- From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:51:07 -0400
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson), Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>, www-tag@w3.org
On 2007-06 -11, at 12:04, Pat Hayes wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> John Cowan writes:
>>
>>> Tim Berners-Lee scripsit:
>>>
>>>> When the word Representation is used, I prefer to use it
>>>> strictly for
>>>> the relationship between an information resource such as a page
>>>> about
>>>> a person and the (metadata, bits) pair, and not for the
>>>> relationship
>>>> between the person described and the (metadata, bits) pair.
>>>
>>> Suit yourself, of course.
>>>
>>> But I prefer to suppose that the (metadata, bits) pair you get when
>>> fetching http://www.heritage.org/images/shakespeare.jpg is not
>>> merely a
>>> representation of that particular JPEG, but also of Shakespeare
>>> himself,
>>> as the publisher of that particular resource must surely have
>>> intended --
>>> they would scarcely have bothered to publish it if they meant it
>>> to be
>>> just some JPEG rather than a picture of Shakespeare.
>>
>> Stop, you're both right [1]. The (metadata, bits) pair is a
>> representation of the resource. The resource is a depiction (a kind
>> of representation) of Shakespeare. To some extent, 'represents' is
>> transitive
>
> Whaaa??? No, it is NOT transitive. A photograph of a book
> describing a statue of George V is not a representation of George V.
>
Agreed. But this seems to be a conversation about english words, not
the the web architecture.
One could say, in *english*, that the (bits, metadata) represent a
picture, which represents a person, who represents the House of
Representatives which represents the people of the USA, which
represent the culmination of billions of years of evolution. In each
case the word 'representation' is used in a different way. That is a
distraction. ("what do you mean by 'angel' and 'pin' anyway?")
> The basic problem, seems to me, is that y'all (by which I mean the
> TAG mostly) are using words like "represent" far too loosely.
The TAG uses (I hope) tag:representation only as a relationship
between a tag:InformationResource and a tag:Representation, the
latter being the class of (bits, metadata) pairs. It is not
transitive. (I would say that its range and domain do not even overlap)
When you see people on the www-tag list using words more loosely,
they may be trying to understand the architecture, or suggesting it
be modified, or talking about how systems other than the semantic
web work, do not assume that the use of words is consistent with the
constrained use in the arch document, and later discussions of the
semantic web architecture, try to achieve.
Tim
Received on Monday, 11 June 2007 17:51:13 UTC