Re: SUO: RE: Topic Maps
Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com:
> Colleagues,
>
>I haven't seen anyone else pick up on this proposal by Chris Angus.
>
>Topic Maps is slated as the infrastructure for the way that semantics on the
>web are going to be managed.
Really? By whom? W3C seems to have committed to RDF
http://www.w3.org/2000/07/hs78/rdf-ms as the basis for its
'semantic web' effort (http://www.w3.org/2000/01/sw/), and Darpa is
funding DAML+OIL http://dtsn.darpa.mil/iso/programtemp.asp?mode=347
, http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/DAML-OIL/ which is now close to
an international standard, being compatible both with the
EEC-mandated OIL http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/ and RDF. Several
of us are involved with the DAML+OIL initiative, so I think that on
the whole we are fairly well on, if not ahead, of this curve.
>So I have a question:
>
>Are we undertaking an exercise for intellectual satisfaction, or do we want
>to make some mark upon the world?
>
>If we wait before getting involved with Topic Maps, then some other group
>will grab the opportunity, and we risk being consigned to the dustbin of
>irrelevance (the Betamax of ontologies).
>
>Let me put it the other way. If we don't want to be an ontology for the web,
>what do we want to be an ontology for?
'an ontology for the web' is a tricky phrase. We certainly want to be
an ontology ON the web, and hopefully a valuable web resource. But
the 'ontology FOR the web' is often taken to mean an ontology for use
by web agent software, and I think that most of the SUO isnt in fact
directed chiefly to that goal.
Pat Hayes
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