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

[Simon Grant]

Always difficult to know how to respond to negative comment without 
appearing negative, but if apologising and explaining help, let me try.

Firstly, I apologise for playing a part in an interaction that is 
less than positive. I would like to participate only positively.

Secondly, to explain, after being a member of this list for 6 months, 
I was trying to test the water to see if some particular personal 
interests are shared here or not. I'm very happy to be directed 
either way, and certainly don't want to impose an unwelcome agenda, 
nor to assume anything, positive or negative, about the people on this list.

I appreciate the skills and efforts of those who have more talent 
with or taste for formalism than I do, and hope (and indeed expect) 
to collaborate with some of them in doing humanly useful work.

Thanks

Simon

At 12:21 2006-06-08, Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>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
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