RE: Documents, Cars, Hills, and Valleys

Joshua Allen wrote,
> Miles Sabin wrote,
> > In many, perhaps most, cases there's simply no problem, because
> > implicit context is sufficent to resolve any practical ambiguity 
> > (eg. in the context of a GET, http://www.markbaker.ca/ will only 
> > ever refer to a document, rather than to Mark in the flesh). In 
> > others we have
>
> This statement makes me think that you are missing the point of the
> semantic web entirely.  In the context of a GET, you are using the 
> WWW, not the semantic web.  It's pretty simple, really -- the 
> semantic web is a way for people to make assertions about things, 
> and know that they are all talking about the same "thing" when they 
> make assertions. Therefore, we need a universal way to identify 
> "things".  That way is called URIs.

And, IIRC, you've claimed that those "things" are always documents,
at least where http: URIs are concerned? Assuming for the sake of
argument that that's so, and there's no ambiguity involved, then by
your own lights it's surely the case that there's some relationship 
between the use of an http: URI in an RDF assertion and it's use in 
the context of a GET ... both identify the same resource, the former 
for the purpose of assertion, the latter for purpose of representation 
retrieval.

I find it hard to see how this forms the basis for driving a wedge 
between the WWW and the semantic web ... on the contrary it suggests 
that the two are inextricably linked.

I'm obviously missing something ... could you elaborate?

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2002 12:25:29 UTC