Zen & Chinwag

(This was for LegalXML.Org but please comment)

There seems to be quite a lot of movement in RPC calls for devices. I posted
quite a lot of bumf to the discussion forum Keywords: - Jini, UDDI, SOAP,
UPnP and their surrounding technologies.
Which even if you don’t agree with what I am about to say they are will
worth a look in the context of LegalXML.
Also there seems to be a lot of postings about TBL's Semantic Web AKA Net
Gods tenth commandment. The web was there to some extent before TBL and I
prefer to think of him as the gardener rather than the creator. This is
because the web has this strange but almost organic growth to it. I see the
Semantic web as a great prophesy to provide the next generation of the web
as a huge monolithic open knowledge service. It tackles the web as a whole
as opposed to many of the above technologies, which make it a collection of
many mini services. I also think that he is correct but like so many of the
devout they can take things out of context.
The Semantic web will be a revolution to creating a huge open knowledge
store with the emphasis on open. In the context of Legal though I would say
without trying to offend anyone this is not the case. Intellectual property
rights and the whole concept of legal jargon, precedents and so on places
two legal bodies always in the position where any exchange is the minimum
legal requirement to satisfy both parties. As you will tell I have no legal
experience what so ever but I would so the interchange of legal information
is anything but Semantic and Open. May be someone would like to quantify how
wrong I am there, but anyway. What I believe is that business information is
not Semantic at least not until we have been paid for it.
I started knocking TBL on purpose because I am now going to have a go at the
very idea of LegalXML in its present form. Please bear in mind that these
statements are purely to form a discussion and without a doubt TBL does have
green fingers just like the work that has been undertaken by LegalXML.org.
There seems to be a presumption that a given Legal scenario for example a
court filing will be able to be expressed in a defined structure. That Legal
XML will lay down the protocol law and as long as we adhere we will reach
communication Nirvana. This provides problems with the freedom of speech of
applications where an application may find a better method of expression but
have no method of translation.
I don’t want to try and express the meaning of life but I am quite prepared
to say I had a good day. Like that sentence we need systems that can provide
a decomposition of an entity into what we are prepared to exchange.

What would be interesting is not only at a B2B scenario that applications
themselves would interact just as we do. It’s our first day and we get the
instructions there is the accounts dept, photocopier, your desk, tea break
at 10.30, goodbye.

In one of my previous emails about John McClure’s
http://www.dataconsortium.org/namespace/DCD100.xml I stated I couldn’t
understand it’s use, but I have seen the light.

So here goes for my theoretical XML protocol ‘Chinwag’ the purpose of
Chinwag is to allow two bodies to have a discourse to ascertain there
relevance and have no need of any formal industry specific XML structure.

When we give two applications there first day at work they need to how
relevant they are and how they will communicate so the only formal
constructs of Chinwag are WHORU, IAM, and THISISME.

The legal case management app and accounts app are introduced a polite pause
and the legal case management app goes first ‘WHORU’.

‘IAM’ financial [parents: #Legal, #App Vendor Semantic] GL, Billings…
‘IAM’ cms [parents: #Legal, #App Vendor Semantic] Client, Case, PIM…

John and http://www.dataconsortium.org/namespace/DCD100.xml I now see as
very important because of the following: -

possession [parents: #Right , #Legal ] The holding, control, or custody of
property for one's own use, either as the owner or person with another
right.
possession [parents: #Poltergeist, #Supernatural] The holding, control, or
custody of one, either as the owner or person without right.

Pure example stuff but this is where TBL’s Semantics comes in where it is
the web itself as like the DNS (Domain Name System) the hops or metrics
between those two means the application can deduce that maybe, similar but
your coming from Alaska on that one.

The next conversation is ‘THISISME’ at this point a full API call list is
presented with the XML fragment that represents the return data but the most
important is a by element reference to its own application definition.
Through the context of Semantics and the approximation of definitions a
protocol can be deduced without the need of formal schema declaration.

I am working on ‘Chinwag’ at this moment the actual protocol is very simple
but it is the AI required for a demonstration. So far I have dissected a
‘Chess’ AI engine because I am trying to enable the functionality for
scenario’s where a single API call will not satisfy a transaction but a
series of calls (moves in my case) will.

So it’s Pawns away for me at the moment but I think John McClure’s
DCD100.xml is a very interesting proposition but instead of describing human
Legal keywords provide context, taxonomy of the components of legal
entities. I believe LegalXML should be defining the elements in context but
not the structure.

I know the meaning of life it’s 42, the problem is what is the question.

Received on Friday, 13 April 2001 05:10:46 UTC