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Re: [ontology-summit] Quality, Big Data, Usability

To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:29:12 -0500
Message-id: <4F2CC228.20604@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Amanda,    (01)

I certainly agree that last year's communiqué was a respectable,
well balanced statement to which I contributed a few words and
some of the editing.  But in my complaint, I was expressing my
frustration that the good, hard work by many good people just
dropped silently into the depths of the WWW without creating
a noticeable ripple.    (02)

JFS
>> Last year's summit did not get into those issues.  It consisted of talks
>> that said "Ontologies are wonderful. You should be using them."  A year
>> later, we see that the major web companies have abandoned any pretense
>> of using ontologies, and people who need to share Big Data ignore them.    (03)

AV
> This is not an accurate or fair characterization of last year's
> summit. While the focus of the last year's summit was indeed on making
> the case, it was not assumed or widely believed that any such blanket
> case should be made.    (04)

Does anyone know whether it had any useful effects?    (05)

AV
> I am very much supportive of, and motivated to invest my time further by,
> the very degree to which this forum has avoided the mistakes of which
> you here accuse it.    (06)

I wasn't accusing anybody of making any mistakes.  I said that the page
for the quality track that you put together was good.  But what I found
frustrating is that the kinds of "ontologies" people are actually using
are nothing but terminologies.    (07)

AV
> In the enormous effort that went into the development of the
> Application Cases...
> In the value metrics synthesis... in which an analysis is offered of
> where and how ontologies are currently capable of providing value.    (08)

Those are good summaries, and I have no criticisms of them.  But I
was responding to Nicola's point:    (09)

NG
>> I believe that the questions below ("Why haven't semantic technologies
>> been adopted as an integral part of the IT mainstream?" and similar),
>> although very relevant, are out of scope for the present Summit. Indeed,
>> these issues have been discussed rather extensively in the latest Summit,
> Last year's summit did not get into those issues.    (010)

JFS
> Last year's summit did not get into those issues.    (011)

That is not a criticism of last year's work.  It just makes the point
that it did not address the question why AI technology in general
and ontology in particular has not made a dent on mainstream IT.    (012)

I was an "early adopter" of the word 'ontology' in my 1984 book
(finished in 1983).  I worked on AI projects at IBM before and
after that time, and I have been participating in conferences,
workshops, projects, emails, etc., about ontology for years.    (013)

Like many people who have been working in the AI field for years,
I would like to see something useful come out of it.    (014)

John    (015)

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