Re: good references re. ontologies for S*m*ntic W*b
One for the Semantic Web
Quoting "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>:
>
> The Semantic Web started with RDF, then OWL, and now SWRL.
> Each one is getting more expressive, and to predict the
> trends, I would suggest a comparison with Cyc. The first
> representation for Cyc (as documented by Lenat and Guha in
> their 1990 book) was based on frames. But as they continued,
> they kept adding more features until they got a very expressive
> version of logic that includes all of FOL plus metalevels,
> contexts, and nomonotonic reasoning.
Well, at least SW has these advantages that CYC does not have:
-it is open: everyone has an immediate access to all ontologies and annotations.
-it is free: no one has to pay to use it.
-the syntax and semantics of all SW languages have been specified by an open
and international W3C: people can participate.
-the actual content of SW is created in a similar manner than Linux: by
different people in different locations at different times.
-it is already clear that RDF-based ontology schemas facilitate building
applications: it is better to have the domain model separate from the used
programming language
All this 'should' make SW better than CYC from most of the reasonable
aspects. It seems that the best thing for CYC would be to just give it away
for free in order to get more people using it and not forgetting it, or
maybe it is already too late for that.
> Lenat always said that nothing was ever added to Cyc unless
> it was absolutely necessary for the applications. Since all
> documents and applications eventually make their way to the
> WWW, there is no aspect of semantics that would not be needed
> for the Semantic Web.
Isn't this 'the very problem'. How to create a deterministic way to write
expressions with complex languages like SWRL in order to represent those
expressions in a deterministic way to an end user. This seems to be
impossible, because it is impossible to set a deterministic rule of how to
describe all things in general. But it is possible to set relatively
deterministic rules to describe and represent relatively common things. I
had the picture that W3C is aiming to do this, little by little.
> For your bibliography, following are a couple of my papers.
> The first is a survey article that was widely cited by
> people working on the Semantic Web:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/ontometa.htm
> Ontology, Metadata, and Semiotics
>
> The second is a cautionary tale about the knowledge soup
> and the problems and pitfalls it involves:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/challenge.pdf
> The Challenge of Knowledge Soup
>
> This talk raises some troublesome questions that any attempt
> to do anything about semantics must address. It is not
> possible to get past the difficulties without recognizing
> them and either solving them or finding ways of working
> around them. Ignoring them can only lead to disaster.
>
Yes, that is essential, but it is hard to think of new better means of how
the evolution process of SW could be guided than those that are already in
use. Any ideas?
-A.Styrman