Re: What a URI means, was Re: erratum Re: resources and URIs

Graham Klyne wrote:

>
> At 15:32 27/07/03 -0500, pat hayes wrote:
> >>Claiming that the URI cannot
> >>identify both the conceptual mapping and the real thing outside
> >>the information system is equivalent to claiming that your
> >>social security number cannot be used to identify anything other
> >>than your social security account.
> >
> >OK, point taken: so the URI can be ambiguous. I agree names can be
> >ambiguous in this sense; they can have more than one possible
> >meaning/referent. ...
>
> Is this really true?  If a social security number "identifies" a social
> security account (and nothing else), it can still be used to make
reference
> to a person

It depends on how you define "ambiguity". I see this as relating a URI to a
set of possible interpretations -- as you know this is pretty fundamental to
the way RDF and OWL are currently defined.

Jonathan