Re: Worry

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
> Similarly, we just /can't/ define what a name refers to

Why?

> it refers to
> different things for different people, example: "john".

Some names do. Some names don't. But one of the points of having
something like the semantic web as to have a system that was different
and more easily computable with than natural language. Put another
way, what do you think the benefit of the semantic web over english
(or esperanto) is?

> All names are an example of this.

That's just false. There are plenty of name that are unequivocally
defined, for instance the UIDS embedded in RFID tags used for
inventory.

> http uris are just the same, given a uri <x>, for one
> person that names "the representation they got back", for another it's the
> view of that representation as presented by a user agent, for another it's
> the concept over time "my paper" and for another it's the topic of that
> paper.

We do not need to build a separate system that is predicated on the
examination of each element necessary to make a decision. The web of
documents does that fine. The semweb is for something else. So the
situation you describe is not acceptable for the semantic web.

> The only things we can say, are that things have names, it's good to
> always use the same name to refer the same thing, and if you're sharing the
> use of a name with another party then it's good to agree on what you are
> referring to - we can't make that decision at web scale, it happens on a
> name by name business.

Consider reading some of the material at http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/

-Alan

Received on Wednesday, 2 February 2011 19:00:34 UTC