[Sigia-l] RE: what would porphyry do? (was apple and pears)

[John O'Donovan]

Jeffrey:
> clearly i've asked an obvious or irrelevant question and am
> out of my depth.

No. It's an obvious question but certainly not irrelevant. It's at the heart
of the work many people are doing.

The answer given was (too) simple but difficult to know what it is you
wanted to know and to what level of detail.

Areas of work that you might find interesting are faceted classification:

http://www.kmconnection.com/DOC100100.htm#Defining_faceted

Cheers,

jod


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Fisher" <jfisher at igc.org>
To: "SIGIA" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] RE: what would porphyry do? (was apple and pears)


> i'm sorry. did my question really seem so obvious? maybe it
> is. i'm perfectly capable of thinking of objects as
> classifiable in multiple categories, but thanks for the
> tip. i guess i was wondering more about work that people
> are actually doing that presents the problems peter was
> talking about.
>

>
> cheers.
>
> j
>
>
> On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 06:41:17 -0000, John O'Donovan wrote:
> > You could think of it like this:
> >
> > A real world object may be classified by any number of parameters and is
> > unlikely to fit into a single hierarchical tree. This means you are
> > modelling complex patterns across objects where you have to accept that
the
> > objects fit into more than one "pigeon hole". The relationships are more
> > like a network than a hierarchy but even this is to simplify.
> >
> > For the sake of an example, you *could* think of the things or objects
you
> > are storing information about like stars in the sky. Their position is
where
> > they are placed in certain domains of knowledge and their shape and size
is
> > what their attributes are. You can join them up in different three
> > dimensional constellations depending on your viewpoint and what you are
> > looking for. The results you get depend on this.
> >
> > To model this sort of stuff it helps to know something about data
modelling
> > and object modelling and a range of LIS issues.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > jod
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jeffrey Fisher" <jfisher at igc.org>
> > To: "SIGIA" <sigia-l at asis.org>
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 7:57 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] RE: what would porphyry do? (was apple and pears)
> >
> >
> >>  [obviously, that should have been porphyry, not prophyry.
> >>  sigh. what i get for trying to be all clever and stuff but
> >>  not paying attention to my typing. - j]
> >>
> >>  On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 11:51:22 -0600, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> >>>  On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 09:19:11 -0800, Peter Merholz wrote:
> >>>>   as the
> >>>>   field matures, it becomes clear that those graphically-oriented
> > beginnings
> >>>>   are not well-suited to the direction that IA is taking, which
involves
> >>>>   understanding and portraying relationships within
> >>>>  complex information spaces
> >>>>   that simply goes beyond what can portrayed in a pretty diagram.
> >>>
> >>>  peter,
> >>>
> >>>  this seems to me the most interesting and important point
> >>>  in the conversation, thus far, not because it disses the
> >>>  graphically-oriented beginnings, but because it speaks to
> >>>  the evolution of interaction and communication and to the
> >>>  challenges of adapting (so to speak) to the changes in the
> >>>  local ecology. your statement here begs three questions
> >>>  (which, btw, i see as a virtue rather than as a failing):
> >>>
> >>  <snip>
> >>  ------------
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> >
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