Comments for Semantic Arts

Comment on Why are scanners so slow? by Brian Shepherd

Brian Shepherd — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:00:34 +0000

Seeing as most users have the exact same experience with scanners as you, in that they are looking for quick and easy utility. Noone wants to have to completely master the scanner software to be able to scan documents. I suggest looking at the ScanSnap S1500 scanner. These things are awesome for everything I’ve ever needed done. Given, I’m not doing large documents such as books, manuals, etc.

Comment on Location and navigation in computer systems by Brian

Brian — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:04:45 +0000

Hi,

Your ideas brought to my mind a program called MindRaider you might find interesting: http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/.

Thank you for your interesting post! You bring up a lot of really good points. I find I’m also going through what I call a “paradigm shift” in my thinking regarding the internet of things vs the internet of documents.

Brian

Comment on Visualization and the Circle of Life by Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:57:17 +0000

I am thinking of getting a very similar tattoo and I was thrilled to see this as I am somewhat worried about the complexity of the spokes. I was hoping to get this on the left shoulderblade with Ouroboros (snake eating its tail) encircling all major symbols of organized religion within. After seeing this it is obvious that the circle of life will NOT fit well on one shoulderblade! haha. Thank you for saving me from an overzealous first tattoo!

Comment on The Data is the Platform by John Biderman

John Biderman — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:47:12 +0000

I would modify this to say the *metadata* is the platform – that which describes the meaning of the primitive data and, in semantically aware systems, is machine interpretable/actionable.

Comment on Role, the overloaded workhorse of the modeling world by Bill DeSmedt

Bill DeSmedt — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:41:44 +0000

Dave — Thanks for some cogent and creative hair-splitting. I can still remember the epiphany, more years ago than I care to count, that “role” (#1) was an abstract part of an entity, by analogy with a physical part.

Relatedly, at times and in certain contexts, this “part” can overshadow any particular whole to which it might belong. Consider the concept of “paperweight” — a role (#2?) which can be played equally well by any number of physical objects, to the point where its actual instantiation is almost a matter of indifference.

Comment on Ontologies — the essential difference by Michael Uschold

Michael Uschold — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:30:30 +0000

I think the point is that reducing complexity may be one of the most important things that an ontology ENABLES, rather than being the defining feature of what an ontology IS. This certainly aligns with my experience. Time and again, the benefits of ontology-based applications is FLEXIBILITY, which comes from reducing complexity.

Comment on Role, the overloaded workhorse of the modeling world by Paul McInerney

Paul McInerney — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:36:29 +0000

I’ve modeled roles in a related context, namely for designing product user interfaces tailored to different user “roles” and certainly agree it’s an “overloaded workhorse”. Here’s a couple of my experiences:

- There is often confusion about the concept of an actor vs. a role, that is whether some entity or property relates to an actor or a role. I find the analogy to actor & role in the theatre/film domain helpful in these discussions.

- As well, I find it useful to distinguish two types of role analysis: (1) identifying the distinctions that people recognize as existing in the world vs. (2) deciding which distinctions are useful to make in the context of the current project/system.

Comment on Ontologies — the essential difference by Martin Gladwell

Martin Gladwell — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:26:45 +0000

I’m not sure that it is a defining feature of ontologies that they reduce complexity. Even in the case when the number of elements is reduced. I would agree that empirically that may be the case and also that it may be a selling point for doing Ontology. The way in which abstraction and generalisation is used can be very complex and technical whilst delivering a reduced number of elements.

Comment on Actualizing Potential – What’s in a Name? by Martin Gladwell

Martin Gladwell — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:21:55 +0000

Very interesting Mike, you raise a lot of the questions I am interested in. The foremost is that I think you have an implicit philosophical view that is broadly existential and realist. That there is a ‘true’ answer to the question, ‘Is this thing a chair?’. My view is that there is no true answer to that question unless it is true by definition. Some things are true a priori. e.g. Is it true that my sister is my sibling? Well, if she is my sister she must be my sibling. Other definition I would argue is socially constructed. There is a range here. At one end groups assert the authority to define terms and govern how they are applied. Law makers, regulators and standards bodies fit here. At the other, communities e.g. teenagers make up terms and apply them within their circle in ways that others may not understand. It seems to me that it doesn’t make sense to ask existential questions of either end of these usages. There is no true or false answer to the question, ‘Is this tree stump a chair?’ A warranted or valid response might be that it could be used functionally as a chair. Another could be that the park warden wouldn’t catalogue it as a chair because it doesn’t need to be maintained as the rest of the furniture under her charge does. As you mention, there are questions as to whether a person thinks of themself as an ‘x’. If they do or don’t, does that settle the question or does it need an external audience and which external audience would settle it, or is it true regardless of what anyone thinks? In the case of a customer, I have had these debates with clients. They usually settle on a fairly hard headed view of who counts as a customer – someone who is likely to buy from them whether or not they have in the past. For some companies that will bring in people who bought 25 years ago, for others it won’t, but it is determined based on a view of likely future behaviour not on the existential question of whether they are ‘truly’ a customer or not.

As you know, I think the concept of roles is useful in helping to distinguish individuals from the multiple relationships they have with other individuals. One question is, ‘What are the individuals in your examples?’. Person seems obvious in the case of the attorney, ‘this’ part of a tree in the case of the stump cut to be a chair, ‘this’ rock, but when we get to the doorstop it could be anything. Which to me draws attention to the point that we are labelling something as an ‘x’ because of its utility to us at a point in time. We are drawing attention to its function ‘now’ and we are absolutely not making an existential claim about it being an ‘x’.
Best Martin

Comment on Semantic SOA by mkumba

mkumba — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:27:49 +0000

Way cool. Let me drop you an email so I don’t forget. I’m heading up to Steamboat to ski in a couple of minutes, but would love to talk to you more about this.

We did some work with the Fiserv branch that spun off to StoneRiver