Re: Proposed agenda

Jonathan Rees wrote:
> With all due respect, regarding the memos you've directed us to, I
> don't think it will be helpful at this point to talk about the
> semantics of reference and binding in RDF.  I think we should try to
> stick with normative RDF and OWL semantics and treat this
> HTTP-semantics activity as an ordinary ontology development project.
>
> When I make say things more vaguely and generally then they ought to
> be said, I'm really trying to bait you all into fixing what I've said,
> so that we have something to talk about and so that it's not just me
> talking.  Maybe I do this because I'm not spending enough time on this
> activity as I need to, but I really do hope my open-ended questions
> are seen as drawing you out, and not an exercise in
> gee-what-is-he-thinking.
>
> I was therefore disappointed that in talking about the 'conundrum' you
> didn't come up with your own classes - particular interpretations of
> the vague categories I listed - for comparison with a putative IR
> class. You did say we should "think about whether those entities have
> the characteristics of an IR" - that's a great idea, but then you
> didn't suggest any characteristics of an IR.
>
> So I propose to take up your question: What are the characteristics of
> an IR?  Or more broadly, what *might* be, what *has to be*, what
> *cannot be* the characteristics of an IR?  For example:
>
> . Does there exist an IR that has mass, or charge? - We have answered
>   that pretty definitely no. So far so good.
>
> . Is there at least one IR that has a dc:author? - I think we agree
>   that there is.
>
> . Does there exist an IR that has a number of pages, or a page size? -
>   I don't know, what do you think?  (Especially Tim, what do you think?)
>
> . How about spelling errors? Can an IR have spelling errors?
>
> . How about a domain, or a range? I would say functions and relations
>   have domains and ranges, but IRs don't.
>
> . How about a license?  Certainly Creative Commons believes that certain
>   things with 200-responding server behavior can be licensed.
>
> I'm not assuming any particular definition of IR.  Just pick one and
> let's talk about it.
>
> So I would suggest the following homework:
>
> Come up with fifteen interesting properties (or property/value pairs)
> in three groups:
>
>   - Five properties that some IR definitely has.
1. A IR has at least one philosophy:representation and possibly one 
Web-accessible webarch:representation.

I prefer the term "Web-accessible resource", which has at least one 
representation which is Web accessible. Otherwise you get in fights 
about whether the text of Moby Dick is an IR.

2. An IR can be given multiple URI, i.e. some awww:uri

3. An IR may have a time of creation. dc:created?

4. An IR may have a creator. dc:creator

5. An IR may have multiple encoding schemes (I.e. XML, RDF) and 
languages (french/english).

What unites the IR is that they embody the same "informational content" 
ala Dretske.

See my explanation here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/homepage/notes/explainingdretske.html

It seems all Dublin Core properties are for IRs off top of my head.


>   - Five properties that definitely no IR has, but that some other
>     thing (in each case) has.

1. geo:lat/long

2. foaf:birthday

3. foaf:friend

4. foaf:dnaChecksum

5. foaf:name

In general, can FOAF apply to IRs?

>   - Five properties that are mysterious to you.
This is more difficult. I kinda think the problem with information 
resources is that anything can be viewed as information on some level. 
The fact that "Jon Reese of today" is the same as "Jon Rees of 
yesterday" in my personal ontology is  because I am abstracting over 
individual instances of him in time/space. Humans do this all the time, 
in all sorts of context-specific ways. So, then, in reality, I think all 
my 5 above properties are now officially mysterious to me. Sigh.

> Then we will collate, and see if there are any intersections between
> our various sets.
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) 
> <dbooth@hp.com <mailto:dbooth@hp.com>> wrote:
>
>     At our next meeting I'd like to propose that we discuss my answer
>     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-awwsw/2008Jun/0004.html
>     to Jonathan's PDF file conundrum:
>     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-awwsw/2008May/0018.html
>
>     To get there, we should first discuss:
>
>     1. http://dbooth.org/2007/splitting/ , particularly sections:
>               http://dbooth.org/2007/splitting/#akt and
>               http://dbooth.org/2007/splitting/#httpRange-14
>     Alan may complain that the AKT example should have modeled AKT as
>     a class instead of an instance, and that may be true, but for the
>     purpose of this discussion I'd rather we ignore that issue, since
>     the reasoning still holds even if the example is imperfect.
>
>     2. http://dbooth.org/2008/irsw/slides.ppt , particularly the
>     two-step identity mapping described in slides 5-8.
>
>
>
>     David Booth, Ph.D.
>     HP Software
>     +1 617 629 8881 office  |  dbooth@hp.com <mailto:dbooth@hp.com>
>     http://www.hp.com/go/software
>
>     Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not
>     represent the official views of HP unless explicitly stated otherwise.
>
>

Received on Sunday, 22 June 2008 21:21:59 UTC