Re: A Dirk and Ndia story about RDF and URIs and HTTPrange14

Identity needs to transcend protocol (URIs, methods, response codes).

Identity can, instead, be encapsulated in the details of the
message|payload|response since that form of information sharing can
span multiple protocols and survive inevitable changes over the coming
years and decades.

mca
http://amundsen.com/blog/
http://twitter.com@mamund
http://mamund.com/foaf.rdf#me




On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 23:35, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com> wrote:
> Identity (and especially persistent identity) on the internet is an unsolved
> problem, and AWWW is busted insofar as it depend on assuming that that URIs
> have owners. The definition falls apart, leaving you with nothing.
>
> Sorry.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
> Connected by DROID on Verizon Wireless
>
>
> -----Original message-----
>
> From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
> To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
> Cc: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
> Sent: Mon, Apr 2, 2012 18:05:06 GMT+00:00
>
> Subject: Re: A Dirk and Ndia story about RDF and URIs and HTTPrange14
>
> Hi Larry,
>
> On Sun, 2012-04-01 at 22:42 -0700, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> Since the TAG has hours scheduled to talk about httpRange-14
>> (sigh) ...
>>
>> Here's my cut:
>>
>> Following the work I was developing earlier, I'm want to be careful to
>> separate out:
>> *  language  (protocol, protocol element)
>> * descriptions of languages (dictionaries, specifications)
>> * implementations (people, software, instances of HTML)
>>
>> And to talk about the issue without making unnecessary (and illogical)
>> assumptions, avoiding
>> * owner (URIs don't have owners)
>
> "URI ownership" is a defined term of art in AWWW:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#uri-ownership
> The word "owner" in this context does not mean the same thing as it does
> in English.  A URI does not have an "owner" in the English language
> sense, but it *does* have a "URI owner" in the AWWW sense.
>
>> * minting (URIs aren't minted)
>
> This is also a term of art in web architecture, but unfortunately it
> does not have a standard definition.  Here is a rough definition, though
> others may come up with something better:
>
>   In the context of web architecture, "minting" a URI means
>   creating a URI.  It usually also implies that the URI owner
>   (in the AWWW sense) has authorized a particular definition
>   for that URI, which may range from being empty (i.e., no
>   definition at all) to very specific.
>
>> * binding to HTTP (communication using URIs doesn't depend on HTTP
>> status codes)
>
> It may or may not.  It depends on the conventions that the communicating
> parties use.
>
>> * "information resource" vs." non-information resource" (an
>> interesting concept but no real division)
>
> Agreed, though some choose to make a distinction.
>>
>> Dirk and Nadia want to have a conversation.
>>
>> 1. In the old days before the web, they could communicate in a natural
>> language, English or French or some other language, using words and
>> syntax they both hopefully knew and understood. There were aids for
>> their understanding, dictionaries (OED, American Heritage,
>> Dictionnaire de l'Académie française) and other references (oh, for
>> literary or historical references), but of course, communication was
>> established because they had a common language, not because they were
>> using the same dictionary.
>>
>> And of course they could use computers and networks, sending text
>> through email and instant messaging, or Dirk could leave files for
>> Nadia to FTP, download and retrieve.
>>
>> 2. The web introduced a great set of  enhancements: mark up, in a
>> markup language.  This allowed them to  mark up text with styling, add
>> images (which of course you could do in other ways), but also add
>> links, using URLs. So now Dirk could not only say words in natural
>> language,  but could annotate words and phrases and images with
>> hyperlinks which would lead the reader directly to additional
>> information.     A communication meant something whether or not the
>> links worked (a failure that led to "404 not found" didn't suddenly
>> change the meaning of a communication), but the links enhanced the
>> communication, to the point where it was just as reasonable to say
>> click >here< for additional information and put all the meaning in the
>> link itself.
>>
>> XML added to the family of languages by providing a framework with
>> namespaces, where a URI could indicate a namespace which then became
>> the context for communication in that name space. MIME is also used to
>> describe the nature of a communication to give the parties a better
>> idea of what was intended.
>>
>> 3. Now, we wanted to enhance the nature of the communication even
>> further by extending the languages of the web to include assertions,
>> triples, which might be expressed as <A> <R> <B> such that perhaps
>> some kinds of automated reasoning and processing could happen. That
>> enhanceme (RDF) was in addition to hypertext markup, since Dirk and
>> Nadia could exchange more formal expressions than those expressed in a
>> natural language... it's a different framework, the links themselves
>> were the communication.
>>
>> The use of A within <A> <R> <B> has similar properties to the link
>> in
>>             Click <a href="A">here</a> for more information
>>
>> That is, if Dirk sends <A> <R> <B> to Nadia, the communication can be
>> enhanced by having A, R, and B (if they are URIs) actually point to
>> real information that Dirk or Nadia could use, if they're not already
>> familiar with the terms.
>
> Hmm, kind of like looking up a definition, right?  That sounds like
> quite a useful convention.  ;)  But it seems to me that the usefulness
> of that convention is highly dependent on the number of parties that
> follow it.  After all, if publishers don't place definitions where those
> definitions can be found when users like Dirk and Nadia click on the
> URIs, then users won't find those definitions.  And conversely, if users
> don't know that they *should* click on the URIs to find definitions, or
> if they cannot tell whether the information that they retrieved *is* a
> definition (because Dirk and Nadia are simply machines rather than
> intelligent humans) then those definitions won't help either.
>
> On the other hand, if some standards organization were to Recommend that
> convention, then that could significantly increase the adoption and
> hence the usefulness of that convention.  :)
>
>> This language of triples has some nice properties, but alas, it
>> doesn't provide sufficient context for some purposes. If the intent is
>> to talk about copyright or ownership or authorship of a work, there
>> are some situations where it's not clear which URI to use in a triple,
>> where "R" is "has copyright" or

Received on Tuesday, 3 April 2012 04:12:22 UTC