RE: DAML+OIL (March 2001) released

><- >What is your problem with that kind of politics?  It seems to
><- me that we got
><- >too many cooks mucking with the soup.  We got CG, and KIF,  and CycL and
><- >lord know what other KR systems floating around.  It makes my
><- head spin !
><-
><- My dear fellow, you have hardly started. But if you want to legislate
><- the world so that there is only one KR langauge or reasoning engine,
><- then I would actively oppose that on political grounds, yes. That is
><- like saying that we should all eat one standard food, and who needs
><- fish?
>
>I think the role of RDF with all the different KR representations is as a
>common interface - the argument that this only needs 2n kinds of converters
>rather that the n^2 required to get all the languages/representations
>talking to each other directly.

That was precisely the motivation for developing KIF (Knowledge 
Interchange Format). It didn't work then and it won't work now. What 
MIGHT work is to define a commonly accepted set of protocols for 
negotiating exchanges of content; but the dream of an universal 
common language is as old as the hills (people one thought it would 
be Latin; a bit more recently they suggested ADA)  and is still just 
as much a fantasy.

>A common interface that is processible using
>existing web technologies would presumably have some additional benefits...

Please, spare me the Web preaching. The Web is nothing more than an 
interchange format and a social compact. There are no 'Web 
technologies' that weren't already pre-Web technologies.

>Of course inferences could be made on RDF directly,

No, they couldn't. RDF hasnt got the expressive resources to even 
describe the syntax of logic properly. If it did I would be willing 
to use it: I've got used to dozens of alternative syntaxes in my life 
(fashions in notation come and go, like skirt lengths). XML, for 
example, would be fine.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Friday, 6 April 2001 14:55:48 UTC