Jibbering Musings

Hixie and Aaronsw are discussing RDF by email, but they’re doing it in www-archive, so we all get to learn from them. Aaron’s just said that “You represent you by giving yourself a URI”, now there’s the controversial issue about using http uri’s for representing people, which I won’t get into (but I actually think they can.). The problem I have this statement is that it a person doesn’t need a URI at all, I know 600 or so people in RDF, very few of them have uri’s, yet it doesn’t stop us doing stuff.

We can get pictures of him, or we can explore how he relates to other people with the foafnaut. So Hixie despite have never given himself a uri is perfectly well known I call him _:genid2_R1038235061790, but he doesn’t need a URI, his email address is unambigous enough, he is the person with the email address mailto:ian@hixie.ch. No more is needed, don’t risk things by giving yourself a URI, losing a single uri is much riskier than losing one of many email addresses.