Top ontology(ies);

why bother?

A small number of top ontologies have been developed over the last decade or two. They are now starting to be implemented in IT systems. This talk will argue that they have the potential to play a significant part in IT; and that exploiting this depends upon a better understanding of their scope and how they can be deployed. It will argue that their scope potentially extends across a significant proportion of the IT market and that this claim is best understood in the historical context of previous information revolutions. Hopefully this will facilitate a better understanding of why top ontologies can be useful and how they can be deployed.