- From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
- Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:13:36 -0500
- To: nathan@webr3.org
- Cc: AWWSW TF <public-awwsw@w3.org>
On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 13:41 +0000, Nathan wrote: [ . . . ] > It's vital to anybody that wants to use layer 3, to have this > distinction Tim promotes, the guys on layer 2 stuff, like Roy and Hixie > don't hit that need, the guys on layer 3 like us and Tim, do hit it. I disagree. I think Tim's view *attempts* to ensure that things are named unambiguously, or perhaps "encourages people to *try* to name things unambiguously", but as Pat Hayes has pointed out on several occasions, http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/homepage/publications/indefenseofambiguity.html I think it is inherently *impossible* to ensure that things are named unambiguously for all applications. It is always possible to make ever finer distinctions, so a URI whose resource identity is unambiguous to one application may well be ambiguous to another application that requires finer distinctions. Bottom line: While many applications may require that "GETtable URIs refer to information resources and not cars", others do not, and the success of the semantic web does *not* depend on making that particular distinction. Nonetheless, I *do* think it is useful to be able to talk about which URIs make this distinction and which do not, i.e., which resources can be considered disjoint from the class of IRs. [ . . . ] > There are three layers of the web, > 1: a web of machines > 2: a web processes which we transfer data to/from and ask to do things > 3: a web of things talked about or referenced in information, which > includes things on layer 1, layer 2, and everything else one can conceive. -- David Booth, Ph.D. http://dbooth.org/ Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
Received on Friday, 4 March 2011 20:14:04 UTC