Re: URIs & Namespaces

hello al.

Al Gilman wrote:
> The things your intimates recognize are not names, they are structured
> utterances.  If we deconstruct those utterances, we can see that they
> are composed of more-broadly-understood concepts.
> This is not RDF-think, it's as old as CODASYL and Codd&Date.

actually, it is as old as plato. rdf is just the latest incarnation of 
the belief that there is a world of ideas, and if we just try hard 
enough, we will be able to formalize it, and then anything can be 
formalized based on these formalized ideas. this has been tried numerous 
times, and rdf just put pointy brackets around that. i really don't want 
to enter the rdf good/bad debate here, i just want to point out that the 
rdf line of thought is not one that is universally true and accepted, it 
is based on a certain school of though which (a) is favored by engineers 
because it looks like you build cool stuff, but (b) has numerous critics 
in the fields of philosophy and linguistics who point out that actually, 
there might not be such an ideal world out there. it is an open question 
and extremely interesting, but at least it is important to point out 
that it is something you can choose to believe in or not.

> Viewing your insider utterances with an eye to spotting reusable
> relationship concepts is work, but yields a higher-value resource.

if you can ever figure out what i am talking about...

"the tiny dark take-away on the street with the big trees."

cheers,

dret.

Received on Monday, 10 December 2007 22:30:05 UTC