RE: Semantic web for life sciences: vision vs. reality

- Eric,

> Again, this reduces to what works best for any particular 
> community which (again) reduces to a social problem. Getting 
> folks around the table to contribute to the discussion and 
> find out what works and what doesn't is a huge step to 
> addressing this problem. That said, from my perspective, this 
> step is being taken and thats an important indicator of success.

Yes.  

Eric.  I wonder if you, or whoever on this list has the social and political
ties, can use the W3C's brand name to invite peoples from "powerful groups"
like MGED and PSI to participate HCLS.  

Honestly, I am not sure if the idea is a good or bad because my feelings is
that they are very reluctant to change so that bring them in might lead to a
stalemate on the discussion.  But their influence on the community should
not be ignored.

I just came back from the bianual NHLBI's meetings (NHLBI founded two
proteomic centers and I work for one of them) and was trying to promote SW
technologies because I do think the ML-approach eventually is going to hit
the sack soon.  But someone thought that I was pushing my own agenda (which
I don't know what to say) and insist nothing is wrong with the ML approach.
There are big gaps to fill.

The MGED's reaction, (I subscribe their discussion group too), to Soldatova
and King's NBT commentary paper is that they are quite upset.  Same can be
said to PSI group.  Someone tried to hook me up with PSI a few months ago.
But emails stopped right after my first disagrement to their thinking that
OWL is the technology to help people building better web pages :-(. I don't
blame them because truly comprehend RDF/OWL is not an easy task, it takes
not just the understand of technology itself but more so the vision on how
things should and can work in SW. 

But our true intension is never to criticize them but in fact trying to help
them. So by bring them in and share the understanding and vision through
communication, they, or we as well, might be willing to change for a better
future.
  
Xiaoshu

Received on Friday, 30 September 2005 15:19:11 UTC