Re: Signs modulo resolution was - Re: Does follow-your-nose apply in the enterprise?

Chimezie Ogbuji wrote:
> A distinct name would be nice when you consider that my first reaction
> was to go with the AWWW/httprange-14-friendly term 'non-information
> source'.  However, the combination of the fact the httprange-14
> finding is being rewritten [1] (yes!) and Roy Fielding's response [2]
> to that draft caused me to pause.
>
> Semiotics has been around and kicking *much* before our beloved web
> revolution and has appropriate names for such things.  A brief perusal
> of John Sowas "Ontology, Metadata, and Semiotics" [3] turns up this
> reference:
>
> "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for
> something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is,
> creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a
> more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the
> interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its
> object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in
> reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground
> of the representamen. (CP 2.228)"
>   
I remember someone said in TAG that he was going to sum up the 
relationship between URI's scheme and transportation protocol. but I 
don't know if it is ever done. In my opinion, I have always thought that 
URI is the "sign" in  Sowa's term.  In its essence, URI has nothing to 
do with the transportation protocol.  The objective of a transportation 
protocol is to ground the resource onto the web. So, for an HTTP URI, 
the scheme name "http" is a "suggestion" that the resource is likely 
grounded to the web via the HTTP protocol and can be retrieved 
accordingly.  However, that does not mean that (1) the identified 
resource has to be grounded and (2) that HTTP is the only protocol to do 
the transportation.  But the above two points seem having been presumed 
by the public and that is where the friction occurs.

The logic to promote the use of http-URI is due to the popular support 
of HTTP protocol because the mapping between the http-URI to HTTP is the 
most nature.  Given a "http-URI", it is easy to invoke the HTTP by doing 
the "get http-URI".  But, nothing in the web architecture said that you 
cannot ftp a http-resource or vice versa.  The problem is that if we 
need to do so, the mapping has to be specified.  Most mapping approach, 
such as doi -> http, is ad hoc and not standardized.

So, then there is two different kinds of arguments. 

One, what should we use as the sign of our resource, i.e., http-URI? 

Two, should we ground the resource on the web? If so, should we ground 
it via HTTP protocol?

I would say yes to both.  What are yours?

Xiaoshu

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2007 09:49:02 UTC