Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Re: Semantic web meta data
I agree. Ontology = Propaganda. The best tools are those which do not
anticipate any search ontology, such as InfoSelect, askSAM, and so far as I
understand it, Google. (01)
A further problem is that our society is fundamentally against objective
information, legislating and bending information to personal, political,
religious, and corporate gain at every possible turn. In Gene Roddenberry's
mythic history of Vulcan, he predicted that an advanced civilization would
have to come to terms with the way its reacts to information, or collapse. (02)
We have no "religion" (in the original sense of the word) of Information.
This is why KM is failing, and the root cause of Wall Street's problems. (03)
Malcolm Dean
Los Angeles (04)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Johannes Ernst" <jernst@r-objects.com>
To: <ba-ohs-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Re: Semantic web meta data (05)
> At 14:23 +0100 2002/08/05, Murray Altheim wrote:
>
> >What does anyone mean
> >when they say a word? How does anyone else interpret that word?
>
> Years ago, a fairly young Indian co-worker (went to college in US,
> but had very traditional parents back in India) confided in me that
> he had a major problem. His parents were a arranging a marriage for
> him in India, and he was horrified at the prospect of getting married
> to someone he had never seen and most likely wouldn't like. He asked
> me a variation of "shouldn't I be allowed to find a wife for myself,
> someone whom I love?"
>
> I asked him what response his parents would give to him when asked
> the same question, and he said it would be something like "you don't
> marry for love" and "if you want to have an affair with someone you
> love after you are married that would be fine." He was even more
> horrified at that idea.
>
> Obviously, he and his parents had very different interpretations of
> what the word "marriage" meant. (Note that this was not a language
> translation problem!) We then embarked on this modeling exercise,
> basically, trying to discern what the underlying concepts were, and
> what names different people would give to those concepts. And we
> discovered that what his parents would call "permanent girl-friend
> outside marriage" was much closer to his idea of marriage, while
> their idea of marriage was a concept he did not feel he could really
> understand.
>
> Global ontology? Maybe ... but it is much much harder than it is
> generally appreciated. Being an immigrant to the US, and not a native
> speaker, I'm close to deciding for myself that any form of language
> translation by anyone (and I'm not even talking about computers) is
> impossible (not "hard" -- impossible) because the underlying concepts
> don't really map. And if we can't do that very well, how can we
> construct a global ontology? I don't see how ... maybe 50 years from
> now, with the process being in step 7 after 20 years of trying, "and
> then, a miracle occurs" ;-) (06)