Re: Are generic resources intentional?

On Jun 9, 2009, at 7:40 AM, Jonathan Rees wrote:

> ...
> (Personally at this point I think that regarding web architecture or
> HTTP semantics I would ditch all the philosophy about "essentially
> information" and "conveyable in a message" and just stick to something
> much more operational and concrete.

Absobloodylutely. Trying to use philosophy to clarify architecture is  
like trying to do engineering drawing using mud.

> I'm not sure what that would be;
> maybe start with "on the web" or "can be put on the web"

No, because sane people (eg Roy) have argued that this would include  
galaxies and sodium atoms because these can be referred to "on the  
web" (or maybe can be seen using instruments that are physically  
attached to the Web; Tim has argued to me that eg Pantone colors count  
for this reason, since they can be detected and checked using a  
digital colorimeter. At least I think that was his point.).

> or "suitable
> for use with HTTP"

Why not, "can emit a response to some kind of access protocol"  ? That  
seems to handle all the present and all the likely future cases, be  
unambiguous, and (by philosophical standards) vividly clear and  
unambiguous. And it has the great merit of talking about the **actual  
resource** rather than an awww:representation of it, which (latter) is  
what gets conveyed in messages, in fact.

BTW, it also means that there is no such thing as a generic  
information resource. And I think this is absolutely correct: there  
isn't. Moby DIck, the novel, is no more an information resource than  
Napoleon. Neither of them can be put on the Web.

Pat

> and try to tighten that up, or else just admit,
> along the lines suggested by Harry, that the ontology aspect is both
> hopeless and silly, or David, who says it's out of scope, and ask
> people to do the best they can with the use cases we already have. (By
> "ontology" here I mean a theory of what things exist and what they're
> like, not a document type.)  Then separately encourage principled
> ontologies, such as FRBR or IAO, not directly related to HTTP or the
> Web, to account for  domains they care about.)
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:02 AM, <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>> Just curious:  If Content-location is returned, does that count as  
>> part of
>> the trace?  If so, then it seems that this issue only comes up in  
>> cases
>> where the Content-location is not supplied.
>>
>> Noah
>
>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC                                     (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973
40 South Alcaniz St.           (850)202 4416   office
Pensacola                            (850)202 4440   fax
FL 32502                              (850)291 0667   mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

Received on Tuesday, 9 June 2009 19:27:45 UTC