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In the early 1970s Professor William ‘Bill’ Martin of MIT

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began the development of a powerful knowledge representation language called OWL

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O - W - L. 

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It was never officially defined but many of us who participated in the project believed that it stood for One World Language.

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At the heart of OWL was a knowledge representation system

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based on the idea that the meaning of any concept in language 

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is based on the totality of all other concepts linked to it.

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The details of OWL were never fully published.

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The first time that I met Bill was in an attic room in Boston,

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myself and two other colleagues from the OWL development team had invited him over for dinner.

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He showed up with the incomplete draft of a book that he was writing, describing his insights into the subtle but profound relationships

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between knowledge representation, structure, and metaphors in natural language.

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It was Sunday night.

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So I'd made a pot roast.

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I placed the various dishes from the oven on the table, his manuscript now amongst them. ‘Food for thought,’ he’d said as I attempted to move it away.

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The dinner continued as any other, until one of my colleagues asked Bill about his manuscript.

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In sharp contrast to the furious, every moving ebb and

flow of his arms,

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he suddenly became very still

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‘Words are doors,’

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he said, taking another bite of pot roast.

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I noticed his hands were unusual, stained with ink and filled with chalk dust.

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If you can open a door, you can access another world.

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He continued, talking and eating.

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‘Some doors are locked.’

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he said, pausing for a moment.

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‘You cannot open them without the key.

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And the key is a metaphor.’

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‘Beautiful!’ one colleague exclaimed, flailing its arms around and nearly knocking over its beer.

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My other colleague was not nearly so impressed.

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‘These analogies will simply not cut the mustard Bill.’

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he said gruffly.

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We need hard data and brute force calculation.

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Any development of artificial intelligence will flail without the data

to support it,

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but it's all nonsense without computational capacity and hard data.

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It said again, repeating it’s point.

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Suddenly Bill turned to look at me,

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‘Inscriptions are traps.’

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he said,

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’To get to The Close World, we must come to this world of terrors.

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We must touch the return of time, the innocent earth

beneath the grass of words. To get to the close world

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we must flock amongst the birds.’

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He pushed away his plate and with a smile, thanked

us for the pot roast and stepped out into the empty hallway.

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“There is no need for hard data.

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When you can simply use a door to tell the truth.

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‘The door has been opened’

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he said,

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before softly closing the door.

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The three of us looked at each other 

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as we heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.

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I was stunned into silence sitting with my

mouth agape.

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‘How'd she get the key to our house?’

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my colleague said.

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He'd left and he'd never come back.

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All I could do was sit.

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It was at that moment that from in amongst the empty dishes,

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I picked up the handwritten manuscript with the words,

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‘The Close World’ written across the front.

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We're on the fifth floor.

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‘How are we going to get out?’

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said one of my colleagues,

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panic appearing in its voice, where before there was the sound of gruff refutation.

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‘We’re perched up here on the fifth floor’

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said the other colleague also panicking as it began trying to jimmy

the lock.

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I picked up the manuscript, and began to read from the first page.

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‘A book is a portal.’ it said.

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‘A portal is an illusion opened when a person enters it.’

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But before I could read on the manuscript turned to chalk crumbling away

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as I read.

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Shortly after in 1980, Professor William Martin became gravely ill and died in 1981.

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As a result, the OWL group dispersed to other institutions and research efforts and developments of OWL ceased.

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That night was the last time we ever saw Bill alive.

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And the first time we ever heard of The Close World.