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Re: Babel (again) or standard taqs and aliases (UDEF, Bizcodes)

• From: Len Bullard <cbullard@h...>
• To: KenNorth@e...
• Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 10:16:22 -0500

KenNorth wrote:

> Here's where you lost me. On the one hand, you mention the auto industry
> scenario where semantics are context-dependent or community-driven. On the
> other hand, you cite a paper ("Replicating Sonorities") that basically makes
> a case that music has low semantic content.

Music has a very high semantic content.  Emotions.  A musical 
piece that can still stir the same emotions hundreds of years 
after it was composed is a thing of beauty.
 
> So we've got:
> 1. Patterns emerge, imitation follows.
> 2. XML, like music, conveys syntactical structure but not semantics.
> 
> Is there something else that I'm missing here?

The 12 bar blues is a fixed form in the outer framework.  Individual 
nuance is used to express particular contexts of emotion. 
That emotional languages emerge, mutate, and evolve is 
self-evident.  The behavior is there to be observed and 
measured if not the particular one to one relationship 
between a single production and an emotion.  So it is 
with markup languages, schemas in relational systems, 
and so forth.  We prosper when the Tower falls, not 
when it stands.

XML is not meant to convey semantics.  It is meant to 
enable semantics to evolve in a community of exchange. 
What the writers are missing, what the CALS committees 
could not admit to, what OASIS is forelornly and 
naively abandons is the need for individuals to form 
their own communities of meaning and their competence to 
do so.  The ideal of the repository is not to be a law 
governing transactions, but an enabler to amplify the 
competence of the organizations.  The article writer 
overlooks that the auto industry is already trained and 
competent and therefore, need local registries by 
which they can negotiate the transactions, then 
transact, not OASIS telling them how.  Other industries 
need more help.  The power of markup is enabling, not determining.

len


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