RE: What is at the end of the namespace?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Martin Duerst [mailto:duerst@w3.org]
> Sent: 18 November, 2001 11:27
> To: David G. Durand; uri@w3.org
> Subject: Re: What is at the end of the namespace?
> 
> 
> At 21:05 01/11/17 +0900, David G. Durand wrote:
> 
> >At 1:05 PM -0800 11/16/01, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> >>The only chaos I have seen is in the writings of more 
> recent specifications
> >>that ignore the research and experience of the Web 
> developers in favor of
> >>their own personal view of an ideal world.  When they 
> implement something
> >>that works and has the same expressive power as the Web 
> itself, then I will
> >>take their writings seriously.
> >
> >A lot of the issues raised in the URN debate were raised by 
> people from a 
> >library background, and librarians have been devising 
> reference systems 
> >for a long time.
> 
> Yes indeed. But they also carry some baggage.
> 
> It took me a very long time to understand why some people insisted
> that much on the distinction between names and locations. I finally
> understood it when I talked to somebody from the library community
> insisting on this distinction. He gave the example of books.
> 
> This helped me a lot: It became clear that in a library with books
> (as in any other system primarily oriented on physical objects, and
> in particular on such objects existing in multiple instances), the
> distinction between names and locations was quite fundamental.
> 
> However, it became also very much clearer to me (I already thought
> so implicitly before) that in a web context, centered on concepts
> and digital resources, where copying and moving things around is
> virtually instantaneous and extremely cheap, the distinction between
> names and locations is not necessary at all, and usually confuses
> more than it helps.

Not so. Just because it is easier to make copies does not mean
that the relation of name to location looses its importance. Quite
the opposite! It means that there potentially could be far more
locations of the "same" thing to keep track of.

Furthermore, your argument only applies to digital objects, not
to abstract objects or concrete objects that are not digitizable.

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Monday, 19 November 2001 04:03:43 UTC