kingsley Uyi Idehen

kidehen@openlinksw.com — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:26:21 GMT

Yihong Ding wrote:

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Kingsley,

Thank you for sharing the thoughts and the memo. They are very interesting. URI and URL are certainly confusing terms and we often mix them when using in real time. To migrate to the web of linked data, however, it seems the issue become critical for people to know well.

Another thought I have, however, is that we may have three, in contrast to two, fundamental definitions on describing the Web. The two well-known ones are data and service; or in RDF we define Class and Property respectively. Until now, we assert the third one---link---to be nothing but a special form of data. The reality is, however, that this special form is so special that we may consider to give it a little bit honor so that it becomes the third member of the fundamental building block of the Web. That is, a link is not a data, and nor is it a service, but a link. Or with respect to your post, a URI is not a data, but a form of link, PERIOD.

I believe that this distinction, once it is made, could be important as well as valuable. A trick thing here is that, following this distinction we can start to think of other forms of links that is beyond URI (which is just a binary model). By contrast, we may start to invent the links in higher order, such as the link of links (metalink) or the thread of links (group link). Be honest, if the Web is moving towards a web of linked data (and I believe so since the Web data is more and more interconnected), we must breakthrough this traditional thinking of the link model. The key is, however, from today we start to think link to be link but not a data.

Anyway, your posts are always thoughtful and knowledgeable. I appreciate reading them, as usual.

cheers,

yihong

>>>>

Yihong,

Nice to hear from you! I still await your trip to Cambridge :-)

Yes, we have a new dimension to the Web that manifests as a "special kind of link";

in a a sense, we are talking about "links with metadata benefits".

Ultimately, It's all about a new kind of Hypermedia Link, but we need to find a way to get people to understand how and why this new kind of Link is the fundamental conduit to the "Mind Society" or in your words: Mind Asset oriented Web.

Let's see what we can do (collectively) re. simplification of this 3rd critical component of the Word Wide Web :-)

Yihong Ding

yihongd@gmail.com — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:42:41 GMT

The URI, URL, and Linked Data Meme's Generic HTTP URI (Updated)

kingsley Uyi Idehen

Yihong Ding