Re: Owning URIs (Was: Yet Another LOD cloud browser)

David Huynh wrote:
> Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> David Huynh wrote:
>>> Sherman Monroe wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     To be more specific, these days a news reporter can say
>>>>     "foobar.com <http://foobar.com>" on TV and expect that to mean
>>>>     something to most of the audience. That's a marvel. Something more
>>>>     than just the string "foobar.com <http://foobar.com>" is
>>>>     transfered. It's the expectation that if anyone in the audience
>>>>     were to type "foobar.com <http://foobar.com>" into any web
>>>>     browser, then they would be seeing information served by the
>>>>     authority associated with some topic or entity called "foobar" as
>>>>     socially defined. And 99% of the audience would be seeing the same
>>>>     information. What's the equivalent or analogous of that on the SW?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I just want to make sure the analogies are aligned properly and are 
>>>> salient. The WWW contains only nouns (no sentences). If I have an 
>>>> interest or service I want to share with others, then I post a 
>>>> webpage and /share its URL/ with you. In the SW, things are 
>>>> centered around the crowd, if I have something to say about the an 
>>>> interest, service, place, person, etc, then I /reference its URL/ 
>>>> in my statements. So the SW contains sentences that can be browsed. 
>>>> Type the URL in the WWW browser, you get /the thing /being shared. 
>>>> Type the URI in the SW browser, you get the /things people say 
>>>> about the thing/.
>>> I didn't quite express myself clearly. If you were to take the 
>>> previous sentence ("I didn't quite express myself clearly"), and 
>>> encode it in RDF, what would you get? It certainly is something that 
>>> I said about "the thing", the thing being vaguely what I tried to 
>>> explain before (how do you mint a URI for that?). The point is that 
>>> using RDF or whatever other non-natural language structured data 
>>> representation, you cannot practically represent "the things people 
>>> say about the thing" in the majority of real-life cases. You can 
>>> only express a very tiny subset of what can be said in natural 
>>> language. This affects how people conceptualize and use this medium. 
>>> If I hear a URI on TV, would I be motivated enough to type it into 
>>> some browser when what I get back looks like an engineering spec 
>>> sheet, but worse--with different rows from different sources, 
>>> forcing me to derive the big picture myself,
>>>    urn:sdajfdadjfai324829083742983:sherman_monroe
>>>       name: Sherman Monroe (according to foo.com)
>>>       age: __ (according to bar.com)
>>>       age: ___ (according to bar2.com)
>>>       nationality: __ (according to baz.com)
>>>       ...
>>> rather than, say, a natural language essay that conveys a coherent 
>>> opinion, or a funny video?
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> David,
>>
>> When you see a URI (a URL is a URI to me) on the TV, or hear one 
>> mentioned on the TV or Radio, you now have the option to interact 
>> with a variety of representations associated with the aforementioned 
>> Thing identified by the URI. You have representational choices that 
>> didn't exist until now. Choice is inherently optional :-)
> Beware the paradox of choices :-)
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005696/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1242800143&sr=8-2 
>
>
>
>> A URI by definition cannot presuppose representation. This is the 
>> heart of the matter.
>>
>> The Semantic Web Project isn't about a new Web distinct from the 
>> ubiquitous World Wide Web. I think that sentiment and thinking faded 
>> a long time ago.
>>
>> If you are used to seeing a nice looking HTML based Web Page when you 
>> place URIs in a browser or click on them,  then there's nothing wrong 
>> with that, always interact with a Web resource using the 
>> representation that best suits the kind of interaction at hand. Thus, 
>> someone else may want to know what data was contextualized by the 
>> nice looking HTML representation (the data behind and around the 
>> page), and on that basis seek a different representation via the same 
>> URI that unveils the kind descriptive granularity delivered by an 
>> Entity-Attribute-Value graph (e.g., RDF).
>>
>> The revolution is about choice via negotiated representations in a 
>> manner that's unobtrusive to the Web in its current form.  Nobody has 
>> to change how they use the Web, we are just adding options to an 
>> evolving medium.
>>
>> You've forced my hand, I need to make a movie once and for all :-)
> It's not forcing, just nudging :) It'll be a win for all.
>
> David
>
>
David,

Okay, so you've successfully nudged me :-)

Here is the first cut (others will follow as this was done in haste, but 
demonstrates the essence of the matter).

1. YouTube -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CweYtyw7fnY
2.  Vimeo -- http://vimeo.com/4736569


-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 11:14:42 UTC