Re: The Test of Independent Invention (was: What Does Point Number 3 of TimBL's Linked Data Mean?)

On 24 June 2013 05:05, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> I hope you realize that the point of that thought experiment is to ensure
> that the technology in question is sufficiently powerful and flexible, so
> that *if* a parallel technology were discovered, the two could be extended
> to encompass each other with minimal added cost -- *not* that it is in any
> way desirable to have such parallel technologies.
>

Whether it's desirable or not to have diversity in technology is a whole
other debate.  It's arguable that the internet is sufficiently large a
system such that diversity is inevitable.  One thing that I think we can
all agree on, is that interoperablity is a good thing.


>
> David
>
>
> On 06/22/2013 08:55 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>> It took me quite a while to understand this fully.  IMHO, it is really
>> worth digesting.  I think it also sheds light on how to approach some of
>> the topics raised in the last week.
>>
>
>
>
>> [[
>>
>> *The Test of Independent Invention*
>>
>>
>> There's a test I use for technology which the Consortium is thinking of
>> adopting, and I'll call it the Independent Invention test. Just suppose
>> that someone had invented exactly the same system somewhere else, but
>> made all the arbitrary decisions differently. Suppose after many years
>> of development and adoption, the two systems came together. Would they
>> work together?
>>
>> Take the Web. I tried to make it pass the test. Suppose someone had (and
>> it was quite likely) invented a World Wide Web system somewhere else
>> with the same principles. Suppose they called it the Multi Media Mesh
>> (tm) and based it on Media Resource Identifiers(tm), the MultiMedia
>> Transport Protocol(tm), and a Multi Media Markup Language(tm). After a
>> few years, the Web and the Mesh meet. What is the damage?
>>
>> A huge battle, involving the abandonment of projects, conversion or loss
>> of data?
>> Division of the world by a border commission into two separate
>> communities?
>> Smooth integration with only incremental effort?
>>
>> Obviously we are looking for the latter option. Fortunately, we could
>> immediately extend URIs to include "mmtp://" and extend MRIs to include
>> "http;\\". We could make gateways, and on the better browsers
>> immediately configure them to go through a gateway when finding a URI of
>> the new type. *
>>
>>
>> The URI space is universal: it covers all addresses of all accessible
>> objects. But it does not have to be the only universal space. Universal,
>> but not unique.*
>>
>> -- Tim Berners-Lee
>>
>> ]]
>>
>