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Hi Mike,
Mike Champion wrote:
> But how about the messy real world most of us must
> operate in, where there is an intent to deceive
> (spammers, virus writers, software companies with
> patents on common sense, politicians starting wars [or
> questioning the definition of "is"], ad nauseum)? How
> about in pop culture contexts where meanings of words
> are changed literally for the fun of it?
You make excellent points. I will offer two comments:
1. In the RDF Primer are several examples of companies that are
currently using RDFS ontologies. Shelley Power's book on RDF also has
examples.
2. Recently I have been doing some reading on "complex systems". This
is a new, highly interdisciplinary science that has its roots in Chaos
Theory. A complex system is one that has lots of parts, which interact,
and the system behaves in a seemingly non-deterministic fashion. A
example of a complex system is the stock market - there are many parts,
and one part (I think they call it an affector) can impact remote
parts. The complex systems people distinguish between a complex system
and a complicated system. An automobile engine is an example of a
complicated system - if you understand all its parts then you can
predict exactly how it will behave. This is not a complex system. A
colleague defined a complex system as "a system that has dynamic
complicatedness".
As I read your words it occurred to me that what you are really talking
about is a complex system. As I learn more about complex systems, I
intend to see how their techniques can be used to solve the issues that
you raise. This is exciting! It might be fun to create a list to
discuss semantics and data interoperability as a complex system? I am
just starting to learn about complex systems. Does anyone have a lot of
experience with it? /Roger
P.S. The Santa Fe Institute does work on complex systems. Also, as does
the New England Complex Systems Institute (http://www.necsi.org)
P.S. A nice pop-science book on complex systems is called Complexity by
Waldrup
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