On 6/17/11 1:46 AM, David Booth wrote:
I agree with TimBL that it is*good* to distinguish between web pages
and dogs -- and we should encourage folks to do so -- because doing so
*does* help applications that need this distinction. But the failure to
make this distinction does*not* break the web architecture any more
than a failure to distinguish between male dogs and female dogs.
Instead of *break* what about compromising or undermining flexibility
implicit in AWWW? This is tantamount to obscuring the WWW potential
relative to its broad user constituency.
Re. schema.org, I don't regard their effort as breaking, compromising,
or undermining AWWW. I simply believe they are taking baby steps that
are 100% defined by their current business models. Rightly or wrongly
so, they have to protect their business models. In a sense, the same
applies to academia and its model where grant funding is vital to
research projects.
What is dangerous though, is encouraging people to misuse and
misunderstand AWWW. Names and Addresses are distinct items. AWWW essence
depends on preserving this vital distinction.
When there are more applications (+1 to Henry's comment about focusing
on Linked Data apps and viral patterns) this lower level matter will
vapourize.
Although not present (I am too young) I am certain similar arguments
arose during the early days of silicon based computing between OS
developers and programming language developers. I certainly know these
conversations did arise when Spreadsheets vendors tackled Cell Reference
functionality.
There are many useful cases in plain sight that many overlook re. power
of URIs as data conductors, integrators, and access mechanisms. I think
(based on my experience with this community and industry at large) that
there is too much focus on reinventing too many parts of the consumption
stack, from scratch. The key is to be "useful" but introduce
"usefulness" unobtrusively if you really seek uptake. Naturally, this
requires understanding of what already exists (i.e., domain and subject
matter knowledge) and functionality areas addressed by existing
solutions. Sorry, but if all you do is program, you cannot really
understand the reality of end-users.
I like to make reference to Apple as a great anecdote because they've
risen from near demise to the vanguard of modern computing by exploiting
the InterWeb from the inside out, they don't see the Web as simply being
about HTML. They understand that its a linked information space and
future data space. They utilize this insight internally in a manner that
just manifests as being "useful" to its ever growing customer base.
Remember, there's a lot of old NeXTStep still underlying what Apple
does. Also remember, the WWW was built on an NeXT machine with a lot of
inspiration from how its innards worked. Believe it or not, we are still
playing catch up (circa. 20011) with NeXTStep and Unix in general re.
really smart and useful Linked Data apps :-)
Embrace history and the future gets clearer and much more exciting. We
have an unbelievable opportunity within grasp. We can embrace and extend
(in a good way) what we may perceive as imperfections by others (e.g.
schema.org). As Pat stated in an earlier post, these imperfections
present opportunities that might even span decades before the behemoths
out there hit their respective opportunity cost thresholds. Once said
thresholds are hit they will respond accordingly via product fixes
and/or enterprise acquisitions etc..
Contrary to popular belief, I will state once again that HTTP 303 is the
poster child for ingenuity inherent in the HTTP protocol and the AWWW.
Yes, we could also up the semantic smarts on clients and let a retrieved
resource disambiguate Names and Addresses, but that only adds a burden
to a target audience that's already challenged re:
1. recognizing linked data structures via directed graphs
2. recognizing that linked data structures have always been about links
and that HTTP URIs are a powerful vehicle for expanding this concept to
InterWeb scales
3. recognizing that de-reference (indirection) and address-of operations
are achievable via URIs and cost-effectively so via HTTP URIs due to WWW
ubiquity
4. understanding that RDF is *an option* for linked data structures at
InterWeb scales, you can use other syntaxes without losing access to
really useful stuff like RDFS and OWL semantics (which also suffers from
over emphasis on RDF at expense of core syntax agnostic concepts).
Links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet#Cells
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet#Named_cells .
--
Regards,
Kingsley Idehen
President& CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen
