RE: ACTION-402 Summarize JAR's message to HT re HTTP-based naming and put on the agenda

I agree that thinking about "trust" is important.

However, I want to point out that it is important to be careful about who trusts whom for what. I was struck by the sentence in Jonathan's writeup:


"In both stories, binding and resolution are orthogonal. Resolution is simply any effective system that is faithful to the binding rule. If I'm interesting in resolution, I can go shopping and find a resolution service that I like, and if one gives the wrong answer (unlikely given that liars can be caught), I can switch to another. Again, verifiability induces honesty and thus trust."

Speaker A at time T1 wishes to utter a name X which has a meaning. Speaker A wants some kind of guarantee that, any listener B, hearing the name X at time T2, will "know" (or be able to find out) the meaning of X. 

The problem is that speaker *A* at time *T1* wants the guarantee.  The sentence "If I'm interested in resolution" -- applies to listener B at time T2. Yes, B can shop around for a resolution service, but how does B at time T2 *know* what A at time T1 meant?

This system of auditing may give B some guarantees that B is satisfied with, but not A at time T1.

How is it "Liars can be caught"? 



--
http://larry.masinter.net

-----Original Message-----
From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 8:35 AM
To: Jonathan Rees
Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: ACTION-402 Summarize JAR's message to HT re HTTP-based naming and put on the agenda

Jonathan Rees wrote:

> I've added this to the agenda and marked it "required reading" 
> (knowing that this is probably wishful thinking at this late date)

I didn't see it as of this morning.  It's very possible that I 
inadvertently stepped on it, but in any case I have re-added it at [1,2]. 
Sorry for any confusion.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/tag-weekly#persistentNaming
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/03/24-agenda#persistentNaming

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
Sent by: www-tag-request@w3.org
03/21/2010 09:30 AM
 
        To:     www-tag@w3.org
        cc:     (bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM)
        Subject:        Re: ACTION-402 Summarize JAR's message to HT re 
HTTP-based naming and   put on the agenda


An expanded version of the summary is here:

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/03/uris-and-trust.html "URIs and trust"

I've added this to the agenda and marked it "required reading"
(knowing that this is probably wishful thinking at this late date)

Jonathan

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org> 
wrote:
> Per ACTION-402 Summarize JAR's message to HT re HTTP-based naming and
> put [its topic?] on the agenda
>
> Re ISSUE-50 URNsAndRegistries, Henry and I wanted to talk about the
> issue of trust in URIs. The particular way in which binding and
> resolution are linked in http: space leads to a certain degree of
> mistrust because it creates single points of administrative failure
> ("the frailty of human institutions"). For example, an archivist,
> librarian, or court would never allow a URI to stand by itself as a
> reference, but would allow other forms of reference to stand. The
> residual mistrust and single point of failure have always seemed
> inevitable (this has been the central argument of the ISSUE-50 draft
> documents), but the fact that society *has* created conventions of
> reference that are highly trusted, lack SPFs, and are resolvable
> (after a fashion) suggests that maybe they are not inevitable. We
> wanted to present some ideas along these lines and consider how one
> might create a useable, trustworthy naming system in URI space (maybe
> even in http: URI space).
>
> Jonathan
>

Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2010 22:17:21 UTC