Re: resources and URIs

>resources and URIsPat Hayes wrote:
>
>[[
>It is easy to read this as saying that the representation is 'about' the
>resource: that it 'refers to' or 'describes' the resource; but this is
>evidently incompatible with the notion of a resource as something that must
>be 'part of' an informational network.
>]]
>
>I generally wholeheartedly agree with what you have said. Quibble: might not
>Chandra be considered 'part of' an informational network

The telescope, yes.  But the galaxies it looks at? I don't really 
think so. We could get into a philosophical niggle here about how the 
stuff on the website is *really* the photons which hit the Chandra 
receptors, yaddah yaddah; but that would be off the point, because 
the basic semantic point can be made by having a web page which just 
says, in English if you like, 'This web page is about Julius Caesar'.

>-- or ought we
>reserve this phrase for something that is connected to a physical network.
>IOW: is "network" a synonym for "graph"?
>
>Hmmm ... what really is the definition of a physical network?

Not sure, but I am sure that there are things we can refer to which 
are definitely not part of it under any definition.

>
>One might thus consider "Chandra" "on the web". Should we reserve the phrase
>"on the web" for things connected by streams of electrons, and/or photons
>and/or ??? -- no, that wouldn't work because Chandra emits photons which are
>sensed by a device which emits electrons i.e. a "router" :-) no? So by what
>right is there something which *isn't* on the web?

Imaginary things, things that no longer exist, things which never 
existed as physical objects (times, dates, numbers), etc etc.  OK 
there can be border cases that we can argue about, but it is 
*obvious* that reference is a wider notion than making links across a 
network, even such a grand network as the WWW.

Pat
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Received on Wednesday, 16 July 2003 11:58:00 UTC