[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really E xtensi
Unless the USPTO understands why semantics are a big deal, and simple symbol processing is insufficient to warrant interoperable systems, I sincerely hope the USPTO stops granting business patents or software patents in general because it is warranting their claims without understanding them. Super registries are not the answer. Federated registries that use namespaces to denote standard and royalty free technology can be part of a solution. Not perfect, but better. len From: Bruce.Cox@U... [mailto:Bruce.Cox@U...] Mr. Snell proposes a solution to some tough problems that Mr. Obasanjo thinks, if they are solved, would provide sufficient grounds for successfully mixing arbitrary namespaces (that is, provide the requisite semantics), and Mr. Bullard points out that namespaces are being used to attach semantics to XML. Having read most of this thread now, I'm convinced that terms like "semantics" are being driven to different meanings than they can readily support. Just as "artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron that raises expectations beyond the possibility of fulfilling, so do "web ontology language" and "semantic web". These philosophical terms, appropriated for use outside their rightful context, are confusing what should be a relatively simple issue, it seems to me. Computers process symbols. Input is rearranged into output that is convenient for us or for other machines to process further. Modern society is replete with the value that this brings. Reading Mr. Snell's outline of a solution looks to me like another layer (or more) of machinery that can accommodate arbitrary namespaces provided there is some super registry and other machinery to resolve ... . Well, the point is, the symbol processing machine gets bigger and more complex. Attaching various machine behaviors to various objects recognized by whatever means as belonging to the appropriate class for that behavior, is nothing more than what computers have always done, that is, process symbols. PhD in semantics not required. If there really were meanings, which usually require interpretation, the processing would not be mechanical, the results would not be worth paying for, and we'd have long since trashed such machines as unreliable junk. The expansion of the web machinery to solve problems such as the one occasioned by RSS appears to lead to a (possibly much) more complex machine than was anticipated when namespaces were introduced. Do we need to "ground the symbols"? As others have pointed out, no. Besides, that happens only when a person looks at the symbols and understands them. Where the machine is too large and complex for any one of us to understand, it takes a community, or an institution to understand it. Machines, no matter how complex, cannot do this, nor do they need to. That's our job, thank you. I think the bigger question is, how do we pay for it? Building a web machine that can perform this kind of processing requires standards ever more cosmic in scope. Do we have the necessary experience and the vision to see that large a picture? Can we and our current institutions support it or not? Will the market embrace it, distort it, or ignore it? Is the benefit worth the effort? Or can we afford to live on the edge of wilderness for a while longer, taming it in smaller bytes? --with my apologies if I've misrepresented anyone's comments.
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