¥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.