- From: John Black <JohnBlack@kashori.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:15:04 -0500
- To: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>, "Pat Hayes" <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@miscoranda.com>, <www-tag@w3.org>
on Mon Dec. 17, 2007 at 8:34 PM, Pat Hayes wrote: > >>.... I think an RDF graph is not a >>document, but is an IR. I believe that an RDF graph is pretty completely >>characterized by a set of triples. > > An RDF graph is *defined* to be a set of triples in the normative RDF > spec, so your belief has some support :-) > >> I believe I can, with suitable >>agreements between sender and receiver about the encoding (as we require >>for all information transmission), I can transmit those triples with >>complete fidelity, and a receiver could reproduce them with no loss at >>all. Q.E.D. > > Hmm. You can transmit some textual encoding of the triples in a lossless > way, yes. But you can't actually transmit the triples themselves. Compare > sending a numeral in some text, using some numerical convention, vs. > sending an actual number. Maybe if 'lossless' is the sole criterion, then > numbers are IRs also, since the literal "123"^^xsd:number seems to be an > encoding of the number one hundred and twenty three with perfect fidelity. > But I'm betting that this isn't what was originally intended by the IR > idea. I suspect that the class of *information resources* will, in the end, be no more well defined than Wittgenstein's class *game* [1]. That is, there will never be a test of necessary and sufficient conditions that can be used to decide in all cases which things are and which things are not an information resource. At best, like those activities that are games, there will be no more than a family resemblance between those that are in that class. In any particular case, those who can see the resemblance will find it useful, while those who can't will be distressed. John www.kashori.com/jpb 1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Lan > > Pat > > > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home > 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office > Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax > FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell > phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes > >
Received on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 03:15:53 UTC