John, (01)
Thanks for making the point about Amazon's approach to context better than I
could. But Amazon isn't explicit about what types of goods/items it's
context model doesn't include - that's left for Amazon partners to discover
"off-line". For example, you can't buy automobiles via Amazon or "bulk
goods" such as crude oil - although their search engine will give you a link
to several different sites associated with crude oil futures and current
market prices. Nor does Amazon sell personal services. Nor does it
negotiate/mediate supply chain agreements between business customers and
Amazon partners - they are free to do that themselves directly. Of course,
Amazon's business model and any supporting ontologies would be much more
complicated if it included such types of sales agreements/contracts. And
potential Amazon customers are reasonably expected to "just know" these
context scope constraints. Still, it would be nice to be able to discover
these context scope limits without having to read a pile of natural language
FAQs or calling up an Amazon sales rep. (02)
Hans (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 2:59 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Amazon vs. IBM: Big Blue meets match in battle
for the cloud (04)
Hans and Ed, (05)
Arguing about ambiguities in the word 'context' is fruitless.
But the general issues about the multiple senses of words -- or even better
*microsenses* -- are fundamental. (06)
HP
> At least we can describe the institutional and domain contexts for the
> systems that interact over the network ...
> as opposed to leaving context implicit. (07)
EJB
> part of our problem was accommodating multiple viewpoints in that space:
> design engineer, engineering software supplier, plant builder,
> equipment vendor, plant operator. So, of course, the ontology
> supports all of them not equally badly, and matches none of them. (08)
I partly agree with both of you, but with qualifications. (09)
As another example, consider the issues in "medical informatics" of a
patient who is admitted to a hospital. The general practitioner, surgeon,
nurses, pharmacists, admin personnel, and the patient must communicate. (010)
The same speaker may use different words or the same words in different
senses when talking about the same case with different people for different
purposes. Replacing words with IRIs is worse than useless, because it gives
a misleading impression of precision. (011)
EJB
> It takes months to get a sense of the differences in viewpoints,
> because the people who hold them only tell you how they see the space,
> do you (sooner or later) see the conflicts, but you have to tease out
> the "principles" involved in their views. (012)
That's a weakness of batch-mode knowledge acquisition. Even if you could
"tease out" those general principles from some "expert", the same expert may
use the same words in different senses when talking with different people or
with the same people about different cases. (013)
HP
>> When e-retailers adopt the Amazon framework and business model to
>> sell their stuff on the Internet... (014)
EJB
> They are adopting the Amazon practices that they expect will work well
> for their "unique" application. (015)
Actually, the Amazon DB schema is an extremely underspecified ontology for
any of the products they sell. The only information that schema specifies
in detail is about methods of buying, selling, payments, and shipping. Most
of that information is orthogonal to any description of the products and
their use. (016)
I believe there is a lesson in Amazon's success: To make independently
developed systems interoperable, use an underspecified ontology that
minimizes the amount of detail on which agreement is required. (017)
EJB
> In a narrow domain in which the meaning of "scope" terms is presumably
> well-defined. (018)
The only narrow domains occur in oversimplified examples. I strongly agree
with your quotation from Selden Stewart: (019)
SS
> There is nothing so pernicious to large-scale designs as the
> seductiveness of simple examples. (020)
Unfortunately, most of the examples used to develop ontologies are
oversimplified. I would have more faith in something as vague as WordNet
than in a typical formal ontology with "precise" IRIs. (021)
John (022)
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