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Subject: Re: [xri] Special prep telecon for XRI/W3C TAG telecon: 3-4PM PT WedJuly 2


A interesting quote from TBL 1996

Axiom 3: non unique

URI space does not have to be the only universal space

The assertion that the space of URIs is a universal space sometimes encounters opposition from those who feel there should not be one universal space. These people need not oppose the concept because it is not of a single universal space: Indeed, the fact that URIs form universal space does not prevent anyone else from forming their own universal space, which of course by definition would be able to envelop within it as a subset the universal URI space. Therefore the web meets the "independent design" test, that if a similar system had been concurrently and independently invented elsewhere, in such a way that the arbitrary design decisions were made differently, when they met later, the two systems could be made to interoperate.

There may be in the world many universal spaces, and there need not be any particular quarrel about one particular one having a special status. (Of course, having very many may not be very useful, and in the World Wide Web, the URI space plays a special role by being the universal space chosen in that design.)

For example, it would be possible to map all international telephone numbers into URI space very easily, by inventing a new URI "phone:" after which was the phone number. It would in fact also conversely be possible to map URIs into international phone numbers by allocating a special phone number not used by anyone else, perhaps a special country code for URI space, and then converting all URIs into a decimal representation. In that case, both URIs and phone numbers would be universal spaces. Identifiers in one space would be consisting only of numbers, and in the other of alphanumeric characters. One would be shorter than the other, but there is no reason why, in principle, the two could not co-exist, allowing you to dial any Web object from a telephone as a telephone number, and point to any phone from a hypertext document.

So, on this last axiom rests not specifically the operation of the web, but its acceptance as a non-domineering technology, and therefore our trust in its future evolvability.



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