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RE: What is "the Web"

• To: "Mark Baker" <distobj@a...>,"Jonathan Robie" <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Subject: RE: What is "the Web"
• From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
• Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 14:21:48 -0700
• Cc: <AndrewWatt2000@a...>,<michael.h.kay@n...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcHtKSaG8VhOqFzBQgiv1NxaB8vSbwAPngxw
• Thread-topic: What is "the Web"

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@a...] 
> Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 6:47 AM
> To: Jonathan Robie
> Cc: AndrewWatt2000@a...; michael.h.kay@n...; 
> xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re:  What is "the Web"
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 09:19:10AM -0400, Jonathan Robie wrote:
> > There is no one thing called "the Web", there are many different 
> > loosely
> > bound technologies being used in a wide variety of ways.
> 
> That's simply not true.  The Web is the information space 
> comprising all things with identity, whose interaction 
> semantics are constrained to being generic to all things with 
> identity.
> 
> The Web does have a boundary.  It's just a very very VERY big one.
> 

<flamebait>
You must be a P.hD, only they can make such grandiose, sweeping,
meaningless statements yet act like they've imparted the wisdom of
Solomon. 
</flamebait>

I assume then that this is merely a political definition which allows
the W3C the start to mandate behavior outside of things involving HTTP
and port 80?  Does anyone have a more serious description of what is the
"World Wide Web"? 

I personally prefer the description in the HTML 4 recommendation[0] 

"2.1 What is the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web (Web) is a network of information resources. The Web
relies on three mechanisms to make these resources readily available to
the widest possible audience:

A uniform naming scheme for locating resources on the Web (e.g., URIs). 
Protocols, for access to named resources over the Web (e.g., HTTP). 
Hypertext, for easy navigation among resources (e.g., HTML). 
The ties between the three mechanisms are apparent throughout this
specification." 

No political or metaphysical aspirations, just a clearcut definition
that Joe Blow can understand and agree with. 


[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/intro.html#h-2.1
-- 
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