Classical vs Chaotic
- Research Interest:
... investigating the value of formal
descriptions of chaotic systems like the Web, especially in the
consensus-building process.
- Predicting change in the Web is more like predicting
the weather or financial markets than predicting the path
of a bullet.
- But I want my bank to use classical reasoning, not heuristics,
when computing my balance
Statistical Approaches are Great
- PageRank
- tagging a la flickr, del.icio.us
- ...
wisdom of crowds
I'm learning that stuff, slowly, but symbolic math is my strength.
HTML 1.x
- 1990: Convex/HP SGML work was an excuse to work on HTML:
- draft a DTD
- try it on some test cases
- discover an issue; repeat
HTML 2.0
- 1994: adding HTML to products at HalSoft
- Asked others to try sgmls parser; not many takers
- Installed sgmls as a CGI service; HTML validator is born
- feedback loop works over the Web
XSD Schemas put structures in the Web
- Not just <purchase-order>, but
- <ubl:purchase-order>
where...
- ubl: is grounded in the web at
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/xsd/common/...
Now I can link to it, not just informally from hypertext, but
formally from other XSD documents...
Formal Mix and Match
- Compose <ubl:purchase-order> with <pharma:drug-interactions>
where...
- pharma: is (hypothetically) grounded in the web at
http://pharma.example/drugml/...
- When does it work? The pharma: folks clearly know about
XSD; do they have to know about ubl:?
Circles and Arrows on the Whiteboard
Tag had a circles-and-arrows diagram of Language Evolution (extensibility and versioning):
Cirlces and Arrows in Drawing Tools
TimBL captured it in OmniGraffle.
.
UML Diagrams
UML to OWL
Extract RDF from the UML diagram...
ext-vers$ make test-agent-pf.n3
xsltproc ... --output ext-vers-uml.rdf grokVioletUML.xsl ext-vers-uml.violet