[sc34wg3] For or Against N323! [Was:Topic Maps land and SAM land]

[Michel Biezunski]

Mary,

> I didn't realize that the RM was thought of as this metaphysical. I can
> understand better now the disagreement and I think that this can go on
> forever if we let it.

I am not sure what you call metaphysical. But in addition to being a
mechanism
that is implementable on computers, Topic Maps is a metalanguage to
represent
knowledge, which is the core of the value that is produced by companies,
organizations and individuals and the actual work to capture what is the
real value of this knowledge can be quite hard. It is usually based on
years,
decades (or centuries) of accumulation of schemas to describe, divide,
categorize knowledge, and the relationships between its components, etc.

Since this is the problem that TM is trying to address and the goal is
to try to use computers to help us doing it, we need to have a model which
is adapted to the task. It can't be too simple because it won't capture
the needs that need to be handled, and it can't be too complex because
nobody would use it if it requires first to get in PhD in TM fields before
using it.

This is why we are having this discussion. It's pretty metaphysical (in
the sense of philosophical) not because the RM is a fantasy of intellectuals
who are not in the real world, but because this is the very nature of the
problem we are addressing, and it's pretty technical on the other side
because we need to use these stupid machines called computers to get
them do what we want instead of accepting to do whatever computers seem
to be able to do.

I don't think the disagreement will go forever. What I am trying is
to keep the issues running, but have the disagreement resolved in the
sense that people would start to understand better what others are
doing and stop feeling threatened about it. I think progress is being
made and eventually we'll get a better set of standards.


Michel
===================================
Michel Biezunski
Coolheads Consulting
402 85th Street #5C
Brooklyn, New York 11209
Email:mb@coolheads.com
Web  :http://www.coolheads.com
Voice: (718) 921-0901
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