On 17/08/2006, at 8:49 PM, Ian Cheong wrote: At 9:09 am +1000 16/8/06, Andrew McIntyre wrote: Negativity about computable terminology shows the same concrete thinking as this ;-)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
The concrete thinking problem is "is machine processable, is good".
Computer languages in use are max 40 years old. SNOMED is 32 years old. The oldest practically useful computer is how old - <20 years perhaps. English language is rather older than modern western medicine. Strangely, we can still understand English written a couple of hundred years ago.
Modern studies on coding demonstrate considerable intercoder variability, even amongst experts.
It seems likely to me that computers will conquer natural language processing faster than clinicians en masse can navigate a controlled vocabulary with accuracy and speed.
That may turn out to be true. Natural language is equivalent to that flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. that holds up the universe. But, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "But it's turtles all the way down." We still need the turtles....meaning some distinct layers of symbolic codes for representation of data. The point is we need a team of turtles, a linguistic stack, to support that flat plate that supports the world :)
Ian. --
Cheers, Kuang |
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
