RE: Information resources?

Quoting "Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com" <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com>:

[snip]
> Namely, the web is all about interacting with representations.
> Representations are binary streams of data. That's all the web does. 
> Period.
> 
> While access to those binary streams is via URIs which denote
> "resources" of which those binary streams are representations,
> the web itself cannot actually provide any explicit information
> or direct access to those actual resources.
> 
[snip]
> One might guess, and one might guess correctly, but any such
> speculation is *entirely* outside the scope of the web architecture.
> 
> The web doesn't really care about resources -- only about the
> access to representations associated with those resources.
[snip]
> Unless one proceeds to the semantic web level, where one can
> obtain explicit statements about the resource in question, one
> *cannot* know for sure if it corresponds to a body of information,
> such as a web page, a poem, a novel, an image, etc. or whether
> it is abstract, or concrete/physical, etc.
[snip]
> The problem with the term "information resource" in the latest
> draft of AWWW is *not* with its definition, but with the linguistic
> properties of the component words of the term itself -- and the
> fact that many folks will read far more into what AWWW is saying
> than it really is.
> 
> If "information resource" in AWWW was simply replaced with 
> "web resource", then that would be much, much better.

+1 though I think I prefer "resource" over "web resource", as "web resource" to
my ear implies something which is inherently "webby" and which would not/could
not exist without the existence of the web, nor be identified or represented on
any other system, including the hypothetical system TimBL mentions when
explaining his principle of independent invention.

-- 
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
"I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even - there are so many of those 
creeping women, and they creep so fast."
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, _The Yellow Wallpaper_

Received on Thursday, 9 September 2004 10:11:37 UTC