RE: httpRange-14 , what's the problem

From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]

>My own view of what a resource is may be found in 
>http://www.textuality.com/tag/s1.1.html

Succinct and sensible.

>Where is the problem for RDF?  What am I missing?

Universality: assume a one to one mapping of the URI to 
a single entity.   It may be useful to explore 
the characteristics of the kinds of resources RDF 
attempt to uniquely identify with RDF URIs.  In 
classical semiotics, it is acknowledged that a 
signifier may have many signifieds varying by 
the kinds of values you describe.  This appears 
to be yet another persistence/maintenance issue 
coming under policy.

>I think there is another issue lurking in here that may deserve calling 
>out: given a URI, while you can potentially retrieve a representation of 
>the resource, you can't find out what the resource is.  

Any metadata system of adding identification qualities helps. 
A lookup is a lookup is a lookup, but...

>There is no systematic way to look at 
>http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/MXOA0069.html and realize that the 
>resource is really "Yahoo's weather forecast for Oaxaca".  In fact, this 
>is why we need RDF or equivalent - to provide a standardized way to make 
>assertions about resources, something lacking in the basic web 
>architecture, which only knows about representations.

Even RDF won't solve that completely.  Again, this is the 
Schrodinger's Cat problem of an infinite recursion of 
observer/controls.   RDF reveals the essential issue 
of attempting to scale a classification system and 
running headlong into the Rosen category problem in 
which it is easy to tell a zebra from a horse, but 
not easy to tell a sphere from another sphere of 
exactly the same composition but slightly different 
size.   The best we get is by design in accordance 
with policy to determine how much precision is 
required or affordable.   No free lunch.

len

Received on Wednesday, 17 July 2002 09:38:21 UTC