Re: longevity of names

An interesting post from Mr Pemberton.  Certainly a person having their
information on their own web site aids in the attribution of the data to the
person and the relation of the elements of data to each other insomuch as
they are from the same source.

Presumably his argument concerning the value of the network could be carried
further to the extreme of the creation of a single unifying "network"
responsible for the association of the various disparate networks.  Whether
said network were achieved via the aggregation of existing data or via
direct user input of relational information a problem (perennial again) of
authority arises.  By what authority does one claim a relationship between
two points in data space?  Authority of some data elements may be easily
verified.  Assuring a person indeed has a particular e-mail address is
trivial, as is assuring that a person in fact "owns" a particular website.
 However attributing an article on one site with a unique person is another
matter.  Assuming the site where the article resides does not offer an API
for the verification of an author name against an e-mail address some *gasp*
human interaction might be required to authorize the association (or, using
the Wikipedia model, the authorization is assumed valid unless refuted).

Of course, this is an age old problem.  For instance, looking across my book
shelf, by who's authority does one state that "Formal Logic" was written by
De Morgan?  The publisher's I suppose, the strength of who's authority
is inversely proportional to the number of lawsuits filed against them for
misrepresentation.

-Paul

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 5:38 AM, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 25 March 2010 11:48, Jakub Kotowski <jakubkotowski@gmx.net> wrote:
> > Danny Ayers schrieb:
> >  > The data on the planet now is probably as fragile.
> >>
> >> What *is* the digital equivalent of parchment?
> >
> > Digital data definitely is fragile but usually it is seen so because
> > recording and playback methods quickly become outdated. There already
> > are people looking at this problem:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Dark_Age
> >
> > Perhaps the problem of naming should be brought to their attention.
>
> Thanks Jakub, interesting material.
>
> Long-term naming really does seem a bit of a pain - immediate reaction
> would be to go for names that are forcefully protocol independent
> (i.e. URNs), but that would be ignoring all the goodness of the Web,
> and in any case URIs as names are technically protocol-independent.
>
> Perhaps things will improve when we see more focus on personal
> (/agent/business entity etc) -oriented naming directly, with WebIDs
> and so on, rather than having to live with the current model where
> naming is devolved to 3rd party service providers.
>
> While Steve Pemberton's approach seems a bit idealistic, utopian even,
> I do believe he's hitting the nail on the head in many respects -
>
> http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/vandf/2008.03-website.html
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> --
> http://danny.ayers.name
>
>


-- 

Improve your life through recursion!
www.recursive-living.com