The Taos
Discussion
Monday, September 05, 2005
ARC model and the tone scale:
thread of 4 beads
Jay Paraki's communication at [27] is relevant and would be important if the BCNGroup or some other organization could get traction on fundamental issues. As it is, what we talk about is really quite un-important.
Now to Dennis's note.
Please feel free to invite others into the conversation or to opt out.
I do see the details of the modeling process that uses Richard Ballard's Mark II and III computer architecture and supporting programs. I know that it is designed to work with books. I know from you helpful presentations, how it works with books and with the users after the encoding.
I do not know if it will capture all of the intent of the author - in those cases where the author was not very good at expressing his/her thoughts. But actually if a book is very well written the full meaning of the book may be only partially encoded.
If we are talking about world wide medical knowledge, this is something entirely different. Yes, the Mark II knowledge base may be many times better suited for conveying community knowledge than are the current book learning. But we are talking about something that compares to a book, not to human knowledge as experienced by a person. Yes?
Many of us have another concern, and that is one where there is not only one book but many books, and many viewpoints.
How does the Mark II or Mark III manage inconstancies? Is it assumed that there is only one viewpoint, ultimately; and therefore this one "correct" viewpoint is the benchmark for all consistent "knowledge".
There is a second aspect of a deep problem, the first aspect being this issue of a single universal truth. This second aspect has to do with "knowing" something that is just incorrect. What does one do with a computer that "knows" a body of knowledge that is incorrect. For that matter, what does society do with an economic/political system that has become "incorrect". What is that wish is incorrect simply will not support a democratic form of governance?
By this, I refer to the type of prosperity gospel we have as our ruling parties (both political parties) today. This prosperity gospel ignores what is reality and imposes a uniformity that the believers would hold everyone to under legal authority to take life, liberty and property. There is no compromise.
Perhaps it is I who knows something incorrectly. In any case, the book that I would write, that could be 100% encoded into a Mark III knowledge processor; would be what? A correct representation of an incorrect view of the world?
Somehow I do not feel confident with a notion of a Mark III knowing what I know. I sense that you and Richard will have something to say about this, as would Tom Adi, John Sowa and others. I know that Tim Berners Lee, or Jim Hendler, is too arrogant to even engage in the conversation - but that is for the community to observe and understand. He is welcome to make a comment. The W3C is not only lead by people like TBL and JH, but is composed of a membership that would have us everyone conform to a type of prosperity gospel. Things are as I say them to be, and reality has nothing to do with anything. Artificial Intelligence is of the same elk.
The development of my work has lead me to say that the W3C standards, lead by TBL, are incorrect because they are not human centric. They are computer science centric, and "computer science has left the barn", I say. Computer science is a profession that serves itself, and has become far too important.
The difficulties we have with our current social/political/economic system is that IT has helped the Powers That Be (what ever they are) to steal control over information. The Mark III could be used to reinforce this control, or not.
The key here has to do with control of knowledge ....
The FDA would control the knowledge of how to heal ourselves and would make illegal any organic substance that has healing properties, unless owned by some corporate entity. This could be aided by machine encoded ontology, such as what can be developed in OWL, the Mark III or in my own Orb technology.
If fact, the FDA acts in the direction of making the ownership of knowledge proprietary. What Jay Paraki and I and others are talking about is in making a technology that enables the encoding and reification (finding a way to establish fidelity to reality) of proper and useful knowledge, and to make this technology FREE to anyone who would wish to use or contribute knowledge.
Please forgive me if I have over stated anything.
PSP