Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and LinkedData

From: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and LinkedData
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:55:54 -0400

[...]

> I believe, however, that what we're discussing here is not just any old 
> RDF statment.  If I had made a statement that "the sky is green", Tim 
> might reasonable express the opinion "no, I think Noah has set out a false 
> statement."  The case we're discussing is different, I think.  Tim is, I 
> believe, responsible for the association between the URI 
> http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i and a resource, or we may 
> assume for the sake of argument that W3C has delegated that responsibility 
> to him.  Tim states that the resource so designated is himself, then he is 
> not offering an opinion: he is stating a fact about the resource that he 
> has chosen to identify with this URI.  The dbpedia folks may similarly 
> establish authoritative associations between the URIs they control and 
> resources.

[...]

> Noah

But what observable consequences come from this within a computational
system? 

Certainly statements like "the sky is green" 

	ex:sky ex:colour ex:green .

have consequences.  For example, if added to functionality of the colour
propery and uniqueness of colour objects, it is inconsistent with the
sky being blue.

However, what consequences can come from the association between a URI
and a (non-information) resource?  I can't think of any, and if there
aren't any then what is the point of arguing about the status of such
associations?


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 20 July 2007 01:05:56 UTC