Carving Up Reality

These two presentations by Giancarlo Guizzardi are incredibly helpful in upskilling your digital proficiency.  

Guizzardi published a book, Ontological Foundations For Structural Conceptual Models.  The stated objective of the book/thesis was, "The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to the theory of Conceptual Modeling by proposing ontological foundations for structural conceptual models."

On slide 47 of the first presentation, Guizzardi mentions "Carving up Reality".  That is exactly what is done when you digitize something.  To digitize something effectively, you have to have a special set of skills PLUS you need talent, skills, and expertise in the area of knowledge or field that you are "carving up" to make digital.  This is part of digital proficiency.

Personally, I am helping to digitize accounting which is the language of business. Why?  Well, that is a necessary step to enable the creation of new types of tools.  Part of this carving process you create theories, conceptual models, and methodologies.  For example, I helped to get XBRL started way back in 1999, I created my Logical Theory Describing Financial Report, I got the Standard Business Report Model (SBRM) started which is a logical conceptualization of a business report, and I created the Seattle Method which is a practical methodology of working with digital reports.

This task of "carving up reality" is something that needs to be done by talented, skilled, and experienced subject matter experts (SMEs).  There is ZERO probability that an LLM is going to "carve up" an area of knowledge such as accountancy effectively.  Something like an LLM can help, but it will take humans to figure out what they want and then create that.  But once that "carved up reality" has been created by talented, skilled, experienced subject matter experts; then LLMs will be able to use the heck out of that conceptualization.

There is a lot more to all this than most people think.  All this takes a lot of work.  There are no short cuts. Modern accountancy is inevitable; but it is not predetermined.

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