I hope you realize that the point of that thought experiment is to
ensure that the technology in question is sufficiently powerful and
flexible, so that *if* a parallel technology were discovered, the two
could be extended to encompass each other with minimal added cost --
*not* that it is in any way desirable to have such parallel technologies.
David
On 06/22/2013 08:55 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
It took me quite a while to understand this fully. IMHO, it is really
worth digesting. I think it also sheds light on how to approach some of
the topics raised in the last week.
[[
*The Test of Independent Invention*
There's a test I use for technology which the Consortium is thinking of
adopting, and I'll call it the Independent Invention test. Just suppose
that someone had invented exactly the same system somewhere else, but
made all the arbitrary decisions differently. Suppose after many years
of development and adoption, the two systems came together. Would they
work together?
Take the Web. I tried to make it pass the test. Suppose someone had (and
it was quite likely) invented a World Wide Web system somewhere else
with the same principles. Suppose they called it the Multi Media Mesh
(tm) and based it on Media Resource Identifiers(tm), the MultiMedia
Transport Protocol(tm), and a Multi Media Markup Language(tm). After a
few years, the Web and the Mesh meet. What is the damage?
A huge battle, involving the abandonment of projects, conversion or loss
of data?
Division of the world by a border commission into two separate communities?
Smooth integration with only incremental effort?
Obviously we are looking for the latter option. Fortunately, we could
immediately extend URIs to include "mmtp://" and extend MRIs to include
"http;\\". We could make gateways, and on the better browsers
immediately configure them to go through a gateway when finding a URI of
the new type. *
The URI space is universal: it covers all addresses of all accessible
objects. But it does not have to be the only universal space. Universal,
but not unique.*
-- Tim Berners-Lee
]]
