Question

I was wondering if anyone could tell me (with an example if possible) the difference between machine processable and machine understandable in the context of ontologies.

Answer 1

The taxonomy of knowledge as I know it is: Signal, Data, Information, Knowledge.

Using an image, as an example:

• Signal might be voltage level in a capacitor cell in the RAM chip holding the image.
• Data might be the bits that make up the image file (but no structure yet, just bytes).
• Information might the structured image data (header, pixels, layout, etc).
• Knowledge would be that this is an image of a house.

Taking some license on your hereto-undefined terms:

• A computer can easily process an image without understanding its contents – adjust white balance, remove chunks etc.
• A computer can much less easily understand an image to know that it is, say, a person.