More How will the semantic web emerge

Joshua Allen wrote:

> Dictionaries are simply snapshot of current usage at a particular point
> in time [0].  The disease of attributing any more authority than that is
> thankfully constrained to the priesthood; the "vulgate" or "putonghua"
> simply ignore the dictionary and talk to each other.
> 
> The argument for ontologies is often that they are a pre-requisite for
> meaningful communication.

The classic controversy in these matters is the "prescriptive" vs.
"descriptive" nature of dictionaries with the former representing this
"withdrawal syndrome" being postulated for ontologies. How well they
worked is exemplified by the problems of making the information in a
library's card catalogue (beyond # and location) have merit forever.

Indices and annotations must be updated as often as dictionaries to
really make sense and since the SW is about those items it must be
dynamic as in a descriptive model dictionary.

That's why there are new looks at history with new bios of Abe Lincoln
coming out faster than any human can read them all!

The labeling of certain menu items as "soup" OR "salad" attempts to
freeze the reality of your meal choices to some pre-determined set and
it is way beyond just possible that many of our either/or things will
have a lot of both/niether choices called for in the future.

This is what we are about: dynamism without the absurdity of
territory-free maps like "supernatural", etc.

Love.

Received on Friday, 16 December 2005 23:03:45 UTC