RE: Understanding URI Hosting Practice as Support for Documentation Discovery: 'meaning of meaning'

In "Understanding URI Hosting Practice as Support for  Documentation Discovery" section 7 "Disclaimer regarding the meaning of "meaning" which says, in part:

" Larry Masinter is concerned that too cavalier a treatment of meaning may lead to mistakes."


Which is a pretty obscure misstatement of what I said.

Let me try again:

I think the questions the document tries to answer is cannot be answered without a model that takes into account identity, belief, communication, and time.
In particular, a model that talks about "meaning" without being explicit about "to whom" and "when" cannot be used to explain and reason about meaning in a communication protocol.

If party A sends URI U to party B, then you need to model A's intent and B's interpretation,  the context of the communication, and the timing of the interpretation.

And most importantly, there is a presumption of persistence of "meaning" that is unfounded; in fact, a key issue is the persistence and evolution of the interpretation of meaning, and a clear idea of what it is that is expected to persist.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

Received on Wednesday, 29 February 2012 17:30:41 UTC