Ontologying
Originally posted as part of the CMPE58H course by Susan Üsküdarlı in the fall semester of 2022 at https://furkanakkurt5204.gitlab.io/personal/ontology/2022/11/15/ontologying.
We talked about what ontologists do last week in class. I searched for some Ontologist jobs. I was pleased to see that the companies look for linguists as well as other technical professions.
While at it, I saw one ontologist argue1 that ontologists are language engineers: not in the sense of engineering or creating new languages (conlanging), but standardizing the language used by a group of people working towards a goal. I’m quoting, from his 2016 LinkedIn article:
I would estimate that 50% of all code that has been written in the last twenty years [is for] translating between representations.
Very sad. 😢
Ontology creation resembles object-oriented design. As such, creating an ontology is also similar to creating a dictionary. When we create a class in a program or an ontology, it’s similar to creating a dictionary. We define what a class is by its variables (literal or object) and methods.
People are different; if we asked a few people to define an apple by a class, we’d get an exact few amount of different classes. Ontologists create clear classes, distinguishing between entities and their properties. Utilizing this experience, they establish standards that programmers use. When an ontology is organized well, transferring work mentioned above becomes less of a burden and takes less time.