- From: Michael Day <mikeday@yeslogic.com>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 18:24:57 +1000 (EST)
- To: pat hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
> >To continue your postman example, the postal system is the web, the > >mailing address is the URI, and the thing that sends/receives letters is > >the resource. Okay, how about a better analogy: the telephone system! The telephone system is the web, the phone number is the URI, the thing that calls and receives calls is the resource. The resource could be a person, or an automated system, or who knows what, but its precise nature does not matter to the telephone system. This is perhaps a better analogy than the postal system, given its electronic nature. (Consider the speaking clock, and weather hotlines, and so on). > I honestly think that most of the SW is not going to be concerned > directly with Webbish matters at all. It mostly going to be about > things like money, dates, contracts, people, boring everyday business > stuff. To the extent that it does get involved with senders and > receives it is going to be terribly strict and fussy about its terms > and getting them right, but that's just the nature of the beast: > formal ontologies do get strict and fussy about defining everything. Hmm, but then what makes it the semantic *web* rather than an inferencing system or ontology language? Why is the W3C involved? What does this have to do with HTTP? Why are we even having this discussion? :) Incidentally, it is interesting to reconsider the example of identifying galaxies by URI in the light of the phone system, and consider identifying them by phone number (technically already possible with tel: URIs). You can do it, and the phone system / web won't care, but if you try to describe it using RDF and say tel:555-1234 is 100 million light years away it seems quite confusing. Michael -- YesLogic Prince prints XML! http://yeslogic.com
Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2003 04:22:30 UTC