It was clear that the world was about to end. The people of Earth watched helplessly as, one by one, the prophecies of armageddon came true. Those caught up in the middle, the power brokers, the politicians, the megalomaniacs, were all starting to feel more like pawns in some grander scheme than commanders of their own fates. The entire situation was no longer in anyone's control.
Circling above the planet, however, was a ship that no one on Earth could possibly have detected. It was crewed by a mix of races from around the galaxy, and captained by Bgfrbglb J'Klgbndr, a Kriglike. The Kriglikes were a humanoid race from a planet similar to Earth, and were well suited for command. The ship's mission was basically scientific, as most aboard were anthropologists, but they were now discussing altering the mission.
"We can not let this species destroy itself," said Brigdalf, an Elliptarian. "They may one day have much to offer the galaxial culture."
"What, like Madonna?" said Zardot, twirling a tentacle in the Parnopian gesture of sarcasm.
"This Madonna seems like a potentially delicious offering for the galaxial cuisine," commented the Blrmph, from behind his transparent container. Blrmph's were basically sentient stomachs, and had to be physcially separated from most other species to prevent any accidental digestions. They rarely commented on anything except food.
"I don't think it's our place to interfere. And from an anthropological perspective this is a unique opportunity to observe the self destruction of an entire species. When before in history have there been trained observers for such an event? This is a monumental stroke of good fortune." This came from Angxor, from a planet devoted entirely to science, and home of the galaxial library.
"What you suggest is entirely unethical," retorted Brigdalf. "We have the capability to prevent this tragedy. We have a moral obligation to use that capability here, otherwise billions of intelligent - albeit primitive - beings will lose their lives, and an entire culture will fall into ruins."
"What about the `Prime Directive'?" interjected Zardot, tentacle still twirling.
"This is SERIOUS!" Brigdalf's growing frustration with his colleagues was apparent as his normally elliptical shape was becoming more and more amorphous.
"OK. That's enough." When Captain J'Klgbndr spoke, which was rarely, the crew listened. His charisma and leadership were augmented by a pyrokinetic ability that would allow him to vaporize any or all the crew at will. Brigdalf became elliptical again, and Zardot stopped twirling his tentacle. "I don't believe it is our place to interfere with whatever destiny this species has made for itself." At that, Angxor displayed what would be best described as a smug grin, and Brigdalf's shape began to quiver. "On the other hand, we clearly must learn all we can about their culture before they destroy themselves. To attempt to learn about them once they are gone would not be possible, as we would be trying to understand their culture biased by our own. We need to somehow collect all the knowledge of their race into one place."
"What about computers," suggested Zardot. "They have no biases."
"Yes, that is what I was thinking," agreed the captain.
"In fact," pointed out Brigdalf, "a huge volume of knowledge, perhaps very close to all of it, is already in electronic form on their planet-wide network."
Angxor felt obligated to comment. "While this is true, the knowledge is scattered, fragmented, entirely unstructured, and hopelessly inaccessible. The information is not well-suited to the Galaxial library."
"Perhaps the library is not well-suited to the information." Zardot's tentacle was in extremely good condition due to the excessive amount of exercise it got.
"I concur with Angxor," said the captain. "If we are to retrieve and store this knowledge they have accumulated, we must find a way to organize it properly. Clearly very few of these humans understand what we have learned over the millenia we have maintained the Galaxial Library."
"Thank you captain. However, we should admit that there are a few humans who have figured it out."
"Precisely, " continued the captain. "I propose we contact these ..."
"I suggest," interrupted the Blrmph, "That after they've all killed themselves I be sent down to clean up the carnage." Captain J'Klgbndr glanced in annoyance at the Blrmph. "Hey, it's getting pretty hot in here. Someone turn down the...errr...ooops, sorry captain, please continue."
"As I was saying," the captain continued. "If we were to disguise ourselves as government agents looking to sponsor a research project."
"Brilliant!" exclaimed Brigdalf, who was now apparently content. "We could go to an academic institution and `sponsor' them to represent all they know on a computer. It could work."
"Let's use this one exemplary human that we've been tracking," began Zardot.
"The dashing one?" asked Brigdalf.
"Precisely. He could start by giving it as a project to his class..."
You have been selected as part of a project to save all human knowledge.
Pick an area you feel you are an expert in, and surf the web for some interesting and relevant web pages.
Based on the web pages you find and your own knowledge, come up with a way to classify pages of interest hierarchically. For example, if you were interested in cars, you might classify pages based on the marque (manufacturer), ie. American, European, Japanese, below that Chevy, Ford, Porsche, and Toyota.
Your categories should be organized in multiple hierarchies, i.e. in the cars domain you might have orthogonal categories such as sportscar and sedan, below that two-seater, convertible, etc. All individuals, would be classified in at least one place in each of the hierarchies you develop, i.e. a web page about my car would be under Porsche and sports-cars. Note that the overlap between the categories may be incomplete, in this example while it is true that all Porsches are sportscars, that certainly isn't true of all Chevys.
Don't pick cars as your domain.
Keep in mind that you are designing a classification scheme for web pages. You want to enable people, who are experts in the area of interest (domain) you have chosen, to be able to find things easily by browsing a hierarchy that is organized in a sensible way.
Define a top-level concept under which all your categories appear.
Submit a text file into the course dropbox that contains your ontology and some data.
For each category you have identified, describe it as follows:
(define-primitive-concept category-name parent-category-name :comment description-string)Where description-string is a string that describes the category in such a way that someone (in particular, me) could understand exactly what it's supposed to represent.
If your category has multiple parents:
(define-primitive-concept category-name (and parent-category-name1 parent-category-name2 ...) :comment description-string)
For example:
(define-primitive-concept car-thing classic-thing :comment "The top-level category for car related web pages.") (define-primitive-concept car-manufacturer car-thing :comment "Anything to do with companies that produce cars.") (define-primitive-concept chevy car-manufacturer :comment "Anything to do with Chevy's.") (define-primitive-concept sportscar car-thing :comment "Anything to do with sportscars.") (define-primitive-concept porsche (and car-manufacturer sportscar) :comment "Anything to do with Porsches.")
Note that my comments are quite skimpy, yours are expected to be much more descriptive.
For each web page you have found, describe it as follows:
(and category-name1 category-name2 ...
(fills URL url-string)
(fills title title-string))
You do not, and should not, list categories that are more general that
ones listed. (i.e. you wouldn't list porsche and sportscars as a
category for a web page).
For example:
(and porsche (fills url "http://www.porsche.com") (fills title "Porsche Home Page")) (and sports-car chevy (fills url "http://www.corvette.org/") (fills title "Corvette owners club"))
You should have at least 15 web pages in your catalog, and they must not all be at the same site. More is better. Verify the URLs because I will enter this information into an actual knowledge base on the web that will link to the pages. Choose a topic you're actually interested in, not something you think I'll be impressed with.