Aldo, (01)
AG
> +1 on both understanding what a system is for system theorists
> (look also at vintage von Foerster's work), (02)
As I said, I have a high regard for GST. During the 1990s, I taught
some courses at Binghamton University, where George Klir founded
a department of Systems Science. I had extensive discussions with
some of the people in that group. I also have other friends in AI
who had studied GST. They published some good papers, but none of
them solved the practical problems of bringing AI technology into
the mainstream of IT. (03)
If anybody had solid applications of GST that could address the
practical issues, I'd be delighted to hear them. But Bertalanffy
published his founding paper on the subject in 1951. It stimulated
a lot of talk and a lot of research. The Binghamton group had many
collaborations with philosophy, cognitive science, systems science,
and AI. I enjoyed the discussions, but they did not solve any of
the practical problems. (04)
> ... this one does not need an entire session devoted to Cyc:
> success/failure stories in using ontologies for big systems
> can be from any source. (05)
I agree. As I said, I would *not* want to have more than one talk
explicitly about Cyc. And I'm sure that there are many good stories
about successes and failures of other systems. (06)
But the most important goal would be to learn from *comparisons* of
different approaches and methodologies. The reason why I mentioned
Doug F, Amanda V, and Bill A is that each of them had extended
experience with Cyc. But they went on to develop other systems
with very different approaches. (07)
So I would not consider them as speakers about Cyc, but speakers
about systems that are very different from Cyc -- and why. From
some discussions with Bill, I gather that their group had tried
several different technologies and methodologies after Cyc. I
would very much like to learn how they differed and why. (08)
Other success/failure stories would also be useful. And I believe
that they would be much more instructive than abstract discussions
about General Systems Theory and related topics. (09)
Bottom line: I've heard a few good talks about GST. But the percentage
of bad talks about GST is much higher. From the notes in these email
threads, I have no hope about such topics for the Ontology Summit. (010)
John (011)
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