[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: First Order Logic and Semantic Web RE: NPR, Godel, Semantic W eb

• From: Jeff Lowery <jlowery@s...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 18:09:46 -0700

> I fear people who can't tell the difference 
> between a person's opinion and a machine's opinion 
> or think that either has facts believable out 
> of context.  Whatever the SW is or is supposed 
> to become, it ain't magic.

Again, it's not the people I fear, it the machine's acting on peoples'
behalf. If SW ain't about automation of decision making based on
understanding (machine understanding, not human understanding, the twain
shall never meet), then we should be careful.

Then again, maybe we should fear people. Saw a factoid show last night
giving the once over to the incident in 1995 where the Russians interpreted
the radar signature of a Norwegian rocket test firing as an ICBM attack from
the U.S. Got down to the last 2 minutes of a 10 minute launch procedure.
Even if that wasn't entirely accurate, I think putting blind trust in we
clever monkeys and our machines is ill advised. We have to carefully verify
our perceptions and the interpretation of facts from our systems; get too
damned clever for our own good sometimes. Literally damned clever. 

Does that mean we shouldn't pursue noble ends? No, noble ends is what's got
us here now, and it is good. Powerful stuff, this SW, and let's take the
full measure of it.

• Prev by Date: Re: XML vocabularies for chemical and pharmaceutical industries
• Next by Date: Re: Generating xml pages from database queries.
• Previous by thread: RE: First Order Logic and Semantic Web RE: NPR, Godel, Semantic W eb
• Next by thread: RE: First Order Logic and Semantic Web RE: NPR, Godel, Semantic W eb
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread