- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 13:07:48 -0500
- To: "'Tim Berners-Lee'" <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: "'Miles Sabin'" <miles@milessabin.com>, www-tag@w3.org
- Message-ID: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B7C0@HQ5>
-----Original Message----- From: Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org] On Monday, August 5, 2002, at 11:53 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:-----Original Message----- Just for the documentation, the following was someone else's comment, not mine; Possibly Fielding who brought up the situation of the Academie. (Len:) Where the consumers of those specifications are relatively few in number and have comparatively aligned interests this can be made to work (viz. the W3C). But the semantic web has considerably grander ambitions and the consumers of its specs are (hopefully) considerably more numerous and diverse in their interests. Attempting to coral those consumers is likely to be about as successful as the Academic Francaise's attempts to banish imported anglicisms from French. It would be a shame if the W3C ended up looking similarly pompous and preposterous. You miss a fundamental difference. The Academie Francaise was trying to create a single vocabulary for all communication, and to mandate its use throughout France. This flies in the face of the way natural language really works. [len] I agree. Somewhat like HTML. Gencoding has that sense of finality that doesn't work in the face of natural processes of inner representation of external events with a feedback loop between them. That is the synopsis of "chaos is the engine of evolution". 1. The Semantic Web will have many vobaularies, and all the W3C will standardize is to inftastructure rules which make it work - the architecture of HTTP and RDF, etc. [len] Yes. A system that provides a means for interpreters to communicate. But RDF is itself, a vocabulary, so this becomes like the linking architecture. One can do as HTTP does and create a syntax and set of processing rules for a type of link, or as ISO 10744 did orignally, create a set of link types. 2. The Semantic Web is a logical system, not a natural language system. We are defining it -- engineering it -- in a different way to natural language, deliberately, so that it can have very consistent properties. [len] Right. Systemic definition. I agree that comparisons with natural language and even the mental processes are stretch. One can go to nature for models to emulate and the discipline of semiotics attempts that. Or one can start with a model one can be reasonably sure works in the medium, and go with that. The second path has a higher probability of getting fielded and maintained. Ah... but where the assets are critical, it is a good idea to give teeth to this, to lash the competitors for the URI together with knives. I don't understand that paragraph, but continuing: [len] Some aspects of a system where that system has global consequences may require force of law. Law is not necessary to define a system, but our social constructs are such that it may be needed to prescribe outcomes for violations. The issue here will the polity of the representative body that can make such prescriptions. Misuse of a URI may be one kind of violation that could require a certain prescription. Willfully fielding systems that violate that may require another, and so on. Because of competing organizations for specifications, a code specification alone won't do the job, TimBL. It simply won't. The world is full of people and organizations which flout that and always will. For those that see specifications for critical systems to be of such value that flouting them is dangerous for the polity at large, the specification must have the force of law and it must have teeth. The W3C is a vendor consortium by your own choice and design. That makes it the wrong polity to dispense law. W3C does not dispense law. All it can do, like any group making standards, is to define what a URI identifies, what an HTTP message means, etc. It is the best body to do that because the US Congress and the United Nations are not practitioners in the arts of global system engineering. Nor do the bodies which do make laws generally do engineering. [len] Correct. That suggests teamwork at the highest levels of these organizations. This is a hard and arduous path. It is short sword work at its most painful, but I don't see another way. Lessig argues or seems to about free market vs controlled market in the effect on technology. I believe different rules govern different phases of the transitions from innovation to law. Specification is suitable for the phases nearest innovation, and standardization is suitable for those nearest law. These are in that sense, polarities to be managed, not problems to be solved. Where parts of the Web infrastructure are critical to the proper operation of the web, and where these parts have become successful to the point that they have global effect over the producers and consumers of vital products, then these pieces should have the support of law. It is critical that the authorities for these specifications be able to discern and enunciate clearly that such a feature has emerged from specified systems, and to be present that case to those empowered by their representative status to make law. For this, it may be useful to define the role of ISO, a body representative of agreements between nation states, as that body which makes such presentations. Technical specifications work together. If the W3C makes a spec which clearly (enough) states what a document (say a P3P privacy policy) means, then governments may, in their elected authority, make adherence to the spec mandatory. [len] They may, but I assert that the documents they are citing include the privately owned property of the vendors. This sanctions the tragedy of the commons. We should attempt to ensure that where we have such documents, that their contents are in the commons even if controlled by the document provider. Also, the courts may, in the event that a fraudulent misrepresentation has been made in a P3P document, refer to the W3C specification, as anyone making a P3P policy will typically assumed by the courts to be responsible for the statement made as interpreted by the spec. [len] See above. It isn't wrong, but it sets a precedent for the privatization of the commons. So the law and the specifications work together. Specs should not be made by lawyers, and laws by technical people, but they should be aware of each other's fields. [len] Yes, but a formal means to do that may be useful. We are seeing more consortia and there will be conflicts. What to do when such a conflict escapes the scope of specification and emerges in the realm of social conduct is difficult when the venue of the conflict is vague or overlapping. We cannot always be precise about this at overlapping boundaries, but we can be precise about means to arbitrate should negotiations break down between parties. Emergence is simply when two forces engage, a control emerges above them. That is both a natural and realistic view of how to solve that problem, in my opinion. Isolate out the pieces which are mission critical and must have the force of law, then submit these specifications to ISO for standardization where the mebers are nation-states with the authority granted by the people to dispense law "of the people, by the people, for the people". This is not poetry, philosophical irrelevance, or rhetoric: it is the principle which governs and maintains governance best, by example, and by historical proof. I am sorry to diillusion you, but ISO has no such authority granted by the people in general. [len] I am not disillusioned. Often, one has to create definitions for a working system; not simply live with what the last authority created. Still, I think there is room to do this. See next response. ISO is a collection of national standards bodies, and national standards bodies are effectively industry-based consortia. Any claim by ISO to be more representative than W3C or IETF would be a matter of great debate. [len] They are a collection of standards bodies but and the work is performed by the industry based consortia, but the *voting* members are nations: "A member body of ISO is the national body "most representative of standardization in its country". Only one such body for each country is accepted for membership of ISO. Member bodies are entitled to participate and exercise full voting rights on any technical committee and policy committee of ISO. " One might assume a vote by a nation can be construed to be a vote by the bodies represented. If these do not include the rights of the people of the country, then this is something to be considered as an issue to take to ISO and the governments of the members. One can then ensure that the commons is part of that debate. You cannot solve it in code, Tim. I said that the specifications must define it. That is not solving it in code. It is the right of W3C (or any other group) to define a technical system by making specifications. There is an implicit agreement that when you use such as system, you operate under the terms of the specifications. [len] Just so. The problem here is social. I suggest a social solution. Just as when you fill in a tax form, you operate under the form author's definition of what the fields mean. I think that this principle should probably more widely and clearly stated, or we will see many more attacks such as the spammers who claim that they can put anything in RDF822 header fields, because "internet specifications aren't laws". They aren't laws, but they define the meaning of messages, and to lie in such a message is fraudulent under existing law. [len] But it is fraud without a prescriptive outcome. It does have a social component, so society must choose. Society can chose whether to mandate that everyone uses the semantic web -- unlikely. Society can chose whether, individual by individual, one wants to use the semantic web. But once one uses it, the meaning of ones messages is deemed to be defined by the specifications. And the law should and I hope will uphold that. [len] I agree. And that is something that the lawyers must and can find a way to present to the law making bodies. We must find a means to present the issues to the lawyers such that the prescription is neutral to the source. This is the concept of isonymy: equality of all before the law. Thanks very much for this discussion. len
Received on Monday, 12 August 2002 14:08:45 UTC