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RE: Reductionist vs Holistic Semantics

• To: Didier PH Martin <martind@n...>, 'Mike Champion' <mc@x...>, "'Roger L. Costello'" <costello@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Reductionist vs Holistic Semantics
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:20:09 -0700 (PDT)
• In-reply-to: <000901c38b69$2e6df190$c801a8c0@DIDIERHOME>

--- Didier PH Martin <martind@n...> wrote:

> 
> Mike you probably made the same inference as me and
> concluded that the main
> reason we do not have yet the semantic web as a web
> of documents providing
> facts about the world is that there are too much
> mercantile and political
> interest roadblocks in front of this vision.

I agree with that, but there are plenty of other
roadblocks.  One is that it is just an intrinsically
hard problem to capture many slippery human concepts
with enough rigor to do anything formal with them. 
(e.g. my "what is a web service, really?" experience).
 Another is that the meanings change somewhat
unpredictably.  

Another is that some &^%@$ people seem to game the
system (WHATEVER the system ... Google, email,
Semantic Web assertions) just for the fun of it:  Why
ARE those worm writers doing what they are doing?
"mercantile and political interests" doesn't seem to
capture it, but you can bet your bottom dollar that
they will attempt to raise havoc with the Semantic Web
if it ever gets going well enough to be fun to break
:-(

I've head TimBL address this point in his lectures. 
IIRC, the SW is supposed to allow "webs of trust" so
that people can follow chains of assertions by people
they trust ... and whose identity can be verified, and
the content of which can be signed, etc. etc. etc.  I
can sortof believe that this is going to be
technically possible, but it will take a LOOOONNNNGGGG
time to deploy and debug.  

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