On 25/07/2013 1:15 AM, Paul Tyson wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-07-24 at 11:08 -0400, John F Sowa wrote:
>
>> Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and other major vendors don't
>> use the DAML technology. That is a sign that we should consider it
>> a small subset of what humanity needs.
>>
> I've always considered these sorts of statements from you as non
> sequiturs, but it wasn't until you added the bit about serving human
> needs that it became clear why. You've previously advanced the argument
> in slightly different forms, like: "all the big guys are doing it (JSON,
> schema.org), so we should too" and "none of the big guys are doing it
> (RDF, OWL), so we shouldn't either". Let's look at some of those needs
> and see who's serving the lion's share of them.
>
> I haven't reviewed the recent SEC filings of those companies, but let me
> make some wild guesses at where their major revenue streams originate:
> web search and ad placement; online activity tracking and data
> aggregation; online leisure, entertainment, and recreation; mobile
> application development (primarily in support of preceding streams);
> mass consumer marketing and merchandising; personal and enterprise
> packaged software development and services in support thereof; and
> lately, software as a service.
>
> Now let's look at a few of the many things they *don't* directly engage
> in, and judge--by size and importance--the range human needs for which
> you say their (the aforementioned big guys') exemplary service commands
> our respectful attention: public utilities, energy production &
> distribution; aerospace and defense; construction, big and small; mining
> and materials processing; automobile manufacturing; heavy equipment
> manufacturing; pharmaceuticals; medical technology; health care.
>
> You might make a slender argument that packaged commercial software is
> essential for all the other companies to run their businesses. And since
> none of the big software vendors are rolling out RDF and OWL tools for
> their customers in these real "brick and mortar" industries, those
> technologies are flawed or useless. The position is weak on several
> counts, but I will only pursue one line here. That would be like saying,
> 20 years ago, that "the principles of generalized markup for documents
> are useless (or wrong-headed) because none of the major word processing
> software vendors support it". News flash: toay's commercial software
> thrives on vendor lock-in, by which the software vendors collect a toll
> not just for letting you inscribe your intellectual property in some
> persistent form, but for each and every use of your intellectual
> property. Why would any profit-minded company develop applications that
> would give individuals and organizations greater control over their
> intellectual property, and the freedom to create and process it
> according to their own needs? There is no more mystery to this than to
> the slow (or nonexistent) commercial support for SGML, XML, HTML, STEP,
> and any other standard that threatened to give information owners
> greater control of their intellectual property. (01)
Both markup languages and word processing exist with both commercial and
non-commercial packages. (02)
Markup languages require too much supporting software to make them
usable by the masses and impose too much discipline that does not have a
sufficient ROI for the average user.
Critical document production is a candidate for markup systems but a
letter to a client or a supplier is not.
There are lots of borderline documents - contracts for instance that
might be better done in a markup language but you need a really good
application that combines the easy of use of word processing with hidden
markup generation and a conversion project to get a critical mass of
contracts into your library. (03)
It appears that the type of results that Google produces or the
responses generated by IBM's Watson, are not possible with ontology
alone and the use of ontologies appears to be buried very deeply within
the systems if it is used at all. (04)
Ron (05)
>
> So, just what is it you think we (as individuals and enterprises) can
> learn from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, etc. about taking control of
> our own information resources and designing our information management
> systems to "augment our intellect" (as Doug Engelbart would put it) to
> meet the many real needs of humanity (as opposed to the ephemera of
> social networking and consumerism)?
>
> Regards,
> --Paul
>
>
>
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--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102 (07)
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