- From: Pdm <editor@content-wire.com>
- Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 16:40:58 +0000
- CC: semanticweb@yahoogroups.com, semantic-web@w3.org
In computer science, 'data' offers a reductive representation of 'the world' - ie whatever we can manage to shrink into a database I look at my pile of shoes on the one hand, and my table that contains the data relating to the pile of shoes on the other hand, and I see two very different things. The reality is the pile of shoes, the table is a representation of the data. A photo, would be a visual representaiton. Data, as understood by a computer system does not represent reality in its entirety and complexity, but a part of it. What aspects of reality are represented by data, depends by the purpose that the data must serve. Similarly, when modelling an ontology, we aim to represent reality as much as possible, and then often only develop those aspects that are particularly useful to the purpose of our system development (every reality can be dissected into subatomic particles, may its not necessary on an everyday basis) On this list, we have seen a heuristic search discussion come up ' search by humming' . And someone asked: what do we model, the intervals between different notes, or the cultural context they belong to? He was asking, what aspect of reality are we going to model? (reply will follow, short answer is: depends on the purpose of the system) Interestingly, this means that our ability to represent data has become much more versatile, now we can store and search data according to a variety of parameters/ In the protege list, someone started a 'motorbike ontology'. I am particularly interested in modelling the relationships of the motorbike compontents to each other, because I am thinking of a motorbike ontology for the purpose of building a 'self assembling' motorbike, where the components contain a chip that knows where the component goes and how should be fitted with the others. My ontology may model an aspect of reality that may be totally irrelevant to a supplier who is simply building an online catalog for his spare parts But I would be interested to know if people thinks that there should be only one ontology. That would pretty much mean that there should be only one view of the world? I dont think so. The bottom line is that understanding reality - ie getting the facts that are important to your system goals right - is key to developing intelligent systems Ontologies are tools used to support that process Wheter computer science has anything to do with intelligent systems, or with reality for that matter, depends very much what aspect of the computer science we consider. In the last ten years ' a layer of intelligence has been added even to the dumbest bits of Computers, ie data and networks, whereby ' intelligence' I refer to the ability of a system to understand and respond to an envrionment, Even data and networks are becoming increasingly capable of context sensitive behaviour Not everybody's mind is sufficiently open to understand the breadth and potential of new paradigms. Paola Di Maio >> >> >> >> >> > > >
Received on Thursday, 12 January 2006 09:41:44 UTC