¥This is
simply obvious, I claim. The Web is a transport mechanism for representations.
But how a representation represents, and how the names in it refer, has
nothing particularly to do with how the representations are transported.
( Korzybsky: ÒThe map is not the territoryÓ.)
¥
¥Reference
has to do with the meaning of texts, broadly construed. The Web has extended
the notion of text to hypertext, but adding markup to a text does not change its
meaning qua text (*); and the use of URIs in RDF/OWL does not even
qualify as markup. With a few exceptions (owl:imports, rdfs:seeAlso, etc,.) the
Semantic Web languages would operate exactly unchanged if the identifiers
in them were not URIs at all, and if the Web did not exist.
¥
¥(*) One
exception might be the ÔgesturalÕ use of a hyperlink , as in Òfor more on
Julius Caesar, see <a href=Òhttp://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes/Julius.htmlÓ>here</a>, where the
word ÒhereÓ refers to the accessed entity, much as one might gesture
at a library shelf in ordinary conversation. But even such uses, while new in
written language, have clear roots in spoken language use.