Nice article, Eugene. Very nice indeed. (01)
Mybe I can contribute a small thought here re your paragraph, (02)
"The Semantic Web is a perfect example of this. Fundamentally, the
Semantic Web is about standards for knowledge representation, which is
an important and worthwhile effort. However, the grand vision underlying
the project is not people-centric enough. Evangelists suggest that by
making human knowledge machine-readable, computers can help us in
smarter ways. This makes sense, but it doesn't explain how that
knowledge is captured and converted in the first place. We have a hard
enough time expressing knowledge so that other people can understand. Is
it realistic to expect massive numbers of people to express knowledge
that computers will be able to unambiguously understand? #" (03)
There seems to exist a sense that carrying a message is somewhat akin to
carrying, for example, water. Water can be carried in buckets or in
pots, etc. without the vessel having any effect on the quality of the
water as it is moved from source to destination. Knowledge, however, is
context sensitive. Mostly we do realize that the sender and receiver are
contexts that influence the meaning of what is transferred, i.o.w.
knowledge itself. BUT ALSO the language and the way it is phrased are
contexts in the way pots and pans are not. They change meaning. Even our
attempts at defining terms affect the very definitions. A four-letter
word may have four books worth of historically developed context to help
make its meaning _almost fully_ understood. A reader's personal history
affects the message he/she receives. Making oneself understood is an
approach to an achievement that simply cannot be achieved perfectly. It
is like trying to achieve absolute zero in physics. Molecular turmoil
keeps leaking in and thereby swarthing the effort. (04)
As we speak we have feedback loops that affect how we complete our
message, i.o.w. our messages are changing as we speak like your article
was changing before it got into print. Similarly, the message is
changing as we hear, notably the emphasis a listener puts on the
message's components (like me picking this particular paragraph from
your paper) and influenced by the listener's emotions. And in
transmission, the message is changed by the means of transmission, a
kind of a cultural contamination. How do we culture machines so they
become sensitive to context that they may "understand" language? Etc. (05)
Henry (06)
On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 20:27, Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
> I recently wrote an essay entitled, "A Manifesto for Collaborative
> Tools," where I describe a vision for how tools can and should be more
> interoperable. It's available in the May issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal
> and is also available on the web at:
>
> http://www.blueoxen.org/papers/0000D/
>
> As always, comments are welcome!
>
> -Eugene
--
Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca> (07)
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