Remembering the Future

My recent look at microformats has lead me to think more about the levels of grey between being able to fully interpret (understand) data, and not being able to interpret it at all. Microformats are currently very binary in this regard - either the software knows the microformat and is able to interpret it, or it doesn’t. This is at odds to other data formats, including XML and RDF, which can convey structure even if the software doesn’t fully understand the schema and vocabulary in use.
. . .
1) The software is unable to interpret the meaning of the data, and also unable to interpret the structure
. . .
2) The software is unable to interpret the meaning of the data, but can interpret its structure
. . .
3) The software is able to interpret some of the meaning (knows some of the vocabulary used), but not all of it.
. . .
4) The software is able to interpret the meaning of the data.

Then at this point it’s probably human.

Topics: Meaning | XML | Representation