Rough Theory

For those who have been curious about L Magee’s project, particularly if you’ve had a look and are still wondering what it is all about, I note that an introduction has been now posted over at schematique. Armed with the new information this introduction provides, I logged in to have a play, and am currently contemplating what to enter into my profile. Like the (sorely missed) “destroy” button, the profile screen offers all kinds of outlets for my anarchic impulses. There is a very large free response space, for example, where I can list my “ontology interests”. I’m wondering whether the appropriate answer for someone like me should be (with a nod to rob) “that there be none” or “prefer epistemology, myself”…

I also love the help information on this page: it’s not every day you see help for a profile that explains:

Only the username and password fields are obligatory. Other fields are used to add metadata to your ontology

But what if my ontology interest is “avoiding metadata”? What if I like my ontologies neat?

Also, although this seems somehow oddly appropriate, given my interest in self-reflexivity, should I have been able to do this:

Updated to add: Ah! Now I see! The destroy function still exists, cloaked under a mere veil of civilisation – for look what I have just managed to generate: this satisfying log file that records my rampage through the software:

destroy: OwlClass ‘Unspecified event’ was destroyed by [me] with a result of ‘SUCCESS’ on 05:19:38, 31 March, 2007.

Of course, what I was destroying was evidence of my other anarchic tendencies – I had great fun creating classes and individuals, and placing individuals within classes, and such. But somehow doubted that the point of the exercise, from LM’s perspective, would be served by classes such as “bourgeois” – regardless of how I then distributed my individuals among them… Although perhaps I’m wrong. One of the navigation options is “Create a new Right”…

Updated again: There’s something deliciously Borgesian about trying to visualise what entity could be categorised by the following:

drives
eats
likes
has_pet
is_pet_of
part_of
works_for
reads
has_child
eaten_by
has_parent
has_father
has_mother
eaten_by
has_part

Eaten by? As an attribute so important it needs to be included in the categorisation system twice?