- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:28:41 +0100
- To: wangxiao@musc.edu
- Cc: "Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)" <skw@hp.com>, Michael Hausenblas <michael.hausenblas@deri.org>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
On 12/2/09 21:14, Xiaoshu Wang wrote: > The practical solution, I think, would not be trying to define what is > IR (Honestly, I don't think there can ever be). Rather, it is to find a > standard way to denote "representation". Once we know when we are > working with representation, and when we are working with resource > (i.e., by way of URI), then all things will be very clear. Yes, this is at the heart of the matter. We could spend all our lifetimes trying to come up with a definition of "information resource" that separated the universe in two. But we have no criteria for identifying any "right answer" when it appears. Being clearer about when we're talking about a bytestream Web-supplied http representation of something, versus "the thing itself", is something we an work on productively. Again, it might be an endless task, since the two are often usefully conflated. But greater clarity can be reached step by step. Re "representation", ... it has been argued (TimBL, frequently) that an RDFS/OWL schema presents a "definition" or "description" of RDF classes and properties, rather than a "representation". This is why the FOAF spec site sends HTTP 303 redirects currently. I would be quite interested to see whether this distinction can be refined and more widely agreed. I suspect it can't, but I'm willing to try... cheers, Dan
Received on Thursday, 12 February 2009 20:29:25 UTC