"[T]he biggest challenge of semantics lies in over-constraining intent." #readingToday

Having worked on a semantic foundation for CFEngine for a number of years, and observed its failures and minor successes , I've seen that the biggest challenge of semantics lies in over-constraining intent: trying to fall back to command and control thinking. This was the mistake of security consultants over the years too: locking down systems to the point where they were unusable. Classical thinking was authoritative: this led to constraint, spanning tree thinking, and the fragility of a branching tree structure. If you don't get rigidity exactly right, you just kill information.

In Search of Certai , Mark Burgess, 2013