Imagine government and other web sites answering an open ended collection of English questions, and also explaining the answers in English. Imagine government folks and citizens socially networking, Wikipedia-style, to continually expand the range of questions that can be answered.
The approach starts from the observation that data by itself is necessary, but not enough, for many practical uses of an intranet or the Web.
What's also needed is knowledge about how to use the data to answer an ever increasing number of questions -- such as, "How much could the US save through energy independence?".
There's emerging technology that can leverage social networking for the significant task of acquiring and curating the necessary knowledge -- in the form of Executable English.
You can Google Executable English to find this. You can use a browser to view, change and run what's already there, and to write and run your own knowledge. Shared use is free.
On the other hand, Executable English is something that a person can read, and that you can also run on a computer.
Since the executable knowledge is in English, Google indexes and retrieves it, acting as a kind of registry.
You and your colleagues can use your browsers to write programs as syllogism-like rules in English, run them, and get detailed English explanations of the results.
Applications of the system include: Answering Questions about the US Financial Stimulus Package, Risk Analysis, Reasoning over Taxonomies, Knowledge Based Data Mining, Business Intelligence, and Supply Chain Management.
As one way of addressing the problem, there is an online system that functions as a kind of
Wiki -- one that supports the collaborative writing and running of business and scientific applications, as
rules in open vocabulary, executable English, using a browser.
The design of the system integrates the semantics of data, with a semantics of an inference method, and
also with the meanings of English sentences. As such, the system has functionality that may be useful
for the requirements of the emerging Semantic Web.
A retailer orders computers from a manufacturer. However, in the retailer's terminology,
a computer is called a PC for Gamers, while in the manufacturer's terminology, it is called a Prof
Desktop.
Fortunately, the retailer and the manufacturer can agree that both belong to the class of
Workstations/Desktops. We also find out to what extent a Prof Desktop has the required memory, CPU
and so forth for a PC for Gamers.
Here is a business rule for this in Executable English.
for the retailer the term some-item1 has super-class some-class in the some-ns namespace
for the manufacturer the term some-item2 has super-class that-class in the that-ns namespace
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the retailer term that-item1 and the manufacturer term that-item2 agree - they are of type that-class
The rule says that, if the two premises above the line are true, then so is the conclusion. In the rule,
"some-item1", "that-class" and so on are place holders, or variables, that will be filled in with actual
values, such as "PC for Gamers" and "Computers" when the rule is run. Apart from the place holders,
the rest of the words in the rule are in open vocabulary, open syntax, English. So, the rule defines the
meaning of the last sentence in terms of the meanings of the first two.
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