- From: Miles Sabin <miles@milessabin.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 16:11:51 +0100
- To: www-tag@w3.org
Jonathan Borden wrote, > A URIref is a _label_ for a _node_. Each URIref uniquely and > unambiguously labels the node. Not all nodes are required to have > labels. Nodes may have properties and these properties may relate one > node to another. This might well be a perfect description of an idealization of the web, in the same way as a regualar grammar might be thought to be an idealization of a natural language. But neither bear very much resemblances to either the web or natural language as they actually are. The actually-existing web isn't simply a collection of abstract nodes and processes: it's a network of extrinsically semantically laden entities created and maintained by people. As such it's liable to all the ambiguities, contradictions and general messiness that characterize natural language and other social phenomena. You can pretend otherwise, but if you do you'll end up with a very precise description of completely the wrong thing. Cheers, Miles
Received on Friday, 20 September 2002 11:12:31 UTC