Re: Reification quoting in RDF/N3 was: A note comparing Conceptual Graphs and RDF/Semantic Web

> At some point we have to jump from machine meaningless to machine
> meaningful. If this is the case, then what does making resources out of
> literals give us?

Well you say we can use them as objects... fine, but it depends what you
need them for:-

<http://infomesh.net/sbp/> :hasAuthor "Sean B. Palmer"

Most people could easily understand that Notation3... but a machine doesn't
cogitate it, it just parses (and possibly remembers) the triple, and
assigns "Sean B. Palmer" (a string literal) as the :hasAuthor property of
that URL. In other words, what "Sean B. Palmer"?, the machine doesn't know
anything about that string beyond that fact.
However, if I tied it in with something unique (a URI):-

<http://infomesh.net/sbp/> :hasAuthor

   :name "Sean B. Palmer";
   foaf:mbox <mailto:sean@mysterylights.com> ] .

That means the machine could identify it with something unique "the" Sean
B. Palmer, rather than "a", if you like. Yes, there are many problems with
this, but on a basic level, URIs have a property of uniqueness that makes
them surerior to using string literals as information on the Seamntic Web.

> So given that predicates such as loves will impose ambiguity,

Not really, it's just a property. If I searched for any :bill that :loves
:scotch, then I could find it on an SW engine, couldn't I? That's enough...
the machine doesn't have to understand what "love" is :-) But also, don't
forget that the Semantic Web is a machine processable Web intended for
humans... my washing machine isn't going to want to surf the Semantic Web
[1].

[1] It could do to find proper wash times, but I'd want it to do that... it
wouldn't have the volition to.

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://infomesh.net/2001/01/n3terms/#> .
[ :name "Sean B. Palmer" ] has :homepage <http://infomesh.net/sbp/> .

Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 11:48:02 UTC