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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: A Light Rant On Ontological Commitment
And DNA immortalizes itself in the shapes of protein folds,
yet is itself, only a recipe of standard amino
acids for proteins. (I say the folding problem isn't
n-body, but another day...).
Yet DNA is choosy at the highest level of the
system it engenders. If you know what the
original meaning of my last name is, you might
understand my thought that the insight of
husbandry is to find willing cows.
We have to look at the ontological
development process in some detail, and then
back at the tools being offered us. It isn't
RDF or Topic maps that we have to choose first,
but how and to what authority we commit.
Borden is right to point out the issues of propriety
of the results, and we have to assume that the
systems we choose to implement must also have
aspects of this. The tools can only be as
strong as the commitment to the ontology
and that commitment attests to authority.
1. How is the record created?
2. How is the record attested?
3. By what tests (observable behaviors)
do we measure commitment?
4. By what means do we initiate or
terminate such commitment?
I do not wish to be simply whimsical, but
the lesson of the Golem was its capacity to
harm a community with its great power if
it exceeded its authority as a servant of
the community. It is one thing to put
the aleph in its mouth, quite another to
remove it and return it to dust.
Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Bryan [mailto:mtbryan@s...]
Nice one Len! I'll have nightmares at the next Ontological conference I
attend.
I came across the following snippet at a Digital Preservation conference
earlier this month:
It was Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) who first recorded the fact that
"Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself".
Q: What makes libraries different from the Internet?
A:There are always multiple copies of the stored data so that if one is
damaged you can get a copy from another source. (And you can compare copies
to identify any tampering with the facts!)
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