SUO: Universal Time, other universals, and cultural context of SUO.
Chris, Paul
This group is seeking universals, it seems. So I am amazed that Chris
senseful proposition was received by such sarcastic answers as yours or the
conversion table sent back by Franck, only mentioning US local time(s). Why
not London or Paris or Sydney or Bombay?
I have been an (amateur) astronomer way long before dealing with knowledge
technologies, and before the Web age ...
Astronomers worldwide have long ago tackled the time question by using
Universal Time - UT replacing GMT in 1972, if I remember well. This is a
truly international standard, and no astronomer, amateur or professional, in
the world would speak now in any "local time". "In this age of computers",
all observatory clocks refer to a reference clock, and all events times
refer to the Universal Time scale ... Even US observatories use it :o)
When the Web exploded, I thought that all Web communities would quickly and
joyfully adopt this very simple standard, both technically useful and well
in the spirit of the Web-based "planetary village" and standards for
knowledge interchange. Discovering it was not the case was a great
disappointment for me. And I suppose missed rendez-vous and conference call
delays due to time misunderstanding are counting by thousands every day, not
to speak about lost of time checking about it ...
It raises for me corollary fundamental questions. Please don't take them as
anyhow provocative, but as real interrogations of a newcomer to this forum :
If time scope of SUO community is US time, how far is cultural scope of SUO
extending beyond US culture and English language?
How much of "upper" concepts will be really "universal" and how much only
pertinent in this "US culture - English language" background?
How many participants is this community are non US natives and how many have
another native language than English?
Are there Asiatic, African members?
What about the alignment of SUO with these other languages?
My deep conviction - and I hope it's shared by many people in this forum -
is that any ontology is deeply rooted in a language and
cultural context, and cannot be easily exported to other contexts. And I
would not consider any concept to be relevant to the "kernel" ontology - I
really like this notion of "kernel" proposed lately, very much more than
"upper" - if it is not relevant to most languages and cultures. So these
languages and cultures are to be present in the debate, if possible through
"native" participants.
That is also why I proposed in a precedent post a "constructivist"
approach - I'll be back with that.
BTW ... I'm a French native :o)
Regards
Bernard
[Paul Eastman wrote]
> In this age of computers I would have thought that by searching the
> Date/Time window one could have derived that type of information.
> Nevertheless, I will simply state:
>
> Mountain Standard Time is GMT -07:00
>
> Regards,
> Paul eastman
>
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> Paul Eastman
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