PUBLIC MARKS with tags data & uri

The Library of Congress Authorities and Vocabularies service enables both humans and machines to programmatically access authority data at the Library of Congress via URIs.

Nov 27, 2010

karl said...

You said: "URIs have become part of the furniture of the real world, like corporate graffiti tags. I'm typing this on a tube train and every poster at this end of the carriage features a URI in some shape."The metaphor is a little bit off. Basically yes you are right in the physical world (everything is real, the difference is more digital-physical), things change too. The poster in the carriage is content (aka the representation served to you), but this is not the URI. The URI in the carriage in this case is the pointer which led to this poster. It could be for example "carriage XZ345-window AXV" This is the identifier, the URI. The content can change it is no issue. Now the URI helps you to designate and draws an expectation, at this URI, I'm used to read this or that. Example in the physical world. At this address, 123 Smith Street, etc. (URI = identifier), there is a shop (representation) which sells bread. Maybe one day the shop will be replaced by a fisher place and you break the expectation of the usual person coming here. You break URIs when you do not handle it anymore. Exemple an urban architect redesign the city, and the street completely disappears, where one day the street was here, the next year no more than a big factory on what was one day a street. The important is not that the street disappeared, but that the name of the street disappeared. The History books of the city or the streets around could display a 410 Gone (Here was Smith Street).