SUO: *Date 04 Mar 2002 -- Content, Form, Function
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Content, Form, Function
I meant to get back to these observations that
John Sowa made, because I think that they are
critically important to the proper conception
of our task:
JS: This raises the question of what we can standardize if
we are not standardizing content. The answer is form:
we should be focusing on formal ways of organizing all
the ontological resources that are available, including
SUMO, OpenCyc, IMPS, WordNet, EDR, etc.
JS: IFF is an effort in that direction, but it has not been tested on
actual content and applications. Having at least two rich content
ontologies, such as OpenCyc and SUMO, should bring to the fore the
question of how they can be mixed, matched, and used together.
JS: I would like to open up all the other sources
of content for consideration in this mélange.
I would add these observations.
Drawing the distinction between form and content is important
because it is the line between what is our business and what
is not our business. We simply have no business trying to
redo the work of content experts and domain specialists.
To invoke the analogy between "concept processors" and word processors,
our job is analogous to writing the specifications for a word processor,
our is not the business of supplying ready-made term papers to students.
Most of the domain knowledge that actually exists in the world is not yet
in the above short list of "ontological resources" and much of the content
that does reside in some of these sources would be just plain ridiculous to
any specialists actually working in the supposedly covered domains.
So I think that the list of "other sources" and the overall mix of
ingredients in this mélange would need to be widened considerably
beyond what's currently contained in these putative resources.
To advert a potential misunderstanding that I can already see coming
down the road, I am decidedly not saying that there is nothing left
for us "meta, generic, abstract, philosophical" folks to do once the
lion's share of content and domain cutlets have been carved off the
corpus of the world's knowledge beast. What is left is precisely
the form, and I would add the function, and those are the aspects
of knowledge evolution that we should be working to facilitate.
Again the analogy with word processors;
the real design and spec questions are:
1. What are the generic forms of conceptual content
that concept users need to be supported in using?
2. What are the generic functions of conceptual work?
Which functions can be given supporting utilities?
I think that those are the sorts of services that
a standard ontology utility ought to be providing.
Jon Awbrey
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