[topicmapmail] Not just Temporality in Topic Maps, but a whole approach

[Alexander Johannesen]

Hi,

On 6/8/06, Simon Grant <asimong at btinternet.com> wrote:
> For me, it is really very little to do with formality, and certainly
> nothing to do with formal logic (though I have nothing against formal
> logic). Where I come to Topic Maps from is from seeing that the TM
> approach is more *humanly* reasonable than, say, just RDF.
> (Not that I know anything significant at all about RDF.)

Hmm. Nor Topic Maps, it appears. Nor the field of KM, but feel free to
jump in and correct me at any time. :)

> I approach
> these matters partly from the perspective of human-computer
> interaction, and partly from cognitive science - how do we represent
> things in ways that are most closely aligned with human thinking, and
> therefore most easily understood by humans?

I hope you're not suggesting that the rest of us here ignore
epistemology or HCI?

> So really, what I would be interested in knowing is, how many people
> around here are interested primarily in semantics and human
> comprehensibility of TMs, and would like (for instance) to explore
> the ways of using TMs to represent human knowledge in ways that
> *feel* most comfortable to the people involved.

Feelings, eh? Let's see if I'm getting this right ; you want to
explore Topic Maps, but you don't like the technicalities of Topic
Maps? You want the semantic goodness, but don't want the ontological
cludge? You want to talk about representation, but not actually
represent anything? I'm confused.

> My guess is that the
> majority here are interested in the formalities, the logic, the
> proofs - maybe in something close to mathematical elegance.

I must put out a warning to my fellow Topic Mappers; I sent him to the
TMRM in a private email, and he must have gotten stuck in the math.
Yes, I'd agree that the math of that spec is probably what makes the
spec incomprehensible to "normal" folks, but that doesn't mean that
the spec itself conveys a difficult or bad message. In fact, I'd say
it's the most exciting part of the whole TM family, *especially* if
you want to understand the underlying epistemological aspects of Topic
Mapping. Just look at the beginning and the end; it's good stuff.

To me it sounds more like you're really after something more fuzzy,
something that's *not* standardised and formalized but Topic Maps are
both. If you want something different, I'd suggest you even make some,
because I don't think Topic Maps can be what you want it to be. But I
could be wrong, of course.

> Again, I
> have nothing against that in itself. Just that, for pragmatic
> applications, for communication, it is really useful to have
> representations that are as intuitive as possible. That is a
> different kind of constraint to the set of formal and logical ones.

If you want intuitive ontologies, you go right ahead, but you can't
*escape* the ontology. You can create intuitive topics and
associations, but you cannot escape their syntax. To me it sounds like
you really want just to talk about computer representation of human
"knowledge"? Or are you just disapointed in the current
user-interfaces? Again, I don't understand the purpose of your mail.

> Is there anywhere else where people of the kind I am talking about hang out?

Don't assume everybody here are the same. It's a tad like pissing in
the fruit-punch bowl.


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                        - Frank Herbert