Re: Section 2: What does a URI identify? (and range of HTTP deref)

/ Bill de hÓra <dehora@eircom.net> was heard to say:
|>> Tim Bray:
|>
|> The notion of "Mexico" can be identified, and I can write
|> a URI and assert that it identifies Mexico:
|> 
|   http://www.textuality.com/countries/Mexico
|
| and then write RDF rules about it and make inferences, and this
| would be useful, but it would be unsurprising if the resource had 
| no representations; and Mexico the nation will obviously transcend 
| any individual representation.
|>>
|
| Wouldn't this work in reverse also? You have a URI to represent
| Mexico and can use that URI to describe other resources as well as
| say things about Mexico itself, for example a jpeg of Mexico,
| whereas you're less likely to use the jpg URL you mentioned below
| to describe something else.

The phrase "less likely" exposes, I think, another murky area here. We
human beings (no offense intended to aliens and intelligent machines
reading this message) are so naturally prone to pattern matching that we
think

   http://www.textuality.com/countries/Mexico

is a more abstract, more appropriate URI for "Mexico" than

   http://www.xml.com/1999/12/graphics/connolly1resized.jpg

But I don't think there's any actual, objective reality to this thinking.

Whatever Tim Bray says about Mexico using his URI to identify it
(including some initial assertion that his URI identifies Mexico), I
could say using the other URI. People would be confused, but I don't
think there's anything architecturally different about the two URIs.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM   | A proof tells us where to concentrate our
XML Standards Engineer | doubts.--Anonymous
XML Technology Center  | 
Sun Microsystems, Inc. |

Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 10:43:00 UTC