Ontologies and hullabaloo
If entropy is the likely distribution of material objects within a space, and an onotology is a system of meaning, is the language that any group creates an expression of the distribution within their space as well? For fun, I’ll assume so.
The most hullabaloo creating presentation in the whole of the KM-Intranets-Search-Taxonomies conference (www.kmworld.com/2007) was by Microsoft, strangely, and during the taxonomy set. The collective rejected the proposition of a very smart man, the proposition that an arbitrary machine language is a more meaningful proxy for the ideal human language than any existing human language.
Filled with passionate self-proclaimed “bunheads,” or MLIS grads, working in government and private sectors, the Taxonomy track crowd displayed an old fashioned romance with words and language. But interestingly, a good portion of the crowd had delved into the technology realm long ago. And not in a superficial way. We are taking hardcore female-dominant group of polymath geeks; chicks who had meshed custom databases and the Dewey Decimal System in the late 80s, their applications then set free from the isolation of bookshelves with advent of the networked age.
But back to Microsoft. The behemoth was represented by an amiable but slightly autistic fellow who claimed he had created a true ontology. With flick of hand, he revealed a funny diagram.
Patiently and methodically, he explained that the item in the middle was the true referent of all the associated words. Different audiences may desire to use, or may best understand, the true meaning by being shown the word of choice, since the common reference in the middle doesn’t change. Simply swapping out the word of one for the other would allow a website, for example, to use the correct terminology without losing the meaning. Now how would one actually do this, in concrete terms?
By assigning an arbitrary symbol to the common referent in the middle, as below.
For no reason whatsoever, I devolved into sputtering outrage, watching the presentation. Visions of Aristotle and Wittgenstein danced in my head. The platonic form of cilantro rose up before me, swaying slightly in the breeze. What would my world be without a strong understanding of Magritte’s lovely pipe? The sign is not the symbol is not the thing itself is not the ideal form is not the random neurons shooting through our minds.
Ce n'est pas cilantro!
In retrospect, the nerdy gentleman deserved more credit for cleanly solving a tricky problem of translation between semantic domains. No blood, no irritating emergent complexity, all language in entropy. These pesky humans -- I could hear him thinking secretly -- why can’t they just settle? When I pointed out the similarity in his approach to the development of Esperanto, he laughed out loud and agreed.
I did wonder later, though, if this really was an interesting step in the direction of a universal translator which would simultaneously lock current languages into place in their evolution, and, more spookily, transfer even more of our collective mind to the rosetta-stone-like machine grid. The more I thought about it, the simpler and better his solution seemed. For the machine. Does the distribution of all languages more integrally include machine language now? Will I wake up in 50 years and say 5-9-21-55-1-24, express love in a lottery number string?
Perhaps its all sentimentality, but, for posterity, here’s my own take on a true ontology:
I can’t help it, I love the messy human mind; the struggle, the reaching, the dirty negotiation and bliss of reconciled meaning.
The most hullabaloo creating presentation in the whole of the KM-Intranets-Search-Taxonomies conference (www.kmworld.com/2007) was by Microsoft, strangely, and during the taxonomy set. The collective rejected the proposition of a very smart man, the proposition that an arbitrary machine language is a more meaningful proxy for the ideal human language than any existing human language.
Filled with passionate self-proclaimed “bunheads,” or MLIS grads, working in government and private sectors, the Taxonomy track crowd displayed an old fashioned romance with words and language. But interestingly, a good portion of the crowd had delved into the technology realm long ago. And not in a superficial way. We are taking hardcore female-dominant group of polymath geeks; chicks who had meshed custom databases and the Dewey Decimal System in the late 80s, their applications then set free from the isolation of bookshelves with advent of the networked age.
But back to Microsoft. The behemoth was represented by an amiable but slightly autistic fellow who claimed he had created a true ontology. With flick of hand, he revealed a funny diagram.
Patiently and methodically, he explained that the item in the middle was the true referent of all the associated words. Different audiences may desire to use, or may best understand, the true meaning by being shown the word of choice, since the common reference in the middle doesn’t change. Simply swapping out the word of one for the other would allow a website, for example, to use the correct terminology without losing the meaning. Now how would one actually do this, in concrete terms?
By assigning an arbitrary symbol to the common referent in the middle, as below.
For no reason whatsoever, I devolved into sputtering outrage, watching the presentation. Visions of Aristotle and Wittgenstein danced in my head. The platonic form of cilantro rose up before me, swaying slightly in the breeze. What would my world be without a strong understanding of Magritte’s lovely pipe? The sign is not the symbol is not the thing itself is not the ideal form is not the random neurons shooting through our minds.
Ce n'est pas cilantro!
In retrospect, the nerdy gentleman deserved more credit for cleanly solving a tricky problem of translation between semantic domains. No blood, no irritating emergent complexity, all language in entropy. These pesky humans -- I could hear him thinking secretly -- why can’t they just settle? When I pointed out the similarity in his approach to the development of Esperanto, he laughed out loud and agreed.
I did wonder later, though, if this really was an interesting step in the direction of a universal translator which would simultaneously lock current languages into place in their evolution, and, more spookily, transfer even more of our collective mind to the rosetta-stone-like machine grid. The more I thought about it, the simpler and better his solution seemed. For the machine. Does the distribution of all languages more integrally include machine language now? Will I wake up in 50 years and say 5-9-21-55-1-24, express love in a lottery number string?
Perhaps its all sentimentality, but, for posterity, here’s my own take on a true ontology:
I can’t help it, I love the messy human mind; the struggle, the reaching, the dirty negotiation and bliss of reconciled meaning.
posted by Christina G at 12:29 PM
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