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Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Summit 2015 Theme

To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Jack Ring <jring7@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 11:40:32 -0700
Message-id: <4B581D66-4EF9-4D22-B823-53865C481D20@xxxxxxxxx>
Summit participants,    (01)

Please consider an alternative view — The ideas recently expressed by John Sowa 
and others may, in fact, make the Ontology Summit theme much more relevant 
particularly to a broader set of sponsors, champions and practitioners than has 
been the case to date.     (02)

I am attracted by this quote from the Ontology Summit introduction, 
"Well-designed and constructed net-centric societies will result in better 
quality of life, reduced threat from external sources, and improved commerce.” 
to which I ask, “Else?” What if net-centric societies are NOT well-designed and 
constructed but inexorably happen from mashups of various and conflicting 
ideologies?    (03)

The fundamental problem? Not enough people know how to design and construct 
systems that are sufficiently intelligent to suppress problematic situations 
that are high in extent, variety (both temporal and semiotic) and ambiguity — 
the non-deterministic field of discourse.  Diagnosis? They do not have a 
sufficiently sharable set of languages that enable the action and do not know 
how to formulate a language that does.  Fondling notions of existence, IS, 
without the notions of behavior, DOES, won’t result in better quality of life, 
reduced threat from external sources, and improved commerce.    (04)

The close-second problem? Not enough people know how to determine whether an 
existing system is fit for purpose and still fit for purpose.  Accordingly, the 
Internet of Things may well include more than one billion ‘bugs’ which, 
according to Lanchester’s Law (echoed by Metcalf’s Law) predicts that the 
probable damage to any one Thing will be proportional the the square of the 
number of bugs in a usage episode.    (05)

What if an ontology for system generation harmonized enough of the various 
interests, would synergistic, value-seeking mashups appear? Probably. A SysGen 
ontology would identify both the existence of things (operands) and the 
existence of transforms (operators) and would be multi-level such as Anatoly’s 
categories, which, in turn, enable a language that spans multiple levels of 
abstraction (in the Halstead sense of Levels of Language).    (06)

There are at least three beneficiaries from the elaboration of ‘ontology.’ One 
class are academics. Another class are those who like to converse on Ontolog. 
The third class includes those who are not very successful at generating 
systems that  are 'Well-designed and constructed net-centric societies.’ Better 
we should strive to serve all three.    (07)

If not here then, yes, it is time to start an alternative Summit.    (08)

Make sense?
Jack Ring
On Nov 14, 2014, at 6:47 PM, Michael Gruninger <gruninger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:    (09)

> 
> Although the discussion, as always, is fascinating, I'm not sure about the 
>relevance to
> the Ontology Summit theme anymore.
> 
> Interested parties may consider renaming the thread and continuing the 
>discussion on
> the general Ontolog Forum list.
> 
> I am hoping that the discussion on the Ontology Summit list can be a bit more 
>focussed on trying
> to defining the scope of the Summit (at this point anyways).
> 
> - michael
> 
> Quoting Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 
>> On 11/14/14 11:49 AM, Barkmeyer, Edward J wrote:
>>> I think we must be careful not to mistake use of the buzzword ‘ontology’ 
>for understanding the concept.  Many people in the information exchange 
>business have finally realized that getting everyone of interest to agree on a 
>common XML schema is not going to happen.  Et voilà, we have discovered the 
>need for information modeling, of a kind that supports the notion ‘synonym’ 
>(or ‘close enough for our purpose’).  And even better we have not one, but 
>two, W3C standards for this – RDF and OWL.  And there are tools that support 
>them.  It is an ‘in’ technology in the land of information exchange, right up 
>there with Linked Open Data.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> IMO, this is a very good thing, because it is a giant step above capturing 
>knowledge in Java and in XML Schema.  It gets us much closer to capturing what 
>we know, in a way that might be useful for multiple purposes.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> OTOH, most of the would-be users have no concept of what it takes to make a 
>model suitable for inferencing, or even that they might want to draw 
>inferences.  They get the general idea of classes and properties; most of them 
>don’t understand axioms other than Subclass and EquivalentClasses.  They are 
>given to understand that there are engines that can do magic with these 
>models.  The fact is that if you really want to do the magic, the ontologies 
>have to be purpose-built and carefully crafted:  OWL as the implementation 
>language for DL reasoners.  It is a different concept, and people who are 
>expecting magic from their E-R models captured in OWL and RDF triple stores 
>will be disappointed.  That is the fate of silver bullets.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> It falls on those of us who have the knowledge engineering skills to build 
>good reference ontologies that modeling groups can incorporate, and to support 
>the activities of modeling groups who, as a body, have only come to understand 
>OWL and RDF at the Entities and Relationships (aka Classes and Properties) 
>level.  What we produce will support a little inferencing magic, and provide 
>examples for the domain modelers who really want to learn the knowledge 
>engineering trade.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> -Ed
>>> 
>>>  
>> 
>> Amen !
>>  
>> 
>> -- 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Kingsley Idehen       
>> Founder & CEO 
>> OpenLink Software     
>> Company Web: 
>> http://www.openlinksw.com
>> 
>> Personal Weblog 1: 
>> http://kidehen.blogspot.com
>> 
>> Personal Weblog 2: 
>> http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
>> 
>> Twitter Profile: 
>> https://twitter.com/kidehen
>> 
>> Google+ Profile: 
>> https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about
>> 
>> LinkedIn Profile: 
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
>> 
>> Personal WebID: 
>> http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this
> 
> 
> 
> 
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