Re: semantic technologies training/request

Count me among the supporters of the NeOn vision here.

Speaking as a person who wants to facilitate marine science, the  
"integrated collection of domain ontologies (knowledge bases)  
supported by a common global schema" is a very attractive vision, but  
not sufficiently achievable in the short term to be useful to my  
target audience (which includes scientists, technologists, educators,  
policy makers, and the lay public, just to be clear).

On the other hand, we desperately need to capture the huge amount of  
scientific knowledge and metadata that are represented by current  
scientific vocabularies. These include all forms of existing science  
vocabularies, most of which are extremely poorly or not at all  
captured.  Having appropriate tools and representations to do this  
semantically -- and it seems to me RDF and OWL are extremely  
appropriate -- improves 'knowledge to the masses' in many ways.   
Providing capabilities to increase collaborative development of  
vocabularies, with technologies that produce computationally available  
information, is equally valuable to future understanding.

So I haven't had a chance to assimilate everything NeOn has done, but  
I know a lot of it will be useful to our mission soon (quite a bit  
already has been). I hope they stay with that track.

John

On Dec 30, 2008, at 10:18 AM, Azamat wrote:

> Here is the NeOn basic defintion: "A Network of Ontologies is a  
> collection of ontologies related together via a variety of different  
> relationships such as mapping, modularization, version and   
> dependency relationships". Indeed, all fundamental troubles are in  
> assumptions and presumptions.
>
> Glancing at the content, one might start questioning the promised  
> tools and applications for justified reasons. First, instead of a  
> variety of diverse, modular, individual ontologies, the Semantic Web  
> implies an integrated collection of domain ontologies ( knowledge  
> bases) supported by a common global schema as a "standard ontology  
> for machines and people". Second, the "network ontology model"  
> hardly can be modelled as a mere extension of the set theory, where  
> sets just replaced by ontologies, operations on sets by operations  
> on ontologies; relations involved in set theory, by the "ontology  
> mapping metamodel" (see the NeOn Deliverables, project reports, http://www.neon-project.org/web-content/index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=categories&Itemid=73) 
> . Again, the OWL logical language can not properly define the  
> network ontology model real semantics, serve as a global scheme for  
> individual ontologies, function as the infrastructure for the large- 
> scale semantic applications, etc.
> I compliment E. Motta and Co on their organizational ability to get  
> funds for such kind of material, but on the minus side, it sets a  
> benchmark of quality for the SW ontology applications for the  
> current FP7 programs, not mentioning the necessity to meet the  
> public expectations. It seems a suspicion about "the distributed  
> knowledge, the wisdom of the crowd" has a good reason.
> Allow me to advise to the NeOn group to try and focus on a more  
> friutful assumption: "A Network of Ontologies is a collection of  
> ontologies related together via a single global ontology",  
> constituting the general framework classification for domain  
> knowledge in various spheres of science, technology, commerce and  
> industry.
>
> Wishing to All a Prosperous New Year,
>
> Azamat Abdoullaev
> http://www.eis.com.cy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: paola.dimaio@gmail.com
> To: Semantic Web ; Marco Ronchetti
> Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 12:55 PM
> Subject: semantic technologies training/request
>
> Greetings
>
> I am starting to be introduced to great sw tools being released by  
> the various EU funded projects, for which lots and lots
> of public money is been used
>
> such as
>
> http://ontoware.org/
> as well as lots of others
>
> Although all of these materials have some tutorials and  
> documentation, the need for
> face to face training is mounting, and likely to increase
>
>  I have not yet found during any of my trips distributed,  
> connected,  open training centers
> possibly c/o universities, whre people could drop in and get some  
> guidance on how to get their hands dirty
>  and have the chance to spend some contact hours with students and  
> tutors who may want to share their expertise
> and help newcomers to become experts
>
>
> If this is at all possible, dear Santa, it's on my wishlist, and in  
> my prayers for 2009
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Paola Di Maio
> *************************************************
>


John

--------------
John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@mbari.org>  -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org

Received on Tuesday, 30 December 2008 21:41:03 UTC