Re: Owning URIs (Was: Yet Another LOD cloud browser)

David,


>
>  Why can't the semantic web track 'whois' information of domain ownership,
>> and maybe even SLL certificate information, of sites and be aware of the
>> social relationships, and use them intelligently? (perhaps more safely than
>> a human who will be confused by
>> http://www.microsoft.com.1000ripyouoff.crime/ ?) .  It is true that the
>> delegation of information within a site is not typically made explicit
>> (though it could be with site metadata).  But there is in general a system
>> of ownership of URIs, it seems to me, and it is important on the SW in the
>> social processes by which different groups get to define what different
>> terms mean. So "no-one can own any URI" set off a red flag for me.
>>
> I intended it to set off a red flag :-) This is because I would like this
> issue to be discussed and researched a bit more; I would like media studies
> to be done on the SW as a new medium; I would like to understand what social
> processes are necessary to make SW technologies congruent with how people
> deal with information and with one another through information; etc.


Well said, and I think there's plenty of opportunity here.


>
>
> To be more specific, these days a news reporter can say "foobar.com" on TV
> and expect that to mean something to most of the audience. That's a marvel.
> Something more than just the string "foobar.com" is transfered. It's the
> expectation that if anyone in the audience were to type "foobar.com" into
> any web browser, then they would be seeing information served by the
> authority associated with some topic or entity called "foobar" as socially
> defined. And 99% of the audience would be seeing the same information.
> What's the equivalent or analogous of that on the SW?
>

I just want to make sure the analogies are aligned properly and are salient.
The WWW contains only nouns (no sentences). If I have an interest or service
I want to share with others, then I post a webpage and *share its URL* with
you. In the SW, things are centered around the crowd, if I have something to
say about the an interest, service, place, person, etc, then I *reference
its URL* in my statements. So the SW contains sentences that can be browsed.
Type the URL in the WWW browser, you get *the thing *being shared. Type the
URI in the SW browser, you get the *things people say about the thing*.


>
> I believe--without proof and without any expertise in media and social
> studies, unfortunately--that for a technology or medium at the scale of the
> SW to be integrated into human society, it has to involve money, power,
> control, ownership, social hierarchies, social conventions, etc., all the
> stuff that are human. It has to get "dirty". Right now, it seems just too
> clean to be human.
>

LOL, I'm laughing because you're so right :)

-sherman