© Roger M Tagg 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web". This is the second generally-published version. The first appeared in late 2007 - early 2008.
This is the home page of FROLIO, a way of thinking about the world for inquisitive, but not necessarily academic people.
FROLIO was started partly as a retirement project by its author, Roger Tagg. It derives, in part, from Roger's research work in the Information Systems Laboratory (InSyL) at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, from which he retired at the end of 2009. Part of InSyL's programme was to research the realities of doing cooperative work in groups, particularly where creative work is a significant part. The group's approach was strongly based on observation of group activities, both in meetings and between meetings. To make sense of the observations, we need to recognize what is actually happening, based on the words and pictures we can record. In doing this, we do not start from a blank sheet - we can assume that there is a consensus of a common structure of what words and phrases - and even body language - mean. That consensus cannot be totally fixed, but evolves from the bottom up.
In information research worldwide, there is a current fashion for ontologies. These have become popular with the development of the so-called semantic web. If we want to integrate the very diverse material that we can find on the internet now, we need to have better means to correlate the underlying meaning of what web material is presenting to us - better than the rather hit-and-miss matching offered by Google (and other) search engines.
However a lot of the ontology research is done by computer specialists and people of a mathematical disposition. In spite of some recent efforts, philosophical and social aspects do not always get adequate attention.
As well as this, most ontologies appear to concentrate on the objects and concepts themselves; they do not often include relationships between objects or concepts - and even if they do, they are (by and large) large limited to relationships of specialization and composition. It seems to the author that a much larger part of "reality" (if such a thing exists!) is about other types of relationships, for example motivation, will, comparison, usefulness etc. What is offered in FROLIO is not intended to replace the work that is being done elsewhere, but to provide a "push" in a different direction that may help to improve the effectiveness of information-related research.
Finally, a separate aim of the author is to try to offer to the more general public a framework through which we can better detect bullshit, spin, mumbo-jumbo and other conspiracies to "bend reality to fit the agenda of power and money seeking hustlers"!
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Help!! This is a tad too wordy for my liking (click this link for a simpler explanation) |
These link you, the reader, to more details about FROLIO. The core of this website is a set of pages about relationships - links to these are on the first table below.
| How FROLIO helps fight Bullshit | Index to related essays and diatribes | Highlights from related books I've read | A reading list |
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 20
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .