Digitalizing Uncertain Information

The paper sketches some initial results from an ongoing project to develop an ontology-based digital form for representing uncertain information. We frame this work as a journey from lower to higher levels of digital maturity across a technology divide. The paper first sets a baseline by describing the basic challenges any project dealing with digital uncertainty faces. It then describes how the project is facing them. It shows firstly how an extensional ontology (such as the BORO Foundational Ontology or the Information Exchange Standard) can be extended with a Lewisian counterpart approach to formalizing uncertainty that is adapted to computing. And then it shows how this is expressive enough to handle the challenges.

Extending the design space of ontologization practices: Using bCLEARer as an example

Our aim in this paper is to outline how the design space for the ontologization process is richer than current practice would suggest. We point out that engineering processes as well as products need to be designed – and identify some components of the design. We investigate the possibility of designing a range of radically new practices, providing examples of the new practices from our work over the last three decades with an outlier methodology, bCLEARer. We also suggest that setting an evolutionary context for ontologization helps one to better understand the nature of these new practices and provides the conceptual scaffolding that shapes fertile processes. Where this evolutionary perspective positions digitalization (the evolutionary emergence of computing technologies) as the latest step in a long evolutionary trail of information transitions. This reframes ontologization as a strategic tool for leveraging the emerging opportunities offered by digitalization.

Broadening Ontologization Design:

Embracing Data Pipeline Strategies

Our aim in this paper is to outline how the design space for the ontologization process is richer than current practice would suggest. We point out that engineering processes as well as products need to be designed – and identify some components of the design. We investigate the possibility of designing a range of radically new practices, providing examples of the new practices from our work over the last three decades with an outlier methodology, bCLEARer. We also suggest that setting an evolutionary context for ontologization helps one to better understand the nature of these new practices and provides the conceptual scaffolding that shapes fertile processes. Where this evolutionary perspective positions digitalization (the evolutionary emergence of computing technologies) as the latest step in a long evolutionary trail of information transitions. This reframes ontologization as a strategic tool for leveraging the emerging opportunities offered by digitalization.

Extending the design space of ontologization practices: Using bCLEARer as an example

The aim of this seminar is to suggest that the design space for the ontologization process is richer than current practice would suggest. That it is possible to open the space up to a range of radically new practices. This consciously builds upon the notion that engineering processes as well as products need to be designed. We provide evidence for the new practices from our work over the last three decades with an outlier methodology, bCLEARer. We also provide some contextual scaffolding for a perspective that we have found we needed to better understand the nature of these new practices. This is an evolutionary perspective which sees digitalization (the evolutionary emergence of computing technologies) as part of the latest step in a long evolutionary trail of information transitions. And sees ontologization as a tool for exploiting the emerging opportunities offered by digitalization.

Interoperability, Digitalisation, Innovation, Form

This presentation looks at the strategic question: where do we go from here? Where here is a situation where the fidelity of interoperability is too low. It suggests the answer is going to be in developing the ring forms(s).

Presentation Structure:

  • BORO situation: setting up the strategic question
  • Framing – then leveraging – the challenge
    • a human information evolution perspective: a narrow framework
    • a biological information evolution perspective: a wider framework
    • a digital information transmission perspective: visualising interoperability
    • an information evolution population analysis
  • Innovation
    • innovation and diffusion (adoption): a frame for human information evolution
    • post-digitalisation – evolved-digital
  • Adding form explicitly to the framing
    • some of our form challenges
  • Summary

The bCLEARer Pipeline Architecture Framework eManual

bCLEARer stands at the forefront of digital transformation, championing an evolutionary approach to harnessing digitization and digitalization opportunities. It guides information on a transformative journey, curating its evolution into fitter forms, ones more suited for computing, that deliver increased value.

To accomplish this, bCLEARer has evolved an architecture framework for semantic data pipelines, along with a methodology for engineering these pipelines.

A while ago, a client engaged us to crystallise our then current working documentation on the architecture framework into an eManual for their bCLEARer programme. What follows is a sanitized version of that manual, capturing the architecture as it existed then. Though bCLEARer continues to evolve, the core principles in this eManual remain relevant.

BORO – General Context

This is the first in a series of three presentations for the Oslo Summer School. The aim of this presentation is to give some idea of the practice of using the BORO Foundational Ontology, providing context for the next presentation in this series. A common way of looking at engineering, including ontological engineering, is as a practice, a way of doing things. Engineering as a discipline emerges from and supports the practice. Foundational ontology engineering, or ontological engineering using foundational ontologies, is then also a practice. The context is given in three parts:

1. ontologies
2. foundational ontologies – purpose
3. foundational ontologies – nature

BORO Analysis Tools

This is the third in a series of three presentations for the Oslo Summer School. It was intended to introduce the BORO analysis tools to be used in the practical problems to be undertaken by the participants.
It was also specifically aimed at providing some ‘practice’ with ontologization interoperability pipelines by recreating the first stage of an ontologization interoperability pipeline with (simple) examples. This was done in the hope that the participants would directly experience some of the challenges (in an attenuated form). The tools covered were:

  • Structured Data Table Migration
  • Space Time Maps
  • Ontological Euler Diagrams
  • BORO UML
  • BORO eXcel Table (Manual) Pipeline
  • BORO KNIME Data Pipeline

BORO Ontology

This is the second in a series of three presentations for the Oslo Summer School. It covers the BORO Foundational Ontology (and the related bCLEARer framework). It starts by explaining BORO's toolkit-based approach. The motivation for this choice is agility, with a goal of speeding up the evolution of the ontology as well as allowing the approach to be flexibly tailored to a variety of situations. It then gives the BORO genealogy, explaining briefly how it has evolved over the last three decades and characterises the BORO Foundational Ontology in three ways: as an ontology of ontological categories, as a constructional ontology of everything that exists and as an ontological architecture. It characterises the bCLEARer methodology.
Finally, it mentions two post-ontology areas where BORO is working: de se agentology and de se doxastology.

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