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RE: "Abstract" URIs

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: "Abstract" URIs
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 08:12:58 -0600

As John said, the topic map people have this one right.

It nails the heads of people to a closed system.  There 
are those who insist that "The Web" is The Internet 
and because of that, some projects and initiatives 
stumble into a religious or political block similar 
to the CIO annointing of the W3C.  The weaker the 
imprimatur becomes, the louder that chorus will become.

People don't like nails.  SSNs are uniqueifiers but 
don't conflate identity with location.  To assert 
that http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/ is John is simply 
to say John uses that string for keeping transactions 
in which he has a personal interest.

Identity is an abstract property.  It is useful 
in the *process* of identification.   Declarative systems 
and their followers have a problem with that one and 
pretend they can touch their elbow with the hand on 
the same arm.  It's something like the Black Knight 
act in the Holy Grail.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]

On Tue, 2002-02-12 at 18:20, Paul Prescod wrote:
> I would say that you are probably:
> 
>  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/
> 
> and your home page is probably:
> 
>  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/index.html
> 
> But if you do a GET on each of them you happen to get an identical
> resource. Alternately you could simply choose not to reify your homepage
> at all.

"I am a human being.  Please do not spindle, fold, staple, mutilate, or
reify me."

I just don't know why I see this whole URI thing as limited.

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