On what a building might not be — a case study

摘要

This article is a case study of a management consulting assignment undertaken by the author into systems problems related to real estate and property development. Despite the expectation that the problem would involve highly tangible concerns and practical issues, and therefore be relatively straightforward, it in fact became complicated with semantic analysis. The paper elucidates the problems associated with clarifying the definition of a building and examines the lessons that can be learned from this case study. Paramount is that semantic analysis and meaning continue to be the first and last frontier of the information sciences.