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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Linking global context
 Hi Len With the web we discovered that the linking process transform each element by integrating them into a whole: the World Wide Web. The integration process is through links. Through links we can navigate through thoughts associations. With XML we can create our own domain language. If that language do not include linking capabilities, the document stands alone without any opportunity to relate to or be linked to another document. If the domain language includes linking capabilities, it is then possible to create a whole greater than the parts. If each domain language has its own way to express links, then, a navigator will have to be aware of all the different idiosyncratic ways to link. If all these domain languages share the same linking syntax then the linking process can be modularized and re-used. If the same linking syntax is used, then we assist to a clustering mechanism and itself the linking syntax creates a new network effect governed by the "power distribution" pattern (in opposition to a normal distribution - in the mathematical sense a power distribution is based on attractors and is not normally distributed). I think that having a consensus on certain layers would tremendously leverage human knowledge. For instance having the same syntax helped reduce the knowledge load by re-using the same rules (i.e. by using XML). So far so good. But staying at the syntax level is only a minor first step. As we already know, several languages share the same alphabet but it does help the people to understand each other since the languages are different. If we add a standard linking layer on top of that we put in place the basic tool used by intelligent systems: linking. A neuron is nothing useful per se but linked to others it becomes the source of thoughts and thoughts the source of actions. I think that the recent debate about xlink and the XHTML workgroup conclusions lost sight about a more global perspective and a potential opportunity for mankind if a common linking specification reach social acceptance. Instead of talking of semantic web, we should focus on the basic fabrics of the web and the basic principle underlying intelligent complex systems: linking. You know, at first I thought that XML was too verbose and that there are more efficient way to structure information. Then, I accepted more work (more thing to do and write) in order to gain from the new standard. I think that the argument about the xlink namespace notation is not really a show stopper since I myself learned XML and a more verbose way to structure information in order to gain something else. People would probably invest in xlink if they gain something more from it. The linking debate is more important that we may envision on first sight. And I think that, as always, Byzantine fights leads to some myopic view of the world. "A different point of view is worth a thousand point of IQ". I do not know who said that at first but I know that reality is not a single facetted world and that the more we can perceive it through different perspective, the more it reveals itself. There is a whole universe in a grain of sand. And when this grain of sand is linked to the other through gravity of other attraction forces it creates beaches or sand sculpture or.... Semi-conductors and who knows what else it could be. Cheers Didier PH Martin -----Original Message----- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@i...] Sent: 29 août, 2002 10:57 To: 'Didier PH Martin' Cc: 'xml-dev@l...' Subject: RE: Linking global context Looks like a good read. The blurbs hype it as revolutionary, and it is not. Any erudite Hindu can explain all of this to one. But since the dominant metaphor these days is the web, explaining things in terms of webs and networks makes sense as a pop communique. So do tantra and karma. A lot of us have been using ecosystem metaphors for some time, and that is a somewhat better metaphor in that it takes up communities in a less flat metaphor: hubs (attractors) might not be organized as a set of connections, but in terms of the sign systems (say message types) they share, so this becomes the self-organizing principle and one has to think about how and in what ways sign systems and power laws are connected (it isn't hard). Some questions: how does any member unattached to a network/community choose its community, and by what means does it signal such intentions? What is the nature of habit, how are habits acquired, and are we capable of transcending habit? Is the trancendence of habit the key to transcending the network itself? Desire is the maker. Desire is the destroyer. How do we become the masters of desire? Networks are a very flat way to look at a complex adaptive system. Given an origin event, how long does it take and at what frequency of interaction for intelligence to emerge? What events can be posited that will amplify this emergence or curb it? What events destroy intelligence (capable of manipulating and influencing events) and how are they detected? One can resort to pattern and link analysis, but they are wholely unintuitive. At the operational scales, intuitive knowledge is vital for selecting actions. len From: Didier PH Martin [mailto:martind@n...] Hi In the context of linking, does anybody has read "Linked - the New Science of Networks" by Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi? I would be interested - in the perspective of linking - to listen to your thoughts about these concepts. <<attachment: winmail.dat>> 
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