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CommuniqueTake3-Nicola.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
Folks, (01)
please find some more comments attached, produced during my flight...
(I hope the annotated pdf file is readable - produced with Preview on a Mac) (02)
Besides minor things, my most relevant comments concern some of the "sound
bites": (03)
1. Ontology as a new paradigm -
"Ontology does for machines what the World Wide Web did for people." Steve Ray (04)
This is interesting, but I suspect it is very ambiguous...
I see there is a sense according to which this statement might be true (I don't
know if this is what you have in mind, Steve): (05)
- the Web allows people to access to (almost) all the data they need, which
however need still to be interpreted by people to become useful information.
- Ontologies help machines, so to speak, to get the data they need, extracting
them from the Web... (06)
But I am not conviced, altogether. In my opinion, the message should be that,
first of all, ontologies are for people (and indeed we do convey such message
in the rest of the communiqué). From the machines point of view, ontologies
ultimately rely on primitives which make no sense as such (unless machines are
able to ground them on perception, but this is a research issue). To me,
ontologies are there to help people (who are using machines) to understand each
other, by making explicit (to people) the hidden assumptions made by the
programmers of such machines . (07)
Maybe the viceversa holds: ontology does for people what the world wide does
for machines: (08)
- through shared Web services, machines are able to use each other's data;
- through shared ontologies, people are able to use each other's data (possibly
with the mediation of machines)... (09)
2. Ontology as a way of clarifying meaning -
“The secret to making a good movie is getting everyone to make the same movie."
So it is with enterprises and that's what ontologies do.' Jack Ring (010)
Again, this risks to be interpreted in a dangerous way, as people may come to
the conclusion that ontologists want to force "everyone to make the same
movie". Sure, adopting the same ontology is like playing in the same movie, but
ontologies can do more, namely letting people understand whether or not they
are playing the same movie, and if not, why not... Moreover, they can help
establish comparisons and mapping across multiple movies... (011)
Perhaps the following sound bite can help understanding the role of ontologies
to clarify meaning (I think Peter put it on the wiki somewhere): (012)
An ontology is like a contract's fine print, one of those things which require
a very precise technical jargon, which you might ignore in many cases, but
which can save your business in critical situations... (013)
3. Ontology as a way to improve agility and flexibility -
“There are three main things that ontologies are good for: flexibility,
flexibility and flexibility” Michael Uschold (014)
I think this flexibility point should be expanded, as clearly flexibility
might be intended in many different ways. In which sense does ontology increase
flexibility? To me, the answers are: 1) it detaches signs from their meanings;
2) it helps recognizing each aspect of the domain as a "first class citizen",
to which you can attach information independently of the rest.... (015)
Best, (016)
Nicola (017)
On 15 Apr 2011, at 16:25, Michael F Uschold wrote: (018)
> Everyone,
>
> Please use this email thread for all feedback on the communique. Anything
>submitted elsewhere risks not being addressed. If you have already submitted
>feedback, I will greatly appreciate if you can take a moment and re-send it on
>this thread using the subject.
>
> Many thanks.
>
> DETAILS:
>
> There is now a snapshot of the draft Communique on the wiki for public review
>and comment.
>
> See:
>http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011_Communique/Draft
>
> The evolving draft Communique is
>at:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z1oyuFxRfhJrzaEcORPT5hWfQqP36uzz7mn8GG-sxDM/edit?hl=en&authkey=CO-n3oEN
>
>
> Please refer to the process described in:
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2011-04/msg00092.html to
>progress this document to its final release.
>
> Michael
>
>
> --
> Michael Uschold, PhD
> Senior Ontology Consultant, Semantic Arts
> LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
> Skype, Twitter: UscholdM
>
>
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