Re: article on URIs, is this material that can be used by the SWEO IG?

Pat Hayes scripsit:

> Those are all physical. But now suppose what you are looking at is an 
> image of a marble bust of Julius Caesar. There is no physical 
> connection between you and the marble, or between you and Julius.

I don't see why not.  There is an electromagnetic interaction, unmediated
by hardware, between you and the marble, which manifests as a
visual perception of it.

> Good question. But I don't really see how the Internet community can 
> possibly do this. First, there really isn't such a community in any 
> real sense. Second, how can any community establish conventions for 
> naming everything that needs to be named? Human societies have not 
> established such conventions.

What are these things which need to be named which have no names?
The fact that something is named is evidence that it needed to be
named.

> BUt how else is one going to use the name to "access" the resource, 
> than for there to be some kind of causal connection between them? How 
> would I access Italy?

You cannot access resources themselves.  You can only access particular
representations of those resources, chosen by content negotiation
(perhaps trivial negotiation of the form "server proposes just one
representation, client accepts willy-nilly").

The connection between an information resource and its representation(s)
is fairly close and straightforward.  The representation you get of
Italy when you do a GET on an URL for Italy will have a rather more
abstract connection to Italy.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan@ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand
on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability.
Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land,
to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.
        --Thomas Henry Huxley

Received on Saturday, 2 June 2007 06:28:02 UTC