Re: #rdfms-difference-between-ID-and-about

(Taken to www-archive so as not to clutter the list with philosophy.)

On Saturday, June 23, 2001, at 11:22  PM, pat hayes wrote:

>>>> -- have you ever opened up an HTML page in your browser 
>>>> without a URL?
>>> Actually yes, I do it all the time with pages I have saved as 
>>> files and given private file names to.
>> Exactly, and those file names created a URL for the document!
> No, they did not conform to the W3C rules for URLs,

They don't? I don't know of any "W3C rules" for URLs, but they 
are most certainly in the IETF's URL spec. To my knowledge, they 
are perfectly good URLs.

> and the files are not accessible on the Web.

They aren't? But I thought you were accessing them! You must 
recognize the definition of Web we are using. The Web is the set 
of all things that have URIs, not the set of things you can type 
into your web browser and get bits back.

> (They are on a Zip disc in my desk drawer.) Not all file names 
> are URLs. File names have been used long before anyone thought 
> of URLs.

I don't see how that's relevant. I was around long before they 
thought of naming me Aaron, but that's still my name, isn't it?

> Obviously you are not a bibliophile. What is the URI for my 
> copy of 'Plays Pleasant' by George Bernard Shaw, published by 
> Penguin in 1951, price 1 shilling? For the 1815 5th edition of 
> Encyclopedia Brittannica (one volume missing), or the mid-19th 
> century collections of political oratory, or the single 
> precious page from the Nurenberg Chronicles? How about the URI 
> for the hand-written diaries and notebooks, and the files of 
> typed correspondence? How about the URIs of the stuff written 
> in those diaries and letters?
>
> Maybe you live in a vision of a future world where all this, 
> and everything else, will be scanned into a kind of global 
> matrix. I guess the best thing I can say to that is, over my 
> dead body. And for once, I'm not joking.

I'd certainly agree with you. But please understand there is a 
difference between scanning in the content of something, and 
simply using a term to refer to it. Just giving it a URI would 
"put it on the Web" so to speak, although this disagrees with 
common usage. And it would never be scanned in to some sort of 
global matrix.

I know we've gone over this before so either you just aren't 
getting this, or you want to stir up trouble. Either way, I 
think this conversation is over.


--
       "Aaron Swartz"      |           Blogspace
  <mailto:me@aaronsw.com>  |  <http://blogspace.com/about/>
<http://www.aaronsw.com/> |     weaving the two-way web

Received on Monday, 25 June 2001 11:02:56 UTC