The Ontology of Documents and the Technology of Identification

Nov 02, 2005

Abstract

Attempts to develop ontologies of documents have been largely confined thus far either to e-documents (for example in the XML context) or to printed documents such as newspapers or works of literature (in the context of library informatics). In this talk I shall focus on the vast family of what we might call time-sensitive documents, and primarily on those made of paper, including: o identity documents (a passport with exit and entry stamps) o clinical documents (an endocrinology progress note) o business documents (a bill of shipment with signatures of sender, shipper, and recipient) We can think of the ontology of paper documents of these and related sorts as a generalization of the ontology of speech acts (statements, requests, orders, questions ...). The advantages of paper over speech include: 1. paper can survive over time, which means that paper documents can acquire new properties (they can be filled in, approved, copied, stamped, signed, counter-signed, revised, annulled, entered in a registry, archived); 2. paper documents thereby create traceable liability, and thus accountability (they leave an audit trial); 3. paper documents can be attached together, creating new document-complexes whose internal structure mirrors underlying relations (for example of debtor to creditor) among the human beings represented by and involved in creating them. I shall sketch an ontology of time-sensitive documents, focusing especially on the ways in which paper documents are used for purposes of identification in commercial and security domains, and concluding with a consideration of the feature of redundancy in documentation, a feature which proves to be indispensable when documents are used in establishing and verifying identity.