Signs modulo resolution was - Re: Does follow-your-nose apply in the enterprise?

/me is supposed to be on vacation but can't seem to stay away from
mailing lists threads :)

Xiaoshu Wang wrote:

> The URN Bijian/Chimezie/and others are talking about, at least from the given use cases, is intended for a URI that has no associated transportation protocol whatsoever.  Perhaps, we should give it a name, something like, URNN (any good suggestion) so to narrow the scope of discussion.

A distinct name would be nice when you consider that my first reaction
was to go with the AWWW/httprange-14-friendly term 'non-information
source'.  However, the combination of the fact the httprange-14
finding is being rewritten [1] (yes!) and Roy Fielding's response [2]
to that draft caused me to pause.

Semiotics has been around and kicking *much* before our beloved web
revolution and has appropriate names for such things.  A brief perusal
of John Sowas "Ontology, Metadata, and Semiotics" [3] turns up this
reference:

"A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for
something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is,
creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a
more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the
interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its
object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in
reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground
of the representamen. (CP 2.228)"

All retorts about realism-based ontological modeling aside, I think I
much prefer 'sign' to 'identifier' or 'non-information source'.

-- Chimezie

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2007Aug/0039.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2007Aug/0044.html
[3] http://users.bestweb.net/~sowa/peirce/ontometa.htm

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 21:36:12 UTC