what is "ontology " ?

[mostafa]

hi guys , i have been reading OA articles for a few months but i'm new to the forum.
I have a question : what exactly is an ontology ? http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/478434a56eb65 ? I'm not sure i get the concept well enough and i will be grateful for clarification.
 
also , the concept of a polyglot is a definition of awesomeness . http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4c5b0c390d960

[Alphadon]

What he said. I'm not sure what an ontology actually is.

[stevebowers]

Ontology is the study of 'things' and of 'existence', and of the relationships between entities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
but in information science, 'ontology' has a more precise meaning - it is a formal naming and classification of the entities that exist in a field of study, and the relationships between those entities, specifically so that they can be represented within a model or other forms of processing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(...n_science)
The way an information ontology is organised has a profound effect on the way that any processing entity perceives or models that field. The field of study can be as large as the whole universe, of course, and the different ontologies that were the subject of dispute and conflict in the Version War (and at other times) represented significantly different ways of perceiving, classifying and modelling reality.

[Rynn]

In the context of OA an ontology forms a fundamental philosophy which, among other things, allows sophonts of radically different toposophies to figure out how to cooperate and interact despite their minds being radically different.

[Avengium]

I can see lots of people that visit OA wondering what an ontology is.

[Drashner1]

We should probably expand on the idea in its own EG article, as well as provide some history of racial/species/clade relations over the history of the setting.

To expand a bit/propose some ideas around what has already been written:

The early centuries of the OA timeline saw the various social stresses we currently see in RL around issues of race, gender, and sexuality largely resolve themselves or otherwise diminish and/or cease to be an issue. In their place arose a whole set of issues around things like the creation of new minds (AIs), new intelligent species (provolution), and the redesigning of life and in particular humanity via technology (gengineering and cybernetic augmentation). These in turn combined with the political stresses that grew up around the creation of new nation-states and cultures across the solar system. Things sort of came to a head in many respects as part of the Technocalypse.

Things sort of struggled along during the Dark Age, with a mix of conflict and cooperation (often for mutual survival in the face of post-Technocalypse threats) resolving some of these issues and exacerbating others. Eventually the intervention by/alliance with transapients led to the rise of the First Federation and the creation of the First Federation Ontology - which basically created a fundamental philosophy/way of thinking that effectively fixed the earlier conflicts and helped maintain a (semi) coherent society and governing organization across many different types of minds and light-years of distance.

Unfortunately, the First Fed Ontology proved to have limits to how much complexity and distance it could cope with and eventually the First Federation fell. It also had encountered competing ways of thinking (possibly ontologies, possibly memetics) from the megacorps (and possibly the transapients running them) that had also developed ways of maintaining a form of coherent structure in their members while operating across light-years. This led to a number of competing ways of thinking and likely some conflict until the Second Federation Ontology came along and provided a foundation for a civ that could both deal with the still greater complexity that was in play and the greater distances.

Somewhere in there or after there the various Archailects with their various memetics came along and replaced the Sec Fed Ontology with their own way of doing things. There was a certain amount of conflict (various wars) but eventually things shook out to the form (or something like) that we see in Y11k.

Or something like that.

Just some thoughts,

Todd

[Avengium]

We should probably expand on the idea in its own EG article, as well as provide some history of racial/species/clade relations over the history of the setting.

[...]

Todd

I can't find an eg article named Ontology. Maybe we don't have. It would be interesting to make one, i like ontologies.

[Rynn]

I can't find an eg article named Ontology. Maybe we don't have. It would be interesting to make one, i like ontologies.

The second fed ontology article describes it somewhat:
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/478434a56eb65

[Avengium]

I think we can make an article for the general definition of Ontology in OA . and move the paragraph:

An Ontology is a wide-ranging software protocol which forms the basic foundation for existence in a civilisation dominated by software entities. (From the Greek on, genitive ontos: of being, and logia: science). All software entities have a complex ontological basis, as do the interactions between such entities and biological beings.

From Second Fed to the general article.
If people agree on this, i want to begin with a draft for that article.

[stevebowers]

Please do!
It would be nice to include the two 'real-world' definitions as well, posted earlier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(...n_science)
it seems obvious that Anders has derived the OA term from these concepts.