- From: Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 05:59:48 +0200
- To: Alexander Johannesen <alexander.johannesen@gmail.com>
- Cc: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
On 8 April 2010 05:11, Alexander Johannesen <alexander.johannesen@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 12:45, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote: >> People can learn can learn things like "TV" (without having a full >> grasp of electromagnetic theory) or even "ADSL" (and you know the >> rest). > > Yes, it's relatively easy to teach people things when you've got a > simple moniker (TV, ADSL, website) attached to something they care > about (people wants moving pictures at home, they want internet at > home, they want to browse websites). But going from "a website" to "a > specific resource with a specific protocol" is dead in the water. Making a mountain out of a mole hill there, imho. "The Web" has already come to mean something pretty well unimaginable say 50 years ago. I believe people have been able to distinguish documents from things ever since documents were invented. I can't see why it shouldn't be possible to tap into a 50,000 year old meme. >>> Huh? Richard Dawkins? >> Yup, him. > > What's the problem with him? He annoys me the way he argues stuff. I am effectively an atheist, but his approach makes me want to run & hide in a church. >>> I think you've got too much faith in the human capability of grasping >>> something they don't care about. >> >> People didn't care about tv until they saw something that manifested the name. > > Huh? People didn't care about TV until they cared about TV. The name > is also different in different languages, just like a car (which is > short for 'automobile cart', or, in Norwegian, 'bil' which is the last > bit of 'automobile'). This discussion is slowly going from memes to > lingustics. Ok. And people used to have to walk in front of cars with a red flag. >> Would you agree that a URI is a name for a thing? How is that so >> conceptually more difficult than ordering a pizza? > > Well, for starts, I don't agree humanly. Technically we're in > agreement, of course, but as a human being that's probably a few steps > away from knowing jack about REST or HTTP(S) or other protocols, I'd > say two things ; > > - a website > - a web page > > The latter is the human form of a resource with a http(s) URI address. > I don't think there's a better way. why not a thing with a name? Ok, I'm not altogether sure it's possible with the current terminology, Resource is so overloaded, but Thing seems fairly clean. But I don't think you have to talk about the leap to protocols - we already have millions of people behaving in conformance to those protocols. >> I take your point about caring about stuff, but we're wasting our time >> if we don't think we're doing something that people might care about. >> Or doing a PhD. mileage varies. > > But people *don't* care about this, only technologists do. People care > about websites and web pages, but they don't care about the protocol, There is a difference between the wire protocol and the human protocol. The human one is clearly the one that matters, and the difference between a thing and a piece of paper that talks about it is pretty significant, and obvious. Most of the Web has the piece of paper model, but that's not to say people have. > and, personally, I think that if we were to collectively try to remedy > this situation we'll do more harm than good. Let the generations of > technological literacy do it for you, because this is akin to fighting > windmills. Which generations of technological literacy would they be, without someone to put this stuff under people's noses? Cheers, Danny. -- http://danny.ayers.name
Received on Thursday, 8 April 2010 04:00:21 UTC