Re: Role of URI and HTTP in Linked Data

On 11/11/10 11:34 AM, Nathan wrote:
> 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.

Still no Referent plurality there re. Identifiers.

>
> 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..

I'll drop and rough draft poem under a separate heading :-)
>
> Nathan
>


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 16:38:36 UTC