A Matter of Perspectives: Talking About Talking About Topic Maps

This presentation is a contribution to the discussion about the future of semantic technologies, and more specifically the discussion about the proposed Topic Maps Reference Model. In this paper I will attempt to show that the terms which are used to describe the work being done in the semantic technologies are somewhat misleading, and I will propose using the term "perspective" instead of the term "ontology" to emphasize the fact that the vision of semantically integrated information depends on the point of view adopted. In this paper I will show that the traditional approach (top-down) which looks like the natural and reasonable thing to do when dealing with information models doesn't work efficiently as long as what we are interested in is connecting information from various and heterogenous sources. A Matter of Perspectives Talking About Talking About Topic Maps Table of