Everything you said, Pat, is as if the goal I was troubled with was
worded:
> to increase public
> awareness of the maturity and capabilities of UPPER ONTOLOGIES, in the
broader context of
> maturing ontology technology for
> automating information analysis and exploitation. (01)
I have no trouble with this. But that is not how it was worded. I was
objecting to the overly broad goal that had nothing to do with UO, per
se. (02)
It said:
> to increase public
> awareness of the maturity and capabilities of ontology technology for
> automating information analysis and exploitation. (03)
It is important to know what we are aiming for. (04)
I wonder what were the goals in mind, of the person or persons who
originally conceived to have this event? The title of the event suggests
a stronger UO focus, rather than on ontology technology in general. (05)
Perhaps we need to first be clear on what the thing of interest is (the
event hiterto referred to as the UO Summit) and then find a good term
that accurately reflects it ;-) (06)
Mike (07)
Mike (08)
-----Original Message-----
From: Cassidy, Patrick J. [mailto:pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 8:22 PM
To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
Subject: RE: [uos-convene] RE: Upper Ontology Summit (09)
Just one point to reassure: (010)
UOS-announcement goal 2:
>and to increase public
> awareness of the maturity and capabilities of ontology technology for (011)
> automating information analysis and exploitation. (012)
Mike Uschold: This troubles me. The scope is fantastically broad, and
really has little to do with upper ontologies, per se. Isn't this the
goal of the organizers of the Semantic Technology Conference series in
San Jose? Do we really want to do this in this group? What is our real
goal?
------- (013)
No need to be troubled. Disseminating the news that ontology technology
has reached a stage where seriously useful applications can be developed
is unlikely to be accomplished by a single conference on the West Coast,
and there will be little duplication of the even more "fantastically
broad" goals of that conference. There are certainly some highly
related presentations at that conference, including those by Adam Pease
and Doug Lenat. Interestingly, the summary of one of the presentations
there
(http://www.semtech2006.com/program/sessions/P5.html) echoes one of the
issues the UOS panel might want to deal with - getting people to
overcome their intimidation by the complexity of the large upper
ontologies. And Doug Lenat's topic
(http://www.semtech2006.com/program/sessions/I2.html) also directly
addresses one of the potential approaches to easing adoption of upper
ontology technology. But the upper ontology is only a very small part
of that conference. The focus of the UOS meeting is indeed, as its
name suggests, the upper ontologies (very modest as compared with
"semantic technologies"). (014)
The reason this conference was organized is to gain some anticipated
benefits from finding relations among the existing upper ontologies.
The "real goal" will be whatever the 8 upper ontology custodians decide
it should be, with perhaps some suggestions from the organizers, key
participants (e.g. MU - any suggestions?), potential users, and
potential funders. (015)
The need for some public education on the issue of the utility of upper
ontologies has been suggested (to me) by numerous comments from people
who should know better, to the effect that upper ontologies, if not
utterly irrelevant to current applications, are still an embryonic
technology not likely to warrant attention from people with immediate
problems to solve. That attitude is badly misinformed, and one
beneficial effect one can hope for from the Upper Ontology Summit is to
begin to correct the mistaken impressions that many in the IT field have
absorbed about the utility of upper ontologies and the current state of
the technology. How that current state can be characterized will be one
of the topics that the UOS panel will be uniquely qualified to discuss
and describe to the wider world. (016)
If any among us are going to the Semantic Technology conference in early
March, it might be educational for all of us if you were to carry out
some informal polling to learn how the attendees of that conference view
the utility of upper ontologies. Keep good notes, especially on
specific comments, positive or negative. That might help in deciding
what kind of public information releases would be needed to address any
mistaken impressions about UOs that are circulating among people with an
interest in information semantics. (017)
Pat (018)
Patrick Cassidy
MITRE Corporation
260 Industrial Way
Eatontown, NJ 07724
Mail Stop: MNJE
Phone: 732-578-6340
Cell: 908-565-4053
Fax: 732-578-6012
Email: pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx (019)
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