- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:28:29 -0500
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: Technical Architecture Group WG <www-tag@w3.org>, Susie Stephens <susie.stephens@gmail.com>
>On 2007-09 -20, at 11:37, Pat Hayes wrote: >(Re: Some TAG review of "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web") >[...] > >>In addition, that final sentence really is ridiculous. "We call all >>these things resources." All WHAT things? It sounds rather as >>though you are saying 'We call everything resources.' > > >I agree that that is a terrible word. It is an abuse of the english >word. (Its use is is historical: when Universal Resource Idemtofiers >and Resource Description Format were dreamed up, the communities >were very much thinking of Information resources, such as >educational resources available on the WWW). > >So, Pat, what would be a better word which we should use instead? Things? Seriously: why do you need a special term which means "anything at all"? Almost any word you baptize specially will have some problems. I gather 'entity' is already used up by XML. If you say 'concept' then some folk will think you mean to exclude the things they are concepts of. Why not just a form of words like this: >The class of all ____ s? The class of everything, aka the universal class. >The class of which all classes are subclasses is the class of ____ s? Things, in an inclusive sense. Anything, real or imaginary, which can be referred to or talked about. To sound technical, call them 'referents' because you refer to them. English doesn't have the word 'namee', perhaps that's for the best now I look at it. I think the topic map folk use "topic" which is about as good as anything, even though its a newer usage and slightly off target (since a referent in fact might just sit there without being the topic of anything because nobody is talking about it.) Better still: The class of which all classes are subclasses is the universal class, which contains everything. Also called the 'universe', also sometimes called the 'domain of discourse', which draws attention to the fact that 'anything' here means anything that can be referred to or talked about, whether it is real or imaginary: any possible topic of any kind of meaningful discourse. Pat > >Tim -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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