Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"

On Jul 16, 2008, at 7:53 AM, Martin Hepp wrote:

> Hi Alan:
> Basically all I wanted to say is that in human communication, we  
> clarify and refine the meaning associated to words in the course of  
> communication,

Consider the difference between two computer scientists arguing about  
the meaning of the term "tractable" and trying to learn a fairly  
alien language (e.g., English if one is only a Japanese speaker) from  
scratch (i.e., no existing translation aids). Heck, imagine trying to  
refine the CS meaning of "tractable" between two people with no  
common language or common mathematical notation.

It can be done, but it's amazingly expensive in time and effort :)

> while the current SW infrastructure requires us to define the  
> meaning of a conceptual element identified by a URI beforehand.

I don't see how this is true. I can use a term without any serious  
refinement of its meaning, e.g.,:

	ex:s ex:p ex:o.

Now I can't do very much with them without some understanding of what  
I intended them to mean, but lets consider:
	ex:Bijan ex:loves ex:mochi.

I still haven't defined this (formally or informally) but I can try  
to write some software or some OWL or whathave you that nails down  
some aspect of these terms.

> Quite clearly, there can be multiple similar elements with  
> different URIs. But we cannot currently negotiate the meaning of  
> this very URI.
[snip]

How can we *not*?

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 08:01:37 UTC