Re: URIs quack like a duck

At 02:29 PM 6/4/00 -0400, Dan Brickley wrote:

>Imagine someone else creates another URI scheme, also used for naming
>individuals and/or orgs. And that some Web data uses your scheme to talk
>about me as urn:mm-agent-namespace:034543532423432 and some other data
>uses person:uk:nx-930366b.
>
>We all(?) agree that there is just one flesh and blood person being named.
>
>We all(?) agree that the URI spec allows us to use URIs to name persons,
>and that here we see two such names associated with the same flesh and
>blood person.
>
>Some of us read the URI spec as saying that there are two capital-R Web
>Resources being named here. (I think TimBL is in that camp.)
>
>Some of us read the URI spec as saying that there is one Resource, and it
>has two URI names associated with it on the Web. I used to think I was in
>that camp.

Me too.

>Now I'm agnostic w.r.t. trying to fathom the proper reading of
>that document.

Now, I'm fairly well convinced in the other camp.

I think it is extraordinarily difficult to assert that two "resources" 
(people, books, etc.) that can be distinctly identified in some way are 
actually identical for all conceivable purposes.

It is far easier to say that they are separate resources that are 
equivalent for some set of purposes.  For the purpose of having a 
face-to-face conversation, the flesh-and-blood indicated by separate URIs 
is equivalent.  But for the purposes of, say, determining creditworthiness 
they may two very different creatures.

> From an RDF perspective, this topic is proving a real implementation
>headache. There's one of something (flesh and blood entity) and two of
>something else (Web names for that entity, aka URI). There seems to be
>utter confusion in the community as to whether we have one Resource (the
>person), two Resources (one each for the two URIs), or even three.

Well, I think we must give up the notion that any web resource *is* the 
flesh-and-blood person, or any physical-world object, but settle for a 
claim that is accurately *describes* said person.  When we can assume such 
accuracy, it is a convenient shorthand (like the "jam jar label") to treat 
the resource as being the person, but the shorthand must not be allowed to 
dominate reality.

#g


------------
Graham Klyne
(GK@ACM.ORG)

Received on Monday, 5 June 2000 09:03:37 UTC