Re: tags

On 23 Jan 2002 at 9:18, Tim Kindberg wrote:

> >I don't follow. How do you retrieve a digital resource
> >"from" a non-digital resource?
> 
> You read the identifier with a sensor (e.g. a camera, barcode reader, ...) 
> and send the identifier to a resolver, which looks it up and returns the 
> URLs of one or more corresponding resources.

In that case, the URI of the original offline resource is *not* being 
dereferenced to an online resource that is "at" that URI; the 
paradigm rather seems to be more that of hyperlinks, where various 
online resources, at different URIs, can be "linked from" or 
"associated with" the offline resource.  In that case, the offline 
resource's URI is the URI of that resource, not of the things it 
points to or that have been associated with it.  When you scan it and 
find associated links, you're not "resolving" the original URI as a 
URN might be, where it leads you to a current instance of the 
original resource, but rather you're using it as a launching point to 
find other resources that are relevant to the original one, each of 
which has a URI of its own (a URL, or maybe a URN that can be 
resolved to a URL).

So, if I decide to assign URIs to each comic book in my collection, I 
know that I can't actually retrieve the comic book by typing that 
into a browser (or even scanning it from a bar code I've attached to 
the plastic bag I'm storing the comic in), but there might be online 
things associated with it, both private to me and public, such as a 
database record of when, where, and for how much I purchased it, a 
review of the storyline, a scanned graphic of the cover, an Ebay page 
where I'm currently trying to sell it, etc.; a smart user agent might 
be able to retrieve those things, but the URI of the comic itself 
wouldn't be the URI of any of them, just associated with it... just 
like the URLs I link to from my Web pages aren't the URLs of my Web 
page itself but merely other resources I'm associating with it.

-- 
Dan Tobias, Programmer/Webmaster

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 13:12:09 UTC