melvincarvalho
commented
7 years ago :+1:
Closed bhaugen closed 4 years ago
melvincarvalho
commented
7 years ago :+1:
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago @melvincarvalho thanks for stopping by! I'm waiting for awhile to see who from VF wants to chime into that wonderful w3.org thread that you started.
I would basically that VF is the semantic successor to NRP, getting close to a first partial release.
And Bill McCarthy and friends, who developed the REA framework behind both NRP and VF, is working on a global semantic accounting web. Here's a recent slide deck from his American Accounting Association presentation last year.
He and some friends are also working on putting the whole thing onto a blockchain, collaborating with some people from Sensorica, who collaborated on the design of NRP and have some Ethereum skillz.
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago P.S. thanks to @bshambaugh for alerting me to that thread and mentioning NRP in it.
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago This is fascinating (to me, your mileage may vary). The Linked Blockchain paper cited above cites and likes the TOVE ontology (more below), and one of the authors elaborated on TOVE in this other paper entitled Towards an Ontology-Driven Blockchain: Design for Supply Chain Provenance.
Here's more about TOVE, the TOronto Virtual Enterprise.
In 1996 or so, I spent a year researching models for supply chain software, and ended up picking REA as the best. TOVE was one of the leading contenders. I had some correspondence with Mark Fox, who apparently still leads that project.
TOVE was pretty good. I liked a lot of things about it. Its problem was that it only understood one-way resource flows (the forward production flows), and not the return money flows (or in VF terms, return resource flows of some types).
I should look at it again, in my mythical free time...
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago 
elf-pavlik
commented
7 years ago TOVE was pretty good. I liked a lot of things about it. Its problem was that it only understood one-way resource flows (the forward production flows), and not the return money flows (or in VF terms, return resource flows of some types).
I hope we won't miss cases where two (or more) "the forward production flows" interact in reciprocal fashion and not assume "the return money flows" as usual case. We had some conversations with @fosterlynn about symmetric exchanges where we have both involved flows as primary / forward (e.g. two regions exchanging coffee beans for olive oil). It seems also related to dependent / independent perspective. In case where two "forward production flows" interact in reciprocal fashion, from independent perspective we should see both as primary / forward and non of them as return. Forward and return may appear in those cases only if looked at from dependent perspectives - "in VF terms, return resource flows of some types"
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago @elf-pavlik
two (or more) "the forward production flows" interact in reciprocal fashion and not assume "the return money flows" as usual case.
Please, I think I already wrote "return flows of some types" in VF terms.
e.g. two regions exchanging coffee beans for olive oil) Forward and return may appear in those cases only if looked at from dependent perspectives
Even if you are looking from an independent perspective, each flow (coffee beans and olive oil) will have a direction of production flow that I am calling "forward", and a direction of return flow, if you draw them as directed graphs. The two flows will interact and cross over each other. This will always be the case for exchanges, there will always be at least two resource flows, where the arrows will go in different directions.
elf-pavlik
commented
7 years ago Even if you are looking from an independent perspective, each flow (coffee beans and olive oil) will have a direction of production flow that I am calling "forward", and a direction of return flow, if you draw them as directed graphs. The two flows will interact and cross over each other.
Do you take each of those flows and call one related to producing particular resources that will get consumed 'forward' and then further part of the flow for those resources which relates to distributing them and eventually consuming 'return'? I don't think for non-currency resources those directions can get drawn very clearly, if that olive oil after exchange gets used as ingredient of something else, then it participated again in 'forward' flow of another resource, similar if the coffee gets used later to make a cake it also participated in 'forward' flow related to that cake. We can't simply use logic based on currencies and try to generalize it by "return flows of some types" because currencies appears only in exchanges and we can always consider them as 'secondary' but non-currency resources participate in cycles of transformation and from independent perspective I don't think we can at any give time label their flow as either 'forward' or 'return'.
Can you add to your diagram those coffee cakes and jars of dried tomatoes in olive oil and still show clear distinction between what you consider 'forward' and 'return' flow as seen from independent perspective?
bhaugen
commented
7 years ago Can you add to your diagram those coffee cakes and jars of dried tomatoes in olive oil and still show clear distinction between what you consider 'forward' and 'return' flow as seen from independent perspective?
Too much work to draw. I'll wait until @bshambaugh can generate the diagrams.
If the words 'forward' and 'return' bother you, don't use them. Say 'production flow' and 'distribution flow'. The flows clearly crisscross in the exchange. They are going in different direction at that point. They are reciprocal, each is the return for the other. The coffee people got olive oil for their coffee, the olive oil people got coffee for their olive oil.
If the coffee and olive oil go into production flows after that, no problem. It's a new production flow.
If the coffee gets distributed to the olive oil people for drinking, and the olive oil gets distributed to the coffee people for cooking, it's a distribution flow.
Or just describe what happened if you don't like my words for the flows.
My point here was the the TOVE ontology could not handle any of those relationships except for the production flows in isolation. That point seems far away now, alas................................................
fosterlynn
commented
7 years ago @bhaugen nice pic, I'll use it in the doc somewhere!
elf-pavlik
commented
7 years ago Even if you are looking from an independent perspective, each flow (coffee beans and olive oil) will have a direction of production flow that I am calling "forward", and a direction of return flow, if you draw them as directed graphs. The two flows will interact and cross over each other. This will always be the case for exchanges, there will always be at least two resource flows, where the arrows will go in different directions. [...] If the words 'forward' and 'return' bother you, don't use them. Say 'production flow' and 'distribution flow'. The flows clearly crisscross in the exchange. They are going in different direction at that point. They are reciprocal, each is the return for the other. The coffee people got olive oil for their coffee, the olive oil people got coffee for their olive oil.
If we talk about 'production flow' and 'distribution flow', both the coffee and the olive oil even before they got exchanged already started their 'distribution flow'. The production flow ended with produce event on resource/stock with category https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93165 (olive oil) and all events after that seem like 'distribution flow' so in that exchange we have two distribution flows and zero production flow (no "They are going in different direction at that point")
If we don't have any exchanges involved, and this olive oil just gets allocated as ingredient to other production processes, we have 'distribution flow' but do you still consider it as 'return flow'?
My point here was the the TOVE ontology could not handle any of those relationships except for the production flows in isolation. That point seems far away now, alas................................................
I understand that you refer to augmenting flows of resources with information about reciprocal dynamics between agents? 'forward' & 'return' seem related to 'effort' & 'benefit' and 'provide' & 'receive'. Can we talk about 'return' flow if we don't have any agreement that pairs it with some 'forward' flow? In case where A provides elderly care to B and C provides food to A but B & C have no economic interactions, does it still make sense to talk about 'forward' and 'return' flows? Would we call any flow where we 'benefit' as 'return' and any flow where we make 'effort' as forward, even if the flows we benefit from and the ones in which we put efforts don't have any exchange like relationship?
Once again 'forward flow' != 'production flow' and 'return flow' != 'distribution flow' since very often during exchanges we will already have just the 'distribution' flows in play.
almereyda
commented
4 years ago We have moved the ValueFlows organization from GitHub to https://lab.allmende.io/valueflows.
This issue has been closed here, and all further discussion on this issue can be done at
https://lab.allmende.io/valueflows/forum-valueflo-ws/-/issues/95.
If you have not done so, you are very welcome to register at https://lab.allmende.io and join the ValueFlows organization there.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments/2017Mar/0000.html Follow the thread. https://semanticblocks.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/linked_blockchain_paper.pdf https://www.slideshare.net/bengardner135/semantic-blockchain https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments/2017Mar/0003.html
That last one should be VF, not NRP. @elf-pavlik - are you part of that w3c group?
Or, wait wait, might be able to ping @melvincarvalho ...