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Subject: [tm-pubsubj-comment] Genetic PSIs [Re: Topic Map domain,paradigmatic PSIs ...]


The idea of the day, for what it's worth :)

"Who should publish our core PSIs?" "Under what domain?" etc ...

This has led and will lead to endless debate and conflicts until we'll get to understand
and apply a very simple principle that has allowed complex information to maintain itself
on Earth against - so far - all possible disasters. Think about genetic information.

1. It has to stay stable over the time.
2. But its supports are very fragile and bound to short-term destruction.

Pretty much like PSIs information, right? I want my subject to stay identified in the
future - say a hundred years from now, not to hope for billions - but can figure the risk
that the current URI will be dead at some point in the near future is quite high, whatever
the trust I put on it right now. In fact, I've better assume that it will be dead. Given
the elusivity of technology, many Cretaceous-Trias crises are likely to occur during the
next century. But remember - good PSIs should never die!

What is the solution proposed by life? Duplicate, replicate, distribute all over the
place. The essential genetic information is everywhere. This solution has proven
scalability and efficiency for over 3 billion years.

So, if we figure PSIs like genetic material, supporting the identity of subjects and able
to deliver it to the external word, we should think about it, and push the problem from:

"What preferential URI should this PSI live under?"
to
"How should we distribute this PSI over so many equivalent URIs that the life or death of
any of them is without importance"

Think about a subject as a species (leading to a very important notion that subjects also
evolve and branch) and PSIs as instances of that species. When identifying a subject, I
want to identify a species, and any instance should do the job, but the more of them
available, the best.

This leads to a viewpoint quite different of what has been expressed in recent messages -
including by me. Under what domain "paradigmatic" or "core" PSIs should be published I
really don't care after all. I wish there were thousands of them, published in every
corner of the web under so many authorities, and each one stating to be equivalent to a
dozen of random others. And every user should be allowed to duplicate it whenever
possible.

That's why we should fight back on the notion of how to declare and manage equivalent
PSIs, that has been somehow pushed out of the debate lately.

Bernard

-------------------------------------------------
Bernard Vatant - Consultant
Mondeca - "Making Sense of Content"
www.mondeca.com
bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
-------------------------------------------------
Chair - OASIS TM PubSubj Technical Committee
www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/



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