The lectures

Ten talks, 36,106 words, about 4.2 hours. Written to be listened to, not read: no headings, no bullets, no code, no URLs spoken aloud. Each one opens by saying where it sits in the arc, and ends by stating the single claim it wants you to keep.

Listening on a phone

Each lecture has a plain-text file. Paste its link into a reader app that fetches URLs, or open the lecture page and read it there.

#	Lecture	Plain text
1	Three Things People Mean by “Ontology”	`01-three-things-people-mean.txt`
2	From Aristotle to Wolff: Where the Word Came From	`02-aristotle-to-wolff.txt`
3	Quine, and Ontology as a Property of Theories	`03-quine-ontological-commitment.txt`
4	The Cathedral: Cyc, and the Birth of the Engineering Sense	`04-cyc-and-the-engineering-sense.txt`
5	The Semantic Web: A Vision and the Stack It Built	`05-semantic-web-vision-and-stack.txt`
6	How the Machinery Actually Works	`06-how-the-machinery-works.txt`
7	Building One for Real	`07-building-one-for-real.txt`
8	The Criticisms That Landed	`08-the-criticisms-that-landed.txt`
9	Palantir: The Ontology as an Operational Layer	`09-palantir-operational-layer.txt`
10	The Politics of an Installed Ontology, and What Comes Next	`10-politics-and-what-comes-next.txt`

The course plan gives the beats and the source notes behind each lecture. Narration setup covers the voice.

Keyboard shortcuts

Ontologies

The lectures

Listening on a phone