[topicmapmail] Intelligence is not optional [Re: Announcement of XML Schema ...]

[Bernard Vatant]

Martin :

" When people start to create topic maps they will almost certainly create
a single type of occurrence,
and will not assign them roles " etc ...

I wonder how you can assert such predictions, with others remarks in
various posts carrying - unless I get you wrong all along this debate - the
understatement that most authors and users won't be able to understand the
very essence of the tool, and make meaningless use of it.  Stating that
fools using a smart tool will get foolish results is quite obvious, as
Patrick already pointed out.
My position is that users and authors are not to be considered as fools to
begin with and for ever, and that using a smart tool is somehow helping
users to build up intelligence and knowledge *for themselves* ...
But a first condition for that is they are given the credit and conditions
to be able to do so, and not closed up in a stupid task of stuffing data
into the system without asking  the why's and how's. So they are at every
level to be given a chance to look at the syntax and concepts the deeper
they are able to, and they will understand more than you and they could
guess to begin with. I aknowledge that may be incompatible with the stress
of a production environment. But in that case, my position is that what is
wrong with that is that very stress. In the long run, time passed to let
people understand the tool they use is far from lost time.
A correlative condition is that the tool goes with proper pedagogical
documentation, help, formation etc ... and that is not developer's job nor
even marketing job. I've thrown away in the past such and such tool, not
from the lack of quality and effectiveness of it, but because it came
packed in both showy marketing and unreadable doc, lowering definitively
its credibility.
Sorry to have a *very* different view of the world, but I am in this Topic
Map *community* - if community there is - not for sake of more and more
effective and quick ways to produce and sell more and more crazy stuff I
don't care for anyway, but to build tools allowing more and more
intelligence
and knowledge to grow in users' mind.
And not for pure knowledge's sake, but because I'm deeply convinced that we
(and there I don't speak of our small community, but of mankind at large)
have no choice for the century and millenium to come that to become
quickly, effectively, collectively and widely more intelligent that we've
been up to now, if we don't want to hit the wall in a very productive and
effective way.

Consider it as my season's greetings.

Bernard