- From: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@upclink.com>
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 12:13:40 -0500
- To: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Cc: www-archive@w3.org, Tav <tav@espnow.com>
Ever since our late-night conversation yesterday, thoughts have
been percolating in my brain. As I walked home from school
today, I had my epiphany as all the pieces have finally snapped
into place. It is now more clear to me than ever that the entire
Internet must be rebuilt in the image of a global decentralized
"Mesh", storing triples preferably. It seems so obvious now, and
I have been thinking of the idea for some time, but it has never
seemed so clear to me as it does now.
There are so many things I want to do: start planning and
building the pieces of this system; convert popular protocols
(HTTP, IRC) into this framework; evangelize the concept to
other; or write it down before it slips my mind. I'm sure things
will solidify in the days (or hours) to come. Meanwhile, I
wanted to ask you for your thoughts on the matter, as you've
surely considered such possibilities far longer than I have.
Have you written such matters up? It seems that they'd be far
more worthy of your in-depth catalogs than your typical fare of
Semantic Web identification problems and Deductive Triple Stores.
Finally, on the subject of Python and C: I have been working on
a "ideal" RDF API for Python the past few days, and I think I
can do very nice stuff with its OO framework. While I understand
your desire to program in C, I was wondering if we could perhaps
come to a compromise. Following the old Brooksian dictum, "plan
to throw one away", perhaps the most effective method would be
to build a powerful prototype in Python, allow us all to use it
as the basis for our various projects (me, SWAP, perhaps
Redfoot), and take the lessons learned to put back in the fully
elegant C++ rewrite. Does this not satisfy everyone?
Anyway, I better get back to thinking while my brain is still
buzzing. Many thanks for your help in finding this stage.
--
"Aaron Swartz" | The Semantic Web
<mailto:me@aaronsw.com> | <http://logicerror.com/semanticWeb-long>
<http://www.aaronsw.com/> | i'm working to make it happen
Received on Friday, 28 September 2001 13:43:06 UTC