RE: URIs: resources and contradictions was: Re: httpRange propose d text

Systems are seldom genuninely open and still useful.  They are 
often pipelined to create a context whose use is authoritatively 
defined.  The right to assert authority is a legal problem. A 
two level system is just the beginning of the organizational 
document.  The direction of the semantic web is that it should 
always leave **the authority to choose the choices** to the user. 
Doing otherwise will turn the SW into a Golem:  the authority 
to choose the tasks to do and the power to do the tasks, the 
authority to declare the meaning and to mean the meaning are 
vested in one and the same clay man.

len


From: Miles Sabin [mailto:miles@milessabin.com]

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?

Received on Monday, 5 August 2002 11:53:24 UTC