Topic maps and ordinary people

Greetings!

Interesting thread on convincing ordinary people about topic maps.

I suspect part of the problem is that we have been searching for *the* 
convincing explanation, as opposed to finding any number of convincing 
explanations for people in different circumstances.

Take for example the government in South Africa, where there are 23 
official languages/dialects. Instant use case for topic maps you say? 
Maybe/maybe not. There are already mechanisms to handle those officials 
languages, along with people who have vested economic and career 
interests in those mechanisms.

But, but, you say topic maps would be more efficient! Sure, and would 
create dislocations in the current scheme of things. And who said being 
more efficient was a goal? It may be a goal of some people but are those 
the people who are making the decisions?

A better strategy would be to find a way for one agency to take 
advantage of another agency via the use of topic maps. That would at 
least be an incentive they would appreciate and understand. That they 
might use topic maps for the delivery of language services would 
probably be a front for disadvantaging the other agency, not the 
original efficiency argument.

With the caveat that the cost of creating/using a topic map cannot 
exceed the expected benefit from its use.

Remember that the cost of eliminating the different radio frequencies 
for New York emergency services did not seem worthwhile until 9/11. That 
is far simpler than building topic maps. As of 1 June 2011, I saw a 
report saying the situation isn't any better.

So, if people can't be convinced by widespread preventable death to use 
a common emergency frequency, maybe we need to look for more convincing 
arguments for semantic integration.

(If I knew what those were I would have stated them at the outset.)

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick-Q/[email protected]
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
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