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Hello Speed-Reading Ali! And
thank you for the most relevant questions from the present technology
coalface.
At this stage in our discussions, namely before we
have worked through Section 2 of my "Matthew Lange 5x5 points" ("ML5x5p" below)
(with their obvious relevance as necessary background), I shall merely be
offering you a punt. But also an exposition of the general method I am
further testing now.
My answer is quite possibly based on too little
knowledge of the products and projects you refer to. I do recall having
looked at CALO long ago and quickly dismissing it, I did watch the presentation
of Siri to the Ontolog Community before it was bought by Apple but thought it
nice though not nearly radical enough in its whole approach. I have now
quickly scanned some of the web pages you have referred me to and see rather too
much of "the same old story" of OWL, RDF, the present conception of the Semantic
Web, and suchlike, though with the latest set of special adaptations or
cousins.
But it is very clear to me that a point-by-point
"comparing and contrasting" would not be applicable. Any attempt is sure
to be unreadable, confusing and not very relevant to the real needs of the
questioner.
So, based on long experience of questions such as
yours, I have been settling on this 2-step strategy for handling them, at least
at this stage of our relevant discussions:
1. Point (usually very briefly would
suffice...) to how far up abstraction and dependency hierarchies one would need
to go to find the common technological or infrastuctural ground.
2. Then, we look for enduser usecases as
the better common ground for a reliable meeting of minds. But even
then it won't be easy because of the differences between enduser needs and
predicaments in the very different ecosystems, the present one so hotch-potch
and the foreseeable new one so architecturally clean, coherent, integrated,
manageable and user-congenially AOS-managed, all thanks to its ontology
foundation. So even with enduser usecases we will need to go back up those
hierarchies, here in the user-situation domain. (But don't worry, we won't
have to go all the way back, right up to "helping people simplify
complexity together"!)
So, step 1, which is
really very easy and simple once you've got it, but it will shock you into
complete incredulity at first, especially before our ML5x5p Section 2 expansion
(as I warned above). In this case it happens to bring another ML 5
sub-steps:
1.1 Not a single one of the present
serializations of so-called ontologies is required. The basic
requirements here fit into ML5x5p 1.4. (As for human readability, see
1.3 and 1.4 below.)
1.2 The uri/url/urn is required only for
interfacing with legacy environments. Identity is always context-defined
and largely-transparent. Precise, complete, yet nimble and flexible
context-management might even be said to be the prime modus operandi of the AOS
(cf. ML5x5p 1.3 and 2.2).
1.3 The AOS as UI is the universal "Semantic
Desktop equivalent". Fine common ground that! But only to start
with. For even the html/http www is not required for user views or
inputs. The ontology-derived Separation of Concerns (ML5x5p 2.1) is such
that view construction and management is highly medium- or UI-device-adaptable
and largely automatic, across all canonical applications, universally.
Obviously that is key to application agility and transportability.
1.4 The equivalent of ontology design and
modification is similarly highly-flexible, with unique features for
componentization and largely plug-and-play reuse (cf ML5x5p 2.3). That is
really a subset of the handling of any user input, in its turn usually largely
automatic reuse of prior modules, of course with full error minimization and
fault handling.
1.5 Data durability (as in ACID) is
likewise a fully-separated concern. So even though my Metaset is at
present based on RDF-like triple-storage (as it has been since 1987) and my own
internal DBMS-less management, it is not a necessary constraint.
Well, as it has turned out it seems there's nothing
of Step 2 left in this case.
Ali, does that seem to address your underlying real
questions at all? Please don't hesitate with any more.
And thanks again. As you can see, you've
provided me with a most useful prompt for a contribution from me which - I
expect - will be at least partly applicable to many questions of the kinds
I can expect at this stage.
Best regards,
Christopher
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:25
PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Some Grand
Challenge proposal ironies
Hi Christopher,
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Christopher
Spottiswoode <cms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
1. The universal yet simple concept of the
suggested Ontology
Chemistry Grand Challenge target product, the
Application Operating
System (AOS).
could you explain how this challenge differs from past efforts
of creating a "Semantic Desktop"?
I understand your proposal hopes to achieve much much more, but the AOS
seems like a pre-requisite for all the other future desires.
Could you provide a suggestion as to how this effort would overcome some
of those past challenges?
Comparisons to these systems and how this Grand Challenge would differ
from them (and how this re-framing might overcome the obstacles they
faced) would be very useful in helping me understand and provide useful
feedback regarding this proposal.
Thanks,
Ali
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