The ubiquity of smart technologies in business processes creates a converging perspective for business analysis on the one hand, user experience on on the other hand.
In practical terms (pun intended) such a convergence should first be based on shared semantics between business analysis and user interfaces; hence the growing interest for tools meant to deal with the issue, and the need of some clarification about the difference between thesauruses, taxonomies, and ontologies. That can be achieved through the ontological prism paradigm:
Thesauruses deal with the mapping of facts to concepts, first by naming the facts (glossaries) and then by defining the semantic forces between names, ideas, and concepts.
Taxonomies deal with the mapping of facts to categories, first by identifying individual objects and phenomena, then by defining shared features and corresponding types
Ontologies deal with the mapping of categories and concepts, in other words the relationship between natural and artificial intelligence.
Set across facts, concepts, and categories, thesauruses, taxonomies, and ontologies ensure the interoperability of representations and usages.
With regard to representations the focus is put on the pivotal roles of networks and graphs:
With regard to usages, the focus is put on communication:
- Direct (conversational) communication: when meanings can be set directly (without mediation) by actual context or through dialog
- Mediated communication: when meanings are obtained through a mapping of contents and shared categories
With regard to knowledge engineering the focus is on the distinction between facts and representations:
- Taxonomies, for the mapping of observed variants (facts) and managed representations (categories)
- Thesauruses, for the congruence of meanings of terms used for facts and concepts
- Ontologies, for the mapping of conceptual domains and managed categories
On a broader perspective such ontological prisms a new light on the relationship between language and knowledge, arguably a major artificial intelligence issue.