- From: Semantics-ProjectParadigm <metadataportals@yahoo.com>
- Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 14:04:10 -0800 (PST)
- To: Azamat <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
- Cc: 'SW-forum' <semantic-web@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <30282.34569.qm@web45516.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
I perfectly understand the federation concept. What bugs me is who will be in charge.
My organization's name hails from the legend of the Warriors of Rainbow, a native North American (both Canada and USA) tale. We subscribe to the essence of this legend wholeheartedly.
Part of the native American wisdom entails that although the Warriors of the Rainbow will arise around the world and save mother Earth from destruction caused by the greed of Western men, there is no council of tribes or even one supreme Warrior.
The essential question becomes how to set up a federated system with all equals, or more succinctly put how do we create a flat supervisory structure based on unanimous consensus?
If the European Union may serve as an example or better yet the United Nations, it will bog down in bureaucracy.
I am privileged to be both a technologist and a "hands-on field worker" in the area of sustainable development.
The human condition will always know greed, poverty, and political, cultural and religious divides.
When it comes to the creation, acquisition, dissemination, utilization and abuse of knowledge these factors will always play a role and thus will severely hamper the final form of the semantic web
The ultimate semantic web I envision is a dynamically changing patchwork of federated domains of knowledge and moreover the patchwork will look different to every user, according to his requirements.
This individuality issue inherent to every user will make creating this universal federated ontology system an almost utopic quest.
By the way I did propose starting a federation of semantic web technology user/developers groups in earlier threads, but to my knowledge nothing has come from this request.
Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747 8280
Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
www.rainbowwarriors.net
Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide
www.projectparadigm.info
NGO-Opensource: Creating ICT tools for NGOs worldwide for Project Paradigm
www.ngo-opensource.org
MetaPortal: providing online access to web sites and repositories of data and information for sustainable development
www.metaportal.info
SemanticWebSoftware, part of NGO-Opensource to enable SW technologies in the Metaportal project
www.semanticwebsoftware.info
--- On Thu, 1/8/09, Azamat <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy> wrote:
From: Azamat <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
Subject: Re: Federated Ontology System: was semantic technologies training/request
To: metadataportals@yahoo.com
Cc: "'SW-forum'" <semantic-web@w3.org>
Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 9:36 PM
On Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:59 PM, Milton wrote:
"Personally I like the motto on the US coins because it is telling of the
road we should think of taking: "E pluribus unum".
It is there with the Eagle on the Great Seal, and must be on your passport,
meaning, "Out of many, one", making one from many, one unified nation from many
cultures, races, backgrounds, beliefs, views; a single nation from a diversity
of states; unity-in-diversity, and diversity-in-unity; what really i try to say
here. This motto shall also work for the SW globally federated ontology.
One can merge ontologies of different schemes, languages, scope, degree,
granularity in several ways, like the different cultures in a society:
a) multiculturalism (multi-ontologies, loose and free as birds or
anarchists, like a bottom-up folksonomy, a people's taxonomy);
b) melting pot (mixing and amalgamating ontologies, like NeOn);
c) Monoculturism (absorbing all numerosity of ontologies into a single
whole, like CYC);
d) Core culture (Leitkultur, a top-bottom globally federated ontology, call
it "E pluribus unum semantic project").
Hope this cultural metaphor is of more use.
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
From:
Semantics-ProjectParadigm
To: Azamat ; Hugh Glaser
Cc: SW-forum
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:59
PM
Subject: Re: Federated Ontology System:
was semantic technologies training/request
A centralized unifying ontology system would be
controlled by whom?
The internet is by nature a decentralized
collection of resources with varying degrees of (open)
accessibility.
As a fairly recent newcomer to this list it has
become apparent that this issue is a much contested one.
A
centralized system would benefit those actors who require control like
national security agencies, and non-democratic governments bent on
controlling the freedom of speech and access to information of its
(dissenting) citizens.
Another group which would benefit greatly
is the horde of malicious users of the internet.
Mathematically
speaking the sheer size of the internet and in particular the deeper
layers make centralized schemes a technical impossibility.
The
W3C standards and similar standards should be used to develop tools that
enable ever more categories of users to have semantic technology enabled
open access to information.
I am certain that the open source
software community, open access community and open networks community
would oppose any centralized schemes.
And then there is the
question of knowledge representation and modeling. As a mathematician
with a passion for formal knowledge modeling I have found there is no
such thing as a unified system for formal knowledge modeling.
Some
interesting articles have been written on how some fundamental theorems
by Godel and Turing are applicable to the combined human knowledge
represented by the internet.
Add to this the fact that according
to Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/), the human race speaks some
6, 912 living languages and my recent questions to this list about
universal linguistic engines and tools for the semantic web yielded no
satisfactory results, even if we had centralized ontology schemes. much
of the human race would be left in the cold because the knowledge would
not be accessible in their native language.
Two years ago our
organization tried to sell a project called 500 Languages for Creating
Sustainable Development to the international community and were told
that the sheer magnitude and scope of a project trying to create
universal digital information tools for sustainable development in the
500 most spoken languages on earth would make it almost impossible both
in human and financial resources.
Personally I like the motto on
the US coins because it is telling of the road we should think of
taking: "E pluribus unum".
Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747
8280
Rainbow Warriors Core
Foundation
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch
Caribbean
www.rainbowwarriors.net
Project Paradigm: A structured approach
to bringing the tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders
worldwide
www.projectparadigm.info
NGO-Opensource: Creating ICT tools for
NGOs worldwide for Project Paradigm
www.ngo-opensource.org
MetaPortal: providing online access to
web sites and repositories of data and information for sustainable
development
www.metaportal.info
SemanticWebSoftware, part of
NGO-Opensource to enable SW technologies in the Metaportal
project
www.semanticwebsoftware.info
--- On Wed,
1/7/09, Hugh Glaser <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
From:
Hugh Glaser <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Federated
Ontology System: was semantic technologies training/request
To:
"Azamat" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
Cc: "SW-forum"
<semantic-web@w3.org>
Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2009, 11:59
AM
Thanks Azamat.
I am trying to stay quite specific here.
You are making some statements about how you think the Semantic Web
should/will work.
You are supporting these statements by making assertions about other
systems, that may have relevance, but it is not always clear that you
establish what the relevance is.
And you seem to be taking specific views of those other systems that would
not always win 100% agreement with experts in those fields.
So I fail to see the value of your assertion that ”Like it or not, to order
and unify things, you need a central authority”, as you seem to make no
arguments to support it that actually refer to the domain we are discussing..
On 07/01/2009 11:43, "Azamat" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy> wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:00 AM, Hugh wrote:
> "We often
reflect our political beliefs in our technical work; it
doesn't
> validate either. And if you were a Syndicalist Anarchist, you might see
the
> Semantic Web
> differently - but would that make your view any more correct?"
>
> Dear Hugh,
> It is funny how intelligent people may misread each other.
> This is not the matter of your politics. It might be surprising, but the
> words as notions tend to change their meanings, extending or narrowing
their
> senses, either by the processes of generalization or specialization, or
by
> spreading, or transference, or hyperbolizing, or by figurative extension.
> Now, dealing with the terms 'to unite' or 'to unify' [web
resources], one
> have many connotations, as 'amalgamate, blend, cement, cohere,
consolidate,
> combine, compound, connect, federate, integrate, link, merge, fuse,
join',
> etc, but all with
specific differences in meanings. What is good with
> 'federate', it suggests 'the act of unifying of heterogenous
and autonomous
> entities under a central authority', which can be naturally extended
as a
> 'central ontology".
> Keeping in mind its political and data base meanings, we can talk about a
> top-bottom globally federated ontology, having a flexible hierarchical
> network topology; the star, the mesh, the loop, the bar are all their.
> I have an impression that Enrico's NeOn scheme is mainly about the
mesh
> ontology, a network their the component ontologies are directly to be
> connected to every other element ontologies.That's just impossible in
all
> senses.
> All the world works like this, any real entities are interconnected via
the
> fundamental elements, principles and laws; in the physical world, it is
> matter and energy, fundamental forces
and interactions, gravitation,
> electromagnetism, weak and strong forces.
And to address the wider issue, which I know I should resist, but can't:
I really don't see that referring to these principles and laws helps to
support the statement you make in your next paragraph summing up, saying we
need a "central authority". I think electromagnetism seems to work
pretty
well without an obvious central authority.
>
> Summing:
> Like it or not, to order and unify things, you need a central authority,
in
> the Globally Federated Ontology (GFO), it is a global scheme of all
> resources, capable to integrate all sorts of particular schemes, data
> models, and views. This most challenging problem is be the first focus of
> any large-scale SW research projects, imho.
> Regards,
I'm not saying I think you are wrong, but I would be pleased to see
arguments directly addressing the
technological issues.
Regards
Hugh
> Azamat Abdoullaev
> http://www.eis.com.cy
> [see how the idea of knowledge federation may work for sciences and
> technology as well].
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hugh Glaser" <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> To: "Azamat" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>; "Enrico
Motta" <e.motta@open.ac.uk>
> Cc: "SW-forum" <semantic-web@w3.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Federated Ontology System: was semantic technologies
> training/request
>
>
>> One thing which seemed a poor argument here:
>>
>>
>> On 06/01/2009 22:28, "Azamat" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, January 06, 2009 7:06 PM, Enrico Motta wrote:
>>> "...if you look at the SW as it is today, you can
already see
thousands
>>> and
>>> thousands of alternative
>>> conceptualizations. This is why the NeOn project is developing a
variety
>>> of
>>> practical solutions
>>> that focus on enabling the development, maintenance and use of
networked
>>> ontologies, rather than assuming that some individual or
>>> organization will give us the 'global ontology'."
>>>
>>> Dear Enrico,
>>>
>>> There is the whole point which somebody of us missing. The issue
is, how
>>> you
>>> are doing the networking of domain ontologies. What one read as
a
>>> definition: "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".
Softly speking,
>>> it
>>> is not very productive to think that way; for nobody in the world,
in no
>>> time and money, is capable to interrelate in such ways an
innumerable
>>> number
>>> of particular ontologies, distributed, autonomous and
heterogeneous, with
>>> their specific local schemas, semantics, languages, formats, data
models,
>>> and structures.
>>> Seemingly, You had an impression that i suggested a centralized,
unitary
>>> ontology system governed by a single global schema. This is not
the case.
>>> This matter is now also discussed on the Ontolog Forum. Some main
points.
>>> I
>>> am talking about a realistic, flexible and scalable model of a
federated
>>> (web) ontology [used in Ontopaedia, check the Index page,
>>>
http://www.eis.com.cy]. The model implies such effective notions
as
>>> "ontology federation", "federated ontology
system", "federated global
>>> schema", 'federated ontology architecture", and
"federated local
>>> schemas".
>>> The notion of a federal union proved its viability in politics as
a
>>> federal
>>> form of government, where power is divided between a central
authority
>>> and
>>> regional authorities. Also, it was successfully applied in the
database
>>> theory and practice, as "a federated architecture for
database systems"
>>> or
>>> "a federated architecture for information management".
>> Notwithstanding discussions about which political systems have proved
>> themselves effective...
>> I really don't think anyone can claim that database federation
has
been
>> successful in the modern, open, web-enabled world.
>> The difficulty that I have in publishing my database and have it
easily
>> federate with other databases is a (the?) major motivator for SW
work.
>>> Now, alike with the power, knowledge is divided between a central
>>> ontology
>>> and regional ontologies. Then a federation ontology will consist
of a
>>> single
>>> central ontology (maintaining the global schema, the semantics,
the
>>> topology, the entry of new ontologies) and a multitude of
component
>>> ontologies with own
>>> local schemas, but members of the federation. There are
technical
>>> issues,
>>> such as federated mechanism, semantic management, schemas
integration and
>>> coordination, search, information retrieval and query
processing,
etc.
>>> But
>>> what is essential: the reality of the concept of Federated
Ontology
>>> System,
>>> which, to my experience, looks more promising than any
(botom-top)
>>> nonfederated ontology systems, either unitary or centralized or
loose and
>>> unconnected, currently prevailing and propagating as pandemic on
the WWW.
>> We often reflect our political beliefs in our technical work; it
doesn't
>> validate either.
>> And if you were a Syndicalist Anarchist, you might see the Semantic
Web
>> differently - but would that make your view any more correct?
>> Best
>> Hugh
>>>
>>> kind regards,
>>> Azamat Abdoullaev
>>> http://www.eis.com.cy
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Enrico Motta"
<e.motta@open.ac.uk>
>>> To: "Azamat" <abdoul@cytanet..com.cy>
>>> Cc: "'SW-forum'" <semantic-web@w3.org>;
<paola.dimaio@gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 7:06 PM
>>> Subject: Re: semantic technologies training/request
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> At 20:18 +0200 30/12/08, Azamat wrote:
>>>> €
>>>> On Sunday, December 28, 2008 12:55, Paola wrote:
>>>> "PMI 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/>http://ontoware.org/ as well as
lots of others"
>>>>
>>>> Paola,
>>>> Thanks for an intersting
link.
>>>>
>>>> I was intrigued to see what is presented as
"ontoware", finding the
>>>> following project as most engaging,
>>>>
<http://www.neon-project..org/web-content/>http://www.neon-project.org/web-c
>>>> on
>>>> tent/.
>>>> Being surprised with overwhelming ontological activities, one
is
>>>> attracted
>>>> to browse the project boasting that:
>>>> "NeOn is a 14.7 million Euros project involving 14
European partners and
>>>> co-funded by the European Commission’s Sixth Framework
Programme under
>>>> grant number IST-2005-027595. NeOn started in March 2006 and
has a
>>>> duration
>>>> of 4 years. Our aim is to advance the state of the art in
using
>>>> ontologies
>>>> for
large-scale semantic applications in the distributed
organizations.
>>>> Particularly, we aim at improving the capability to handle
multiple
>>>> networked ontologies that exist in a particular context, are
created
>>>> collaboratively, and might be highly dynamic and constantly
evolving."
>>>>
>>>> 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".
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Azamat,
>>>
>>> A lot of people (including myself) believe that
>>> it is both extremely unlikely, not to mention
>>> undesirable, that a common global ontological
>>> schema will become a "standard ontology for
>>> machines and people". And indeed, if you look at
>>> the SW as it is today, you can already see
>>> thousands and thousands of alternative
>>> conceptualizations. This is why the NeOn project
>>> is developing a variety of practical
solutions
>>> that focus on enabling the development,
>>> maintenance and use of networked ontologies,
>>> rather than assuming that some individual or
>>> organization will give us the 'global ontology'.
>>>
>>> Very Best Wishes
>>>
>>> Enrico Motta
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> The Open University is incorporated by Royal
>>> Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England
>>> & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC
>>> 038302).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
Received on Thursday, 8 January 2009 22:04:56 UTC