Architecture of theWorld WideWeb - Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web - page 16

and as such is both close to our project and an inspiration. 2 In particular, AWWW
is an exegesis of Tim Berners-Lee's notes on “Design Issues: Architectural and
philosophical points” 3 and Roy Fielding's dissertation “Architectural Styles and
the Design of Network-based Software Architectures” (Fielding 2010), often
abbreviated as REST. The rationale for the creation of such a document of principles
developed organically over the existence of the W3C, as new proposed technologies
were sometimes considered to be either informally compliant or non-compliant with
Web architecture. When the proponents of some technology were told that their
particular technology was not compliant with Web architecture, they would often
demand that somewhere there be a description of this elusive Web architecture. The
W3C in response set up the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) to “document
and build consensus” upon “the underlying principles that should be adhered to
by all Web components, whether developed inside or outside W3C,” as stated in
its charter. 4 The TAG also maintains a numbered list of problems (although the
numbers are in no way sequential) that attempts to resolve issues in Web architecture
by consensus, with the results released as notes called 'W3C TAG findings,' which
are also referred to in this discussion. The TAG's only Recommendation at the
time of writing is the aforementioned Architecture of the Web: Volume 1 butitis
reasonable to assume that more volumes of Architecture of the Web may be produced
after enough findings have been accumulated. The W3C TAG's AWWW is a blend
of common-sense and sometimes surprising conclusions about Web architecture that
attempts to unify diverse web technologies with a finite set of core design principles,
constraints, and good practices (Jacobs and Walsh 2004). However, the terminology
of AWWW is often thought to be too informal and ungrounded to use by many, and
we attempt to remedy this in the next few chapters by fusing the terminology of Web
architecture with our own peculiar brand of philosophical terminology.
To begin our reconstruction of Web architecture, the first task is the definition
of terms, as otherwise the technical terminology of the Web can lead to as
much misunderstanding as understanding. To cite an extreme example, people
coming from communities like the artificial intelligence community use terms like
'representation' in a way that is different from those involved in Web architecture.
We begin with the terms commonly associated with a typical exemplary Web
interaction. For an agent to learn about the resource known as the Eiffel Tower
in Paris, a person can access its representation using its Uniform Resource Identifier
(URI) http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/ and retrieve a web-page in the HTML encoding
whose content is the Eiffel Tower using the HTTP protocol .
2 Although to what extent the Web as it actually exists follows these design choices is still a matter
for debate, and it is very clear some of the more important parts of the Web such as the ubiquity of
scripting languages, and thus HTML as mobile code, are left unmentioned.
3 These unordered personal notes are at: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/ , which we also refer
directly to in the course of this chapter.
4 Quoted from their charter, available on the Web at: http://www.w3.org/2001/07/19-tag (last
accessed April 20th, 2007).