Re: Newcomb number news
Patrick Durusau <patrick-Q/[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.xml.xtm.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Lars, On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 10:04 +0100, Lars Marius Garshol wrote: > * Robert Cerny <snip> > Another thing that only occurred to me long after we started building this was that the whole concept might seem a little disrespectful of the other people who helped found/invent Topic Maps. Michel is definitely one of those people, and I guess there might be more. The whole thing was meant to be rather tongue-in-cheek, but if it hurts people's feelings that's a shame. A bit late to say this now, I guess. > It would be unfortunate if anyone took the exercise as a sign of disrespect. In part because any award or designation of being "first," at least in intellectual circles, is more or less arbitrary. Sometimes it comes down to who was "holding the mike" to use your phrase when a result was announced. Not to take anything away from people who get such prizes, but I have yet to see an idea that did not have numerous "contributors," both known and unknown. It would be good to remember that the Erdős number, on which this was modeled, was based on a publication-with association. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number That is something that can be ascertained fairly easily and with little disagreement. Intellectual history is more complicated and nuanced. Suggestion: Why don't we allow people to self-declare, on whatever basis seems good to them, the person(s) who stimulated their interest in topic maps? Just take it as self-declaration and let it go at that.* Hope you are looking forward to a great weekend! Patrick *We can leave it to intellectual historians of the 20/21st century, using topic maps, to write papers sniping at each other over the origins of topic maps. ;-) _______________________________________________ topicmapmail mailing list [email protected] http://www.infoloom.com/mailman/listinfo/topicmapmail