Hi Gerard
Who does understand semantic interoperability? The beauty of human interaction is that we can get along even without understanding each other. And we'll never get computers to understand each other. So we shouldn't aim for semantic interoperability, we should aim for unsemantic interoperability ;-) (kudos to the Health IT Nerd) Grahame From: openehr-technical-boun...@openehr.org [mailto:openehr-technical-bounces at openehr.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Freriks Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 5:37 AM To: For openEHR technical discussions Subject: Re: Layers of interoperability, OWL and openEHR Derek, Shooting? No. I agree with you. And I disagree. I think that there are clinical informaticians that know, implicitly or explicitly, about semantics, about language and the philosophical aspects. At least clinicians and nurses do (and most patients and other people) since they communicate using voice, writings and gestures. The problem is that technicians do not understand semantic interoperability. And I must say that many informaticians are actually technicians without any understanding of semantics. Gerard On 21, Apr, 2009, at 16:17 , Derek Meyer wrote: Dear List People, Another view, and my two (euro) cents, for what they are worth:- There are many philosophical difficulties in the concept of semantic interoperability which technology cannot address. Put simply, semantic interoperability requires an agreement on meaning, and meaning is not a 'thing'. Semantic interoperability requires uses of a system to think in the same way - or at least in mutually understandable ways - and informaticians do not (yet) have the power to change the ways people think. So semantic interoperability is a kind of philosopher's stone. The search for the original philosopher's stone, which could turn base metal into gold, simply showed that alchemists misunderstood chemistry and sub-atomic physics. Maybe the search for semantic interoperability simply shows that informaticians misunderstand linguistics and the nature of knowledge. OK - you can shoot me down now...... Derek. -- <private> -- Gerard Freriks, MD Huigsloterdijk 378 2158 LR Buitenkaag The Netherlands T: +31 252544896 M: +31 620347088 E: gfrer at luna.nl Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin 11 Nov 1755 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20090422/c25902fa/attachment.html>
