Re: SUO: Negotiation Instead of Legislation
John,
I agree with much of what you say, however your conclusion does not follow.
Adhering to a standard is not required by any law of the universe.
That there are times and places in which a "legislated" ontology is
of no use is unquestionable. Developing one does not suddenly mean
that it must be used in those cases.
There *are* times and places when such ontologies are of use, and
this is the reason they should be built.
I have found that having a reference ontology is, among other things,
extremely helpful to people, even experienced people, who are
building a new ontology. It tells you where to start. Even the
upper level ontology published in your book, John (flawed as I may
think it is), has proven incredibly useful as an analysis tool to
people building OO, DB, KR, etc. ontologies. It has been better to
have it around than to banish it because some people (like me) don't
agree with it.
Personally, as I've said on the SUO several times, I believe there
should be more than one, but still a small number, of SUOs. The
first step in developing a negotiated ontology should be to pick the
SUO to use.
-Chris
At 12:28 PM -0500 2/20/02, John F. Sowa wrote:
>In my recent notes, I have explained why I believe that legislated
>ontologies, such as CYC, SUMO, and others, are misguided and obsolete.
>
>Some people have objected that we have to start somewhere and that
>we should build on what has already been done. I agree with both
>of those principles, but I disagree with the suggested starting
>points and the suggested direction in which to proceed.
>
>Instead, I believe that our starting point must be the existing
>legacy computer systems that have been implemented over the past
>50 years and that won't go away for a long, long time. Furthermore,
>I believe that new developments must proceed in an evolutionary way
>from where we are to where we want to be instead of an all-or-nothing
>jump into the unknown.
>
>In my keynote presentation for the Knowledge Technologies Conference,
>which will be given in Seattle on March 13th, I make those points,
>and I discuss successful implementations that have worked on major
>systems. Following are the slides for the talk:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/negotiat.htm
>
>At the end of the slides are some recommended readings for further
>background about these issues.
>
>John Sowa
--
Christopher A. Welty http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/
Vassar College Computer Science Dept. Voice: (845) 437-5992
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0462 Fax: (845) 437-7498