Re: Preferable alternative to 'resource'

>Pat Hayes writes:
>
>>  Until quite recently, and everywhere except for a few of the more
>>  recherche TAG writings, "resource" in most of this literature in fact
>>  means "information resource". And keeping "resource" as an
>>  abbreviation for IR seems quite sensible, and conforms to natural
>>  English usage and to historical precedents.
>
>Interesting point.  That might work.
>
>>  URI could be glossed as Uniform Rigid Identifier, which in fact is
>>  quite a good description of its intended use.
>
>Umm, please take no offense, but that seems a bit clunky and forced.

Well, yes, I agree. And in any case it introduces an explicit name 
clash, when it would be easier to just let the old usage hang around 
without bothering anyone. I just kind of liked the idea, is all.

>  Right
>now, I think we should either stick with the current broad meaning for
>"Resource", or adopt a new initialism.  It's not clear to me that anyone
>outside the priesthood has even noticed the URL->URI transition, so maybe
>yet more confusion only makes it a little worse?
>
>>  With respect to IBM, 150 IBMers is a pretty small group compared to
>>  the entire rest of the planet.
>
>Yes, of course.  The question is whether my little experience is
>representative of many others?  Overall, there's a tremendous investment
>in teaching people about the Web and how to use it.

Agreed, but nothing really changes here except terminology. I really 
think that anyone other than pure ungeeks will be able to let this 
slide past without getting too confused. And to me, the contrast 
resource/thing is a lot easier to handle than
non-information resource/information resource.

>How much of that is
>at a level of specificity that would be affected by the changes of
>terminology we're contemplating, I'm not sure.  I'm just offering one
>datapoint, not drawing any conclusions.

Fair enough. Sorry if my response was a bit sharp-stick.

Pat

>
>Noah
>
>--------------------------------------
>Noah Mendelsohn
>IBM Corporation
>One Rogers Street
>Cambridge, MA 02142
>1-617-693-4036
>--------------------------------------


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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, 9 October 2007 16:34:17 UTC