information resource paradox

I'm mulling over the comparison of the information carried by
a representation to the information carried by a resource.

Let's suppose that content entities (representations) and information
resources can both carry information, perhaps many "informations"
each.  Suppose the a resource R "has information" content entity E (R
"has information" E) at time t, let I(R) be the information carried by
R, and I(E) be the information carried by E.  We might have

   I(E) = I(R)                (e.g. data: URI resource, 'fixed resource')
   I(E) a subset of I(R)      (lossy encoding)
   I(E) a superset of I(R)    (advertising? marginalia?)
   I(E) disjoint from I(R)
   I(E) overlaps I(R)

and so on.  Let's define subclasses of "information resource"
according to which of these holds.  For example, let's say that an IR
R is "transparent" if I(E) = I(R) whenever E "corresponds to" R.

So let's take our journal article example, where you do a GET of some
URI U and you only get an abstract of an article (you don't get all of
its information).  Is this consistent with U naming the journal article
(consisting of more than the abstract)?  We might phrase the question
this way: are journal articles transparent?

When you put it this way the question sounds nonsensical - why would
you consider applying a property like "transparent" to a journal
article? I.e. journal articles are not information resources.  Where did
I go wrong?

Received on Friday, 19 March 2010 14:18:28 UTC