- From: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
- Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 09:11:28 -0400
- To: Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com
- Cc: chris@w3.org, www-tag@w3.org
Yep, a big +1 here. Well said Chris, Patrick. On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 02:51:04PM +0300, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: ext Chris Lilley [mailto:chris@w3.org] > Sent: Mon 2003-08-04 16:51 > To: Mark Baker > Cc: www-tag@w3.org > Subject: Re: httpRange-14 > > > An interesting result of Roy's argument is that resources, since they > cannot be observed directly, can only be inferred through observation > of the representations that they have returned over time. > > I think that is a valuable observation and leads further to a > principle that I find clarifying, though it may upset some: resources > are inherently second class objects. URIs are first class objects, and > may be stored, transferred, compared for equality and so forth. So can > resource representations (and proxy caches do this all the time). > > Resources, though, are a derived abstraction. You can't observe them > directly, or measure them, or compare them. You can compare their > identifiers, but not the resources themselves. Their meaning, the > abstraction that they convey, is reverse engineered from observation > or from shared social discourse. The meaning is not observable from > the identifier in isolation, only from the usage of this identifier. > > Naturally, social usage of an identifier is influenced by the > representations returned from it. > > Consistency, then, is a social effect where observations on the usage > of the identifier and observations on the returned resources are > substantially in agreement. Consistency is an analogue quantity, not a > binary one - consistency can be greater or lesser, can be argued > about, has shades of meaning, and whether the consistency is good > enough depends on the use that will be made of it. > > > > Very well put. And SW descriptions of those resources, using RDF, OWL, etc. can aid in the general understanding of what those resources are and can be part of a more precise social interaction regarding those resources. > > Cheers, > > Patrick > > -- Mark Baker. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. http://www.markbaker.ca
Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2003 09:11:33 UTC