Thanks for the comments.
BRS (previously): From my point of view – this seems more or less an impossible task – unless we are creating consensual agreements and stipulative definition systems. We can’t define “continent” in a universal or invariant or context-independent way. We are forced to define the term within the bounds of some social convention or agreement – something that “works in a particular professional domain or social context.”
MW: As I was sailing up the Devon coast the other day I remember looking at a particular lump of land/rock just offshore and wondering when a rock was big enough to be called an island.
BRS: Sure. But let it be noted – that this is entirely a matter of opinion, regarding what you – or your friends, or your professional associates, or your local culture – happen to think an “island” is.
“No man is an island”? Probably not worth an argument until that metaphor is highly clarified – or as I would be inclined to say – “accurately dimensioned”.
“Is George a Tiger?” Let’s compare the dimensions of “George” to the dimensions of “Tiger” and see how isomorphic the comparison really is. Is that rock an island? What are the dimensions of island – that distinguish it in the “taxonomy of all things” from continents or mere stones in the sea. To be precise, we have to formally define these things. In the end, all of this is regulated by statistical cultural effects and boundary values that have been stabilized by convention.
BRS (previously): I’ve been exploring the notion of ambitious computer-mediated projects that define concepts like “political issue” and “region of applicability” in some precise way. If we want to define an ideal form of cybernetic/electronic democracy or self-governance – we would want exact definitions of “regions” – maybe as legal entities, maybe as consensual agreements – so that we could put an issue like “global warming” or “climate change” in the right “region” – and also put a much more local issue, like “where to put the stop sign”, in the right bounded region.
MW: Most of these things are defined by fiat. There are even different choices made in different countries about where the boundary between land and sea is.
BRS: Yes, I totally agree. This is how it actually happens. But multiply this tendency by an order of magnitude, you got a major reason why the world eco-system or economy is threatened (just ask Donald Trump J) with collapse. One planet, one ocean, one sky, one economy – and “interoperability” quickly moves from the optional to the mandatory column (of course, Donald would say “Make me king and I’ll fix it.”)
BRS (previously): I’d like to see all of this mediated through GIS and “longitude and latitude” – which as somebody mentioned in the call, is defined in floating-point numbers – “accurate to within a specific number of decimal places”.
MW: It sounds as if you have the naive view that if two people are talking about the same Lat and Long they are talking about the same place. Sorry, not necessarily so. Lat and Long are relative to some ellipsoid, and historically different countries have picked different ones for their national and world maps, with significant differences. In the oil industry (where I come from) it is desirable to know the position of a drill bit in 3D relative to the surface with some precision, considerable care is taken selecting the most appropriate ellipsoid for where the drilling is taking place (which may be hopeless elsewhere). The good news is that since the early nineties with the advent of GPS most maps and charting systems have used WGS84. But you still need to check.
BRS: Thanks for mentioning that Lat and Long definitions are also culturally relative – and I’ll have to learn about “WGS84”. I did get my first exposure to GIS working very briefly with ESRI, and one of their executives years ago gave me the gift of ColdFusion, the programming language I work with. But today, for my money, Google more less runs the world. They have mapped this place to an excruciating and amazing level of detail. Yesterday, I looked at “Street View” on a Google map of a Canadian hwy where I slept 10 years ago, and there was a perfect photograph of that place. They have just about photographed every street address in the (“civilized”?) world.
If we want to define “regions” in ways that reach the world, and operate on widely-shared consensual protocols that make sense to people – I doubt we need anything more than what something like 1 billion people in the world already have on their desktops or phones. You got bandwidth and screen-space – you pretty-much got a hi-res map of everything on the planet – running under one consensual protocol – at least for us out there in “the masses”. I am often in total awe of what I can pull up on my screen today – in a matter of a second of two. If we human beings want to keep walking around on a clean happy planet, we ought to figure this out pretty quick.
If you are saying that Google map coordinates are not globally consistent – but are culturally relative, and change from country to country or region to region – that would come as a surprise to me – but one I need to hear about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System
Thanks to all.
Bruce Schuman, Santa Barbara CA USA
http://networknation.net/vision.cfm
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew West
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 1:02 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Update on the Next Ontolog virtual meeting on "The Thing about Location Is" (Th. August 20th 12:30 -2 EDT).
Dear Bruce,
I don’t like to rain on your parade… but here are a couple of comments on your observations.
[MW>] <snip>
From my point of view – this seems more or less an impossible task – unless we are creating consensual agreements and stipulative definition systems. We can’t define “continent” in a universal or invariant or context-independent way. We are forced to define the term within the bounds of some social convention or agreement – something that “works in a particular professional domain or social context.”
[MW>] As I was sailing up the Devon coast the other day I remember looking at a particular lump of land/rock just offshore and wondering when a rock was big enough to be called an island.
I’ve been exploring the notion of ambitious computer-mediated projects that define concepts like “political issue” and “region of applicability” in some precise way. If we want to define an ideal form of cybernetic/electronic democracy or self-governance – we would want exact definitions of “regions” – maybe as legal entities, maybe as consensual agreements – so that we could put an issue like “global warming” or “climate change” in the right “region” – and also put a much more local issue like “where to put the stop sign” in the right bounded region.
[MW>] Most of these things are defined by fiat. There are even different choices made in different countries about where the boundary between land and sea is.
I’d like to see all of this mediated through GIS and “longitude and latitude” – which as somebody mentioned in the call, is defined in floating-point numbers – “accurate to within a specific number of decimal places”.
[MW>] It sounds as if you have the naive view that if two people are talking about the same Lat and Long they are talking about the same place. Sorry, not necessarily so. Lat and Long are relative to some ellipsoid, and historically different countries have picked different ones for their national and world maps, with significant differences. In the oil industry (where I come from) it is desirable to know the position of a drill bit in 3D relative to the surface with some precision, considerable care is taken selecting the most appropriate ellipsoid for where the drilling is taking place (which may be hopeless elsewhere). The good news is that since the early nineties with the advent of GPS most maps and charting systems have used WGS84. But you still need to check.
Regards
Matthew West
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk
+44 750 338 5279