RE: URIs / URLs

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Charles F. Munat wrote:
> Aaron Swartz replied:
> > I'm a bit confused -- what would be a resource that they located but
> didn't
> > identify?
> 

I would identify everything (even people with a new URI schema).
I would locate with URL all what is possible to reach from the network.

 
> 
> So if I assign the URL/URI http://people.com/AaronSwartz to Aaron Swartz,
> that may serve to *identify* Aaron Swartz, but it does not locate him. At
> best it locates a description of Aaron. Thus http://people.com/AaronSwartz
> might serve as the identifier for Aaron Swartz, and as the identifier AND
> locator for the description of Aaron Swartz, but it cannot serve as the
> locator for Aaron Swartz because Aaron Swartz IS NOT ON THE INTERNET AND
> PROBABLY NEVER WILL BE.
> 
> Put another way, http://ideals.com/JUSTICE might serve as an identifier for
> the concept of justice, but does it *locate* justice? I think not (though I
> wish it were that easy to find justice in this world).
> 

I like your examples.

> As I mentioned in an earlier post, the question is, Do we need identifiers
> for non-retrievable items such as concepts, people, etc. or do we really
> only need to identify descriptions and other resources that are retrievable
> over the Internet?
> 
> Hell, I don't know. You tell me.
> 

My opinion: YES.
Even if you don't want an URL for a person
(it would be not a web-locator because a person 
is not on the web, and would be difficult 
do deal with a geographic locator: people move), 
you might still want to identify them with an URI.

Typical example: you want to write metadata in RDF 
about a person.
I think you need an URI.

What do you think ?

Cheers,
Giosue'

Received on Thursday, 12 April 2001 17:13:06 UTC