2010/8/10 Anthony <o...@inbox.org>: > On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Jaak Laineste <jaak.laine...@gmail.com> > wrote: >>> I like this test because it will make things easy. No fuzzy shades of grey >>> like >>> some Richard is suggesting. Can you give an example of a thing that is done >>> by a >>> human being and that is not art by this definition? >> >> Humans create many non-art things. For example databases it >> human-created items. Database of phone numbers of a telco operator, >> financial accounting database, state registry of roads. > > Software, maps, encyclopedias, textbooks...
No, these are piece of art, not databases of facts. It is probably best to use semiotics to make the difference. There is important difference between designator and designee; (or sign and thing what sign references). I also need to explain how I mean my terms. I'll try my best. As even Fredrik mentioned two times in a SOTM presentation, Estonians do not know English, so pardon me if I'm fuzzy here. Best example for OSM would be "highway". You have two separate artifacts what you can mean: a) Physical feature somewhere out there, made for cars, usually paved, with many parts (lanes, signs, posts etc) included. Physically it consists of asphalt, grain, sand, plastic etc. For every traveler its meaning can be very different, depending whether you use car, cycle, walk, bus, depending when and why you are using the road. b) A sign which signifies the physical feature, marked somewhere in a computer system as set of nodes, tags and relations. Here it is important to note that in mapping there is no clear (un-ambiguous) relationship between physical feature and the cartographic sign. You can spend years on improving OMS wiki, but you will never take subjectivity out of that, you will never see that two persons will map a road exactly same way. Maybe you'll get many tags to be the same, but never the nodes. So can see two type of signs: a) subjective signs, where transformation process from physical feature to sign has subjective decisions. b) objective signs, where transformation is always determined. Best example: mathematical or chemical artifacts. Also items in a phone number registry and road registry are objective facts, because they are kind of self-contained facts. Typical registry items are "hard facts" by definition; even if the "road" on it has been destroyed or is not yet built in physical world. Clearest objective facts are self-contained, you can say they signify nothing but itself. For physical features we are able to find really objective signs (hard facts) only for quite simple things, something that "after careful examinations by several independent groups it was concluded that this specific piece of matter is 99.9% gold". I used term "database" in specific meaning: it is collection of objective things. In IT database means any kind of digital collection, it does not matter what you put there. More exact would be "database of facts". The word "fact" means for me only objective facts; not some subjective cognitions. In common talk you can say "it is a fact that there is a highway". Actually it is never a really a fact, maybe you saw a day ago some cars running on a pile of asphalt, the only fact here is probably just that you have a subjective memory about thing what your subjective eyes produced. Another way to look it: "fact" for me must be a sufficient and single right way to describe thing. Map is by definition a model, model of earth, which rather complex thing and even worse: constantly changing. Models are always simplifications of things, therefore imprecise and with a lot of facts and exceptions left out. Model of a complex thing can never be a hard fact. One way how you can make OSM database of facts would be to define "highways" as "items in OSM database with highway=* tag", not as "roads in the physical world". So every highway in the planet.osm would be a fact just because someone has added it there. I don't think this approach would be really good for OSM quality. It can be also confusing because map-makers (like myself) really try to make as objective maps as we can. But this is very long-time process, and in principle impossible, when you recognize that the modeled thing itself changes in every second, and everyone puts his/hear personal subjective cognition into it. Finally, we can sum it up with the ultimate question: is the model we have already good enough (in terms of a) content and b) process definition) to consider it as just registration of facts, or is it just a quick subjective sketch? Some can say that it is, I would rather claim that it is pretty far from it. Even through pragmatically it can be good enough for many. But I see no objective way to answer that question. -- Jaak _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
