Ontologies as social constructs: The case of geographic information

Recent developments in cyber-infrastructure along with the expanding democratization of the web underline the potential role of ontologies as effective means for unleashing the power of the semantic web. However, the broadening range of users and user needs has led to increasing calls for ‘lightweight’ ontologies very different in structure, expressivity and scope from the traditional foundational or domain-oriented ones. This paper outlines a conceptual model suitable for generating such micro-ontologies tailored to specific user needs and purposes, while avoiding the traps of relativism that ad-hoc efforts might engender. The model focuses on the notion of information decomposed into three ’views’: that of the measurements provided by the empirical world, that of semantics that provide the meaning, and that of the context within which the information is interpreted and used. Together these three aspects enable the construction of micro-ontologies, which correspond to user-motivated selections of measurements to fit particular, task-specific interpretations. The model supersedes the conceptual framework previously proposed by the author [5], which now becomes the semantic view. In it new role the former framework allows informational threads to be traced through a nested sequence of layers of decreasing semantic richness, guided by user purpose. ‘Purpose’ is here seen as both the interface between micro-ontologies and the social world that motivates user needs and perspectives, and as the primary principle in the selection and interpretation of information most appropriate for the representational task at hand. While exploratory, the model appears compatible with several other efforts in the field.