PUBLIC MARKS with search theory

nl is a python library, that exposes a declarative API that allows us to build sentences and rules. These are used as input for a knowledge base built on the CLIPS production system. CLIPS builds a Rete network with the rules and sentences, which can then be queried for the consecuences of those in a most efficient way.

The main claim of nl is to offer a syntax that can accommodate any coherent theory that we may build with the natural language (in the same sense as something like the semantic web's OWL-Full would), while at the same time being based on a simple finite domain first order theory. This theory is NL, a discussion of which can be found here. This discussion is probably required reading to understand the breadth and the limits of nl, but not to start using it.

So, in the best traditions of Heath Robinson and Charles Babbage, I built one:

This Timeline of 20th c. Art and New Media was created to include relationships between art, new media art, science, technology, war and media theory.

We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin's On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.

The road coloring problem is proposed as a graph theory problem, but once you understand it, the applications can be stretched into other disciplines. What the conjecture asks is: using a single set of instructions, is it possible to reach or located a destination from any other point within the network.

There’s a strong tendency to see services as ‘things’: we often hear that services are ‘more complex’ than products. All kinds of means to grasp the complexity of an airline or a hospital can be applied – cybernetics, actor-network theory, etc. But the interaction between a prostitute and his or her john or jane is complex in a way I don’t think these approaches capture.