- From: Miles Sabin <miles@milessabin.com>
- Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 16:35:09 +0100
- To: www-tag@w3.org
Michael Mealling wrote, > Given any context (belief system) you can say that it 'means' > anything you want it to mean. The issue is that there are two > important sets of contexts: one is what the authority that owns/has > change control over "www.w3.org" says is the context and the other is > what others say that believe about it. Its the difference between > opinion and identity. The W3C has the ability to say what "is" while > anything said by anyone else is merely opinion. The difference is > very important. Agreed ... but how does that help us precisely? It's one thing to assert that the domain registrant has the final word on the matter, it's quite another to give that assertion any teeth in practice. If there are millions of people using http://www.w3.org/ to refer to a document, and yet more millions using it to refer to a web site, then what on earth are you proposing to do to get those millions to coordinate on a single unambiguous interpretation? Legislation? Cattle prods? REST is comparatively safe here, because the interpretation of URIs in REST is determined by RFC 2616 and manifested in a comparatively small number of implementations. But RDF offers anyone the capability of making assertions using any URI. Nb. _any_ URI, not just URIs for which the asserter is the authority ... restricting the range of allowable assertions to only those involving URIs for which the asserter is authoratitive or has coordinated with the authority would dramatically limit the scope and usefulness of RDF. It's open vs. closed again. In a genuinely open system there is no authority which can practically be appealed to. > > I know what a document is, and I know what a web site is, but I've > > really no idea what a resource which might "mean" one or the other > > is, unless it's just an artefact of a semantic theory. Or try it > > again with another example: I know what a document is, and I know > > what a car is, but I've no idea what a resource which might "mean" > > one or the other is, again, unless it's just an artefact of a > > semantic theory. > > Its an artifact of someone trying say "this is what _I_ think this > means" and "this is what the owner says it means". If you don't make > a distinction based on authority then its all just vague assertions > with no concreteness on which to base anything. Which authority? Cheers, Miles
Received on Sunday, 4 August 2002 11:35:42 UTC