get agreement
between white supremacists and the ACLU on an ontology that deals with
human rights and history. Having spent many hours with an ultra-orthodox
Jew while travelling together, I can see that his definition of dinosaur
bones and mine will never match very well. (01)
It appears to my untrained mind, that what I would like to have for
using ontologies, is something akin to what Maven (mavem.apache.org) and
dependency management gives me for software development.
Each software package carries with it a POM (project object model) file
that describes itself and its dependencies.
Maven looks though the dependencies that I declare in my project and
builds a list of transitive dependencies that describes the entire
hierarchy of dependent libraries. It identifies conflicts in version and
generally resolves them in favour of the latest version. (02)
I have the option of explicitly excluding a dependency of a sub-project
if I want to resolve the issue myself by substituting a library with a
colliding namespace for one of the dependencies. If I do this, I am
responsible for what happens to me if the namespace that I use is
missing libraries or implements methods in ways that cause problems. In
short, I am responsible for compatibility if I rip out a chunk of a
dependencies and add in my own.
I do however expect that anyone publishing a library with its
dependencies listed in a POM, is assuring me that the set works together
and has passed some level of testing. (03)
Using the entire set that I describe in my project POM, Maven can then
extract the complete set of libraries including transitive dependencies
that I need for my software to run and Maven can package this into a
single consolidate library rather than dozens of files. (04)
In order to participate in this scheme, a developer of a package must
create a POM describing his artifact and give it a GroupID (I use
com.artifact_software.projectname), an artifactId and a version which
only has to be unique within my project.
This can then be shared through a local or universal repository
depending on your distribution intentions. (05)
If something like this existed to support the lattice of ontologies, it
would simplify the users' adoption of ontologies and allow incompatible
ontologies to co-exist with minimum impact on the stability of the universe. (06)
It addresses the Islands of Intelligence issue to some degree by
allowing clever people to build islands and bridges which can be used by
less clever third parties to do route planning from one smart place to
another without having to build all the islands. (07)
Although these are
> -Ed
>
> P.S. The 7090 was my 3rd computer as well. But that is a topic for the
> bar. The question is what we have learned from our experience. John's
> analogy to the major systems development and integration experieces of
> the 1980s is the product of experience, and is a useful paradigm for
> understanding our current state.
>
>
I am a bit of a neophyte compared to you guys, the 7040 was my first
computer. For the modern crowd, the 7040 was a stripped down 7090 ( no
FPU). (08)
Ron (09)
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