Re: Role of URI and HTTP in Linked Data

Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 11/11/10 10:00 AM, Nathan wrote:
>> Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>>> On 11/11/10 9:00 AM, David Booth wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 2010-11-11 at 07:23 +0100, Jiří Procházka wrote:
>>>> [ . . . ]
>>>>> I think it is flawed trying to enforce "URI == 1 thing"
>>>> Exactly right.  The "URI == 1 thing" notion is myth #1 in "Resource
>>>> Identity and Semantic Extensions: Making Sense of Ambiguity":
>>>> http://dbooth.org/2010/ambiguity/paper.html#myth1
>>>> It is a good *goal*, but it is inherently unachievable.
>>>
>>> Are you implying that a URI -- an Identifier -- doesn't have a 
>>> Referent (singular)?
>>
>> http://kingsley.idehen.name/dataspace/person/kidehen#this does not 
>> name you, it's not a name for you, or the name for you.
>>
>> It's a name (identifier for the purpose of referencing) of "#this, as 
>> described by http://kingsley.idehen.name/dataspace/person/kidehen" and 
>> how "#this, as described by 
>> http://kingsley.idehen.name/dataspace/person/kidehen" is ultimately 
>> interpreted to be, depends entirely on context and application.
>>
>> > If so, what is the URI identifying?
>>
>> It's identifying, or referring to, "x, as described by y" and what the 
>> description identifies is open to interpretation and context (a human? 
>> an agent? a father? a trusted-man? a holder of X? a bearer of Y?).
> Nathan,
> 
> In your response, I don't sense (in any way) the plurality that I sense 
> in David's comments -- for which I sought clarification.
> 
> I interpret David's response (maybe inaccurately) as saying:
> http://kingsley.idehen.name/dataspace/person/kidehen#this, isA URI that 
> can have > 1 Referent. None of your expressions infer that.

AFAICT, it's more Man != Father != TrustedMan, so dependent on how you 
interpret the resource you will come to different conclusions as to what 
it identifies (x the Man or x the Father or x the TrustedMan, and so 
on), those things are all differentFrom each other, so thus it names 
different things in different contexts - but of course it's just one 
thing which can be classified in different ways.

Or, perhaps he was more referring to that fact that </Toucan> does 
identify two entirely different things, not one thing that can be 
classified in two different ways.

I'd suggest "URI == 1 described thing, description open to 
interpretation" as opposed to "URI == X things" - but reality we are 
faced with is that we need to handle both.

Might be missing something..

Nathan

Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 16:35:20 UTC