[ontolog-forum] "Data/digital Object" Identities

[Gary Berg-Cross <gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx>]

There is a bit of a movement to discuss digital data in terms of Digital Objects and an  "Architecture."  One rationale for this seems to be to provide an easier mechanism for the "creation of, and access to, digital objects as discrete data structures with unique, resolvable identifiers"  - From a CNRI’s Press Release. 

It is further argued that such Digital Objects with a persistent ID (PID) will "provide a foundation for representing and interacting with information on the Internet."

Seems like a large claim and I wonder what this community thinks of this idea. After all Identity is quite a semantic issue and intuitions about identities for digital objects might cause some problems.  They seem quite mutable and we'd need to distinguish the ID for the raw data from each processing version of it.  Is a data object in one format the same as a data object in a different format or a different one?  The bit streams can change but the original identity might be considered the same.

Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.  

gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx     

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross

NSF INTEROP Project  

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0955816

SOCoP Executive Secretary

Independent Consultant

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

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