19 March 2006

EveryObject and the Tree of Life

if you take two specific things

and generalise what they have in common

the generalisation will have
far fewer features
than either specific

so when you generalise all humans
into Everyman

Everyman will be vague and blurry
(PKDick's "A Scanner Darkly"
objectifies this into a camouflage-suit)

and creation-myths often reverse this
with structure emerging out of a chaotic void




the a.i. project 'Cyc' attempts
to build a universal ontology
where the highest
most-general
levels
are abstract
blurry and vague

and Ning.com incarnates this paradox
in its universal 'Content Store'
where all content-types are equal
and relations between content-types
are wholly user-defined




but the world is structured
in familiar and reliable ways

we deal with people, places and things

people and things tracing worldlines
thru places and times

so a universal content-store
could embed these reliable structures

'knowing' that all data
can be viewed on the Tree of Life