Seismic Semantic Federation: The View from Machu Picchu.
Beth Cardier · 2009
Interoperability between ontologies is currently enabled by abstractions that standardize or bridge their compositional elements. This paper describes how geometric form will be used as a more flexible ontological abstraction, one that is capable of not only tolerating heterogeneity, but leveraging it. We exploit this capability to include a narratological mechanism – nested context – in our ontological design, drawing on structures explained in Bakhtin’s ‘dialogics ’ of modern prose. It is expected that this mechanism will enable better representation and management of causal processes in our predictive intelligence system. Context My mother grew up on a farm in remote Australia. Unlike her friends, she didn’t dream of raising cattle, owning a house, or even finding a husband. By the age of eight, she only wanted to see the Inca structures of Machu Picchu. We don’t know why this was her dream. I imagine her standing barefoot on cracked dirt, miles of dry paddock around her, the sole person in rural Queensland with Peruvian jungle on her mind. By the time my mother reached the age of 50, the words “Machu Picchu ” had come to refer to a place too wonderful and far away to reach. When she turned 53, I encouraged her to journey there with me. In Peru, on the first of a series of mountains that led to the sacred site, she developed such severe altitude sickness that a team of doctors spent a full day with us. I researched altitude sickness over a slow internet connection and learned that it was sometimes fatal. It seemed as though we might have to abandon the trip. In serious cases, the only cure for altitude sickness was to return to sea level. But I also knew that if I didn’t take my mother to Machu Picchu, neither of us could bear what the words would come to mean.