- From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
- Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 23:05:00 -0400
- To: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
- CC: Linked Data community <public-lod@w3.org>
I hope you realize that the point of that thought experiment is to ensure that the technology in question is sufficiently powerful and flexible, so that *if* a parallel technology were discovered, the two could be extended to encompass each other with minimal added cost -- *not* that it is in any way desirable to have such parallel technologies. David On 06/22/2013 08:55 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote: > It took me quite a while to understand this fully. IMHO, it is really > worth digesting. I think it also sheds light on how to approach some of > the topics raised in the last week. > > [[ > > *The Test of Independent Invention* > > There's a test I use for technology which the Consortium is thinking of > adopting, and I'll call it the Independent Invention test. Just suppose > that someone had invented exactly the same system somewhere else, but > made all the arbitrary decisions differently. Suppose after many years > of development and adoption, the two systems came together. Would they > work together? > > Take the Web. I tried to make it pass the test. Suppose someone had (and > it was quite likely) invented a World Wide Web system somewhere else > with the same principles. Suppose they called it the Multi Media Mesh > (tm) and based it on Media Resource Identifiers(tm), the MultiMedia > Transport Protocol(tm), and a Multi Media Markup Language(tm). After a > few years, the Web and the Mesh meet. What is the damage? > > A huge battle, involving the abandonment of projects, conversion or loss > of data? > Division of the world by a border commission into two separate communities? > Smooth integration with only incremental effort? > > Obviously we are looking for the latter option. Fortunately, we could > immediately extend URIs to include "mmtp://" and extend MRIs to include > "http;\\". We could make gateways, and on the better browsers > immediately configure them to go through a gateway when finding a URI of > the new type. * > > The URI space is universal: it covers all addresses of all accessible > objects. But it does not have to be the only universal space. Universal, > but not unique.* > > -- Tim Berners-Lee > > ]]
Received on Monday, 24 June 2013 03:05:34 UTC