xml-dev - Re: Semantic Web Hackings

["Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>]

> > In my opinion, ownership of "Webspace" is not as clearly defined
> > as ownership of mailboxes.
>
> But an email address is like a black hole.

That doesn't matter: we aren't dereferencing it, or asking it to perform a
certian processing function. We're just using it as a unique name for a
persons interface into the WWW. If a mail address couldn't perform that
capability, we wouldn't be using them as mailing addresses! Think of a
mailing address as a name: a URI.

> Where are you going to put the RDF document [...]

On the Semantic Web.

> If you're uploading it to some sort of central server

Central isn't a function. The WWW is a decentralised base of knowledge.
Centralsied systems fail because people don't like being ruled over. The
Semantic Web will also be decentralised, and that is what some people don't
seem to understand, because they don't think it's possible. Of course it's
possible: it uses Web architectures.

> (Although I don't think that a centralized solution is very practical.
> I'd rather see it distributed much like the web, itself.)

Exactly!

> If, however, you're hosting it in your own web space, how is the rest
> of the world supposed to find it? They not only need to know your
> URI (mailto:sean@mysterylights.com) but also the URL where they
> can retrieve the RDF document that describes your URI.

That's not the function that this is performing. We are not asking for
information about mailto:sean@mysterylights.com directly, we are simply
querying it on the Semantic Web and then fining a piece of RDF that
describes that email address, which is a URI representing me.

> Somehow, I'd need to let my engine know where to find the
> description for your URI and all of my other friends. Do we
> reify those statements and say that the objects' descriptions
> could be found at the appropriate URLs? Yuck.

What's wrong with pointing someone to a URL? Here is some information about
me: <my URL/> That's how stuff works: if you want to find out something
about me, look it up.

I we're both missing something in each others conversations here; I'm not
sure why you are refering to URLs as if they are unrecoverable, and maybe
you can't see that I'm just using a mailto: as a name, not an address.

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
http://infomesh.net/sbp/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ [ERT/GL/PF]
"Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics."
   - Homer J. Simpson, BABF07.