Re: URIs and Unique IDs

Michael F Uschold wrote:
> 
> BTW, this discussion has inspired me to write a paper on the topic. 
> Probably too late to submit to WWW conference, but I will make whatever 
> I have available in some manner when it is ready

Great, I look forward to seeing it. Can you post a copy to semantic-web 
when it's ready?

BTW - and perhaps this is a bit cheeky - but may I take this opportunity 
suggest (to you and others) that titles like 'URI Crisis' are a little 
overly-dramatic. I'd rather see dull titles like 'URI - Mild Nuisance', 
'URIs don't solve everything' or 'URIs Provide Opportunity for Further 
Clarity and Best Practice'. The use of URIs provides mostly syntax and 
some machinery around decentralised control; it also quite naturally and 
inevitably provides many many ways to screw up. This doesn't constitute 
a crisis any more than the fact that Unicode allows people to write 
illogical things or bad poetry.  Or that UML and OWL allow bad or vague 
conceptual models to acquire the outer trappings of formality.

I find the talk of URI and identity crisis a little alarmist, and I fear 
they're one of the factors that put people off from approaching this 
technology. Are we really in a crisis situation? Should I stop or start 
doing something asap?

cheers,

Dan

--
http://danbri.org/

Received on Monday, 3 November 2008 11:44:29 UTC