Re: "Web Identity" -> "Web Credentials"

Manu,

thank goodness i’m not the only one…

When reading through dublincore, or most other ontological formats; i don’t need to guess so much what it might mean, given it uses english improperly.

Dan / Libby made foaf many, many years ago.  I think simply the application of the format was not intended for it’s current use cases.

I’m also sure that enough use-case users seek to resolve the problem earlier rather than later.  

I think it’s possible to have terms defined in something else to ‘link’ to foaf terms - i.e.: sameAs (definition).  I think that’s still different legally.  It’s about whether someone authors the document, or whether a 3rd party has used the document to translate into another RDF language that they want to use (for whatever reason). 

If we can’t get the words right in english; perhaps we should be basing the terms on some other language; or perhaps that other definition of the language and term should be declared.

I think in Indonesian; “AIR” means “Water” but it’s declared as a document in Indonesian; perhaps that limits the confusion...

On 14 Mar 2014, at 1:03 pm, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On 03/11/2014 01:14 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>> Loosely speaking, In Foaf you have a Person, and you have a the
>> super class which is an Agent which can be a robot, human, group or
>> corporation.
> 
> Ah, so here's the disconnect. I'm not talking about FOAF at all. I'm
> talking about the English language definition of "Agent":
> 
> a·gent ˈājənt/ noun
> 1. a person who acts on behalf of another.
> 2. a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified
>   effect.
> 
> You are talking about foaf:Agent, which deviates from the English
> language definition quite wildly (and is thus very confusing to people
> that don't know about FOAF, which is the vast majority of the Web
> Developer population):
> 
> http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_Agent
> 
> Agent - An agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact).
> 
> We should go with English language definitions because that's what
> people are familiar with (not some esoteric Semantic Web thing). Dan
> Brickley, who created FOAF, now works for Google on schema.org. The spec
> is dead. Schema.org killed it. We should stop using it.
> 
>> The super class of Agent I think is a "Thing".
>> 
>> "Agent" itself is not tied to foaf in the Web Identity spec, it seems
>> to be more or less the same thing you are saying.
> 
> You could say that what we are talking about is the identity of a Thing.
> Again, going back to the English language:
> 
> i·den·ti·ty īˈdentitē/ noun
> 1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
> 
> Let's stop using esoteric Semantic Web vocabularies that are now over 14
> years old. Primarily, let's stop using them because they don't line up
> with the standard English definition, which is going to confuse Web
> developers.
> 
>> "identity" A set of information that can be used to identify a
>> particular entity such as a person, agent, or organization. An entity
>> may have multiple identities associated with it.
>> 
>> "identity URL" An identity URL consists of an HTTP or HTTPS scheme
>> and denotes an identity.
>> 
>> "identity document" (don't know if this is necessary) A document that
>> exists at an identity URL and contains statements about an identity.
>> 
>> May help with an example
>> 
>> I am a type of Person.  Which is a type of agent.  In your
>> terminology am I an Identity, I think not.  So what am I?
> 
> You're down one level too many. You're at the Semantic Web Vocabulary
> level. "identity" is at the conceptual level. You are a thing that is a
> person. Information about you is your identity, and you can have
> multiple identities depending on which subset of information about you
> is used. The standard English definition of "identity" is what we're
> using in the spec.
> 
>> The digital string that "denotes" me on the web, is 
>> http://melvincarvalho.com/#me
> 
> That's a perfectly fine way to denote yourself on the Web.
> 
>> The (profile/identity) document which contains more information about
>> me can be dereferenced at http://melvincarvalho.com/ and specific 
>> statements about me found at the #me anchor.
> 
> Fine as well.
> 
>> So I wonder is identity a super class of agent?
> 
> No, that's a strange FOAF-ism. I'm arguing that we should use the
> English language definition of "agent", which is:
> 
> a·gent ˈājənt/ noun
> 1. a person who acts on behalf of another.
> 2. a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified
>   effect.
> 
> And an identity is this:
> 
> i·den·ti·ty īˈdentitē/ noun
> 1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
> 
> Agents can have an identity.
> Things can have an identity.
> People can have an identity.
> 
>> In the terminology above which is the Identity, the Identity URL and
>> the Identity Document?
> 
> Identity is abstract.
> 
> Identity URL is http://melvincarvalho.com/#me
> 
> Identity Document is the thing that you have when you HTTP GET
> http://melvincarvalho.com/#me
> 
>> From my POV, I already implement turtle, but would not be a huge
>> effort for me to add json ld I think.
> 
> For you it's not a huge effort because:
> 
> 1) You studied mathematics under Stephen Hawking, which probably means
>   you're incredibly intelligent. :)
> 2) Have a deep knowledge of the Semantic Web and its intricacies as well
>   as programming
> 3) Already know TURTLE and would find it easy to implement just about
>   any data expression language.
> 
> Most Web Developers do not easily fall into any of the 3 categories
> above. This is something that is typically lost on most Semantic Web
> folks. So, the question becomes: What are the set of technologies that
> we could use that are most familiar to Web developers that also provide
> the benefits of the Linked Data stack?
> 
> That's why we're using JSON-LD.
> 
>> We're currently working on a proposal such that domains that are not 
>> email providers may still vouch for an email address. So, for
>> example, you could still login to a website using "melvin@gmail.com 
>> <mailto:melvin@gmail.com>", but your personal website
>> "http://melvincarvalho.com/" could still vouch for the email
>> address.
>> 
>> Great.
>> 
>> So what about content addressable identifiers like bitcoin:
>> addresses?
> 
> Yep, should also work just fine.
> 
>> At this point I'm unsure DHT's give you anything the web doesnt!
>> I'm convinced that decentralized systems can be built using the web,
>> tho I've yet to prove it!
> 
> One of the Web's fundamental flaws is that the protocols it uses, like
> DNS, HTTP and TLS, lead to centralization as a byproduct of its design.
> It's the reason we have things like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp,
> Google Search, etc.
> 
> Things like Telehash and Kademlia tend to foster more decentralization
> than the Web because no player on the network has "special privileges"
> (like the root CAs, core network routers, etc.).
> 
> You could argue that any decentralized system can be built using the Web
> just like any program can be written as long as you have a Turing
> complete language. Just because you could re-implement the Web using
> Fortran doesn't mean that you'd want to. Specialization is a good thing. :)
> 
> -- manu
> 
> -- 
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: The Worlds First Web Payments Workshop
> http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/
>

Received on Friday, 14 March 2014 03:52:28 UTC