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RE: Beyond Ontologies

• To: 'bryan' <bry@i...>
• Subject: RE: Beyond Ontologies
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 09:26:17 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

To determine if the web is a complex system, 
read the draft of the W3C web architecture. 
If the description there is clear to you, 
it isn't.

If you consider a hypermedia link 
a function call, then your vision is 
coherent.  Unfortunately, it is 
too limited for the purpose of getting 
a research grant.

Complexity is an effect, not a 
type of system.  There are types of systems 
that exhibit complexity.  What characteristics 
of systems create complexity?  Once you have 
that, it is much easier to find examples.

Feedback-mediated adaptation is one means 
to create complexity from simple initial 
conditions.  The term non-linear dynamic 
system is also applied.  Another way to 
consider attractors is to look for hidden 
couplers.  For the cultural Rummy example, 
what is coupled to the site where the term 
originated that enabled it to propagate 
quickly?  Did it change meaning or role,  
for example, going from Google to 
googling such that a specific name for a site 
became a generalized verb for searching?

len


From: bryan [mailto:bry@i...]

I was thinking at a far enough distance, which distance I can achieve by
leaning my head way back in my chair and looking straight up, the
individual programming languages and processes sitting on individual
addresses performing calculations on the inputs sent to them, begin to
seem insignificant, that the network itself begins to look like a
program calling these addresses as its subroutines. (By the way did
anyone ever see that study that a large number of IT workers had smoked
pot before? Fascinating stuff.)

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