From Information Society to Knowledge Society: The Ontology Issue

摘要

Information society, virtual enterprise, e-business rely more and more on communication and knowledge sharing between heterogeneous actors. But. no communication is possible, and all the more so no co-operation or collaboration, if those actors do not share the same or at least a compatible meaning for the terms they use. Ontology, understood as an agreed vocabulary of common terms and meanings, is a solution to that problem. Nevertheless, although there is quite a lot of experience in using ontologies, several barriers remain which stand against a real use of ontology. As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to build, reuse and share ontologies. We claim that the ontology problem requires a multidisciplinary approach based on sound epistemological, logical and linguistic principles. This article presents the Ontological Knowledge Station (OK Station), a software environment for building and using ontologies which relies on such principles. The OK Station is currently being used in several industrial applications.