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Medieval Metadata (was RE: Namespace Basic Principles)

• From: David Megginson <david@m...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 10:43:14 -0500 (EST)

Bill dehOra writes:

 > To quote someone who knew a bit about metadata:
 > 
 > "I saw that one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book 
 > referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to 
 > find was not always to be informed."
 > 
 > Sam Johnson said that in 1753. We're still nowhere really.

Go back further and blame the early medieval monks -- they're the ones
(in western Europe, anyway) who started scribbling notes in the
margins of books so that people could look up references in other
books[*].  The Web is simply an incremental improvement on their
system.


All the best,


David

[*] Note that a book is a fully random-access scroll, a technical
prerequisite for dense linking.

-- 
David Megginson                 david@m...
           http://www.megginson.com/

• References:
  • RE: Namespace Basic Principles
    • From: Bill dehOra <BdehOra@i...>

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