Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Sandro Hawke wrote:
>
> "Hans Teijgeler" <hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl> writes:
>> To me the distinction between information and non-information resources 
>> is
>> non-existing, because what you call a non-information resource actually
>> contains information as well
>
> But it doesn't contain *only* information.  Information Resources are
> things which can be entirely and completely encoded as bits and then
> transmitted over a network.  They can be copied, perfectly.  They can be
> serialized.  They are pure information.  (Another name I suggested for
> this class was "Digital Artifact", but the TAG went with "Information
> Resource" instead.)
>
> That, it seems to me, is a fairly crisp and useful class to define when
> talking about computer systems like the Web.
>
>    -- Sandro

This is what I used to think. But, apparently, this is not the case. What 
you are talking about are representations of the resource. Each 
representation of the resource is "pure information" that can be perfectly 
copied. But remember that the representation is not the resource. The 
resource is the *source* of the representations. So while any one 
representation may be copied perfectly, or even any stream of 
representations over some time interval may be copied perfectly, yet these 
are not the resource being represented. The resource, that which is the 
source of the representations, cannot be copied. How could it? You would 
have to know all future representations that resource will produce, and in 
what sequence.

John
www.kashori.com

Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 10:50:32 UTC