- From: Renato Golin <renato@ebi.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:39:04 +0100
- To: Ioachim Drugus <sw@semanticsoft.net>
- CC: John Black <JohnBlack@kashori.com>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, Jacek Kopecky <jacek.kopecky@deri.org>, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>, semantic-web@w3.org
Hi Ioachim,
Ioachim Drugus wrote:
> I think, content-type is the type that the *author* of the content
> *intended* the content to be. Content-type helps the interpreter
> (interpreting agent) to select the right approach to interpretation, but
> does not guarantee that it will interpret the content as it was
> intended by the author.
Exactly, it's only the author's intention, nothing more.
> Availability of content-type is necessary but
> not sufficient for a piece of data to become information.
> What I wrote previously refers only to discrimination between data and
> information, but it does not explain how things go further.
I wouldn't say not even necessary, but optional. You definitely don't
need content-type to know an HTML when you look at it. Programs aren't
that different, just a bit dumber.
Of course it's *much* simpler to have context type, even for us. ;)
> Now, since the interpreter is confined by the knowledge {content,
> content-type}, the only other thing which is given to start the
> interpretation process is *context*.
As content-type is a kind of context this is a bit redundant.
Data + context = Information
SYN-SUM(Information) = Knowledge
ie. all contexts (known) about the same data, in synergy, so:
SYN-SUM[N](Information) != SYN-SUM[N-1](Information) + Information N
Of course things can get much more complicated, data can be a subset of
other data in a different context and things like that but that's
further than the discussion about the same data's contexts.
> There is yet another aspect - the difference between *information* and
> *information resource* on which I which I will not write here to keep
> to the point of this discussion - discrimination between data and
> information. This difference is clearly stated in how Tim defined the
> information resource, but I think, after I work here a little, I will
> come back with a " formalized" manner to put it, which might also help.
Yes, good thread going on about it, I couldn't help much with that,
though... ;)
cheers,
--renato
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Received on Friday, 29 June 2007 14:41:06 UTC