RE: Semantic web - a fractal ongoing struggle toward greater consistency.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Hanna [mailto:jon@spin.ie]
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 7:56 AM
> To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Semantic web - a fractal ongoing struggle toward greater
> consistency.
> 
> 
> 
> > Of course, in RDF HTTP URIs are used as UUIDs.  But while they
> > are used that
> > way, they are no longer HTTP URIs, but just unique, opaque
> > identity markers.  I still
> > think that in that case, we are using these HTTP URIs as UUIDs to
> > denote the HTTP URIs
> > used as HTTP URIs.
> 
> They are always UUIDs, if they weren't they couldn't function 
> as URLs since
> it would be impossible to know what resource you should send a
> representation of.
> HTTP, DNS and server implementation policies add semantics on 
> top of the
> opaque identifier, but they never cease to identify one thing 
> and one thing
> alone.

True.  But my  point was the other way around.  I'm trying to make the point
that, as I understand it, RDF and SW don't require any of that HTTP semantics 
to be applied on top of the UUID.  I want a connection to the web.  Were there 
not the promise of a real, deep connection to the web, I might be tempted to 
use an existing logical formalism.

I would love to see the semantic web emerge organically in an exotically 
beautiful fractal pattern out of the existing web - as though it had always 
been there and is now just being revealed by RDF and OWL.

I know the pre-semantic web works.  And I think RDF and OWL will work.

But what I just can't yet see the logical connection that UUID-URIs in the 
semantic web have to HTTP-URIs in the pre-semantic web.  To me there is a 
wonderful, evocative, and metaphorical connection to HTTP-URIs that motivates 
me to want to continue the search for a stronger connection.

The difficulty I am having, is for me the pre-semantic web is more of a system that 
does things than a language that says something.  I want a logical system to make 
assertions with that has the ubiquity, reach, and power of the web.

I want both.  And I want the connection to be necessary and essential.

Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 12:42:20 UTC