Re: Monotony

>>But in any case, the key point here is that reasoning on the 
>>semantic web is supposed to be done not by people, but by software. 
>>If people were doing it then it would be the WWW, not the SW.
>
>I think your wrong here.  I think that that the senario where RDF 
>facts inform humans, then humans use those facts in their actions; 
>will far outweigh the senario where automated agents actually 
>perform logical reasoning from fact to consequence.

Well, if you really do feel that way, I wonder why you are even 
bothering with the semantic web technology at all. After all, people 
can read natural language embedded in HTML much more easily than they 
can read RDF. Seems to me that RDF/XML is almost perverse as a 
notation for human beings to read and understand.

>  And even where the automated agent performs some task, it will 
>seldom use logic programming to arrive at the consequence, rather it 
>will use standard "if, then" programming.

The way it is programmed is irrelevant. But in any case I don't think 
there is such a thing as a single 'standard' programming technique or 
style.  There are communities of users, particularly in Europe and 
Japan, for whom logic programming has been 'standard' for about 20 
years or so. Prolog engines sometimes provide the fastest-running 
code for applications like this.

>In fact, I believe the case you are purporting as the most common 
>will actually be so rare, that there should be a prize given to the 
>designer of such an agent.

Software agent technology is almost routine these days. Amusingly 
enough, I am typing this while sitting in a DAML PI meeting listening 
to a talk about a large-scale deployed military information system 
called SONAT which uses software agents to connect DAML ontologies 
and draw conclusions automatically. The field has got to the point 
where people are worrying about things like strategies for 
reconciling conflicting access policies between agents.

(BTW, the Cmap tools (version 3) uses what is essentially agent 
technology under the hood in order to support real-time 
collaboration.)

Pat

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Received on Wednesday, 16 October 2002 13:30:25 UTC