Re: blog: semantic dissonance in uniprot

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> On 24 Mar 2009, at 05:06, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> [snip]
>> Michel,
>>
>> 303 redirection serves a single purpose: enforcement of the Identity 
>> principle for discrete data objects. If a datum lacks identity it 
>> cannot in away be resourceful.
>
> Identity principle? Resourceful? What is it to be resourceful?
>
> In general (i.e., in the broadest context) the identity conditions of 
> data objects typically is not their name. E.g., consider lexical form 
> and xsd:integer.
>
>> The identity principle also implies that "Identity" stands alone from 
>> all else, you cannot intermngle with "representation", for instance.
> [snip]
>
> I strongly recommend not appealing to potentially tendentious and hard 
> to explicate, much less empirical support, principles in these 
> discussions. One is more likely to communication across conceptual 
> perspectives if one operationalizes one's concepts.
>
>> If you are going to honor the Identity principle on the Web,
>
> There's no honor among engineers.
>
>> in an unobtrusive manner (i.e., leverage ubiquity of HTTP) there is 
>> no way around the above.
>>
>> The whole essence of the Linked Data Web comes down to distillation 
>> of Data Objects from the host Information Resources (documents) i.e, 
>> making the Data Objects
>
> These captializations scare me.
> [snip]
>> Scientist are always preoccupied with,
>
> I'm a scientist! I'm not always so preoccupied with database records! 
> Except DBLP!
>
>> and interested in, database records because science lives and dies
>
> By funding!
>
> By publications? Backstabbing? Politics? Grad students and postdocs? 
> Am I warm?
>
>> by the following processes:
>
> Damnit! I got it wrong AGAIN! ;)
>
>> 1. Hypothesis
>> 2. Observation
>> 3. Conclusion
>
> Tendentious (and very naive) philosophy of science seems poor ground 
> upon which to sprout the tree of  Engineering Consensus!
>
> Seriously, there's a huge, rich literature about the nature and 
> practice of science. Very little of it would embrace this description 
> even as a crude formulation.
>
>> The steps above are about units of observation ("data"), contextual 
>> representation ("information"), and conclusions ("knowledge").
>
> Such scare quotes are scary! I don't know what a "unit" of 
> "observation" is, but the history of such concepts as observation 
> sentences in Carnap doesn't leave me with much hope.
>
> So, at this point, I can't distill out your position, much less how 
> all this is supposed to support that position. Is it really necessary? 
> Aren't there simpler, more direct considerations?
>
>> In my experience, scientists are completely preoccupied with Data :-)
>
> Well, I hope I've now embiggened your experience!
>
> Cheers,
> Bijan.
>
Bijan,

Is "Identity" important or not? That's the question here.

Is granularity important or not? A variation of the statement above.

303s are just about "Identity" at the datum level within the context of 
the Web when using a particular form of HTTP based URI scheme (the Slash 
based URI).

Should we be able to reference a datum and de-reference a representation 
of its description via the Web?

-- 


Regards,

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

Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2009 13:01:59 UTC