Web Space

For casual readers, the term web space could be harmlessly understood to be personal owned web site such as a space of a homepage. This is an imprecise expression of this term. But it would not harm you to catch the main idea in most of the posts in Thinking Space that has used the term web space. I will explicitly emphasize the meaning of this term if the precise interpretation of web space is particularly required in a post.

(You do not need to read beyond this point if you are relaxing yourself on reading.)

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The formal understanding of this term in Thinking Space is based on the view of Web evolution. The last installment in the series "a view of web evolution" tells the formal definition of this term.

A web space is a personified composition of web resources.

First, a web space is a composition of web resources. A web space is not a space of pre-allocated memory, and nor is it a random virtual space on the Web. A web space refers to a particular collection of web resources that are well organized under certain discipline.

Second, a web space is personified. By personified, the resources in a web space are subjectively assigned by the owner of the web space. These assignments of resources in a web space are reflection of consciousness of the owner.

By combining the two points, a subjectively arranged composition of Web resources represents a disciplined and self-complete subset of consciousness of the owner. By disciplined, there is reasonable logic behind the composition. By self-complete, this composition must have satisfactorily expressed a fact. At last, the expression is a subjective interpretation that only reflects the consciousness of the owner, and hence it may not necessarily be an objective fact.

Ultimately, we can personify a composition as we have described to be a virtual person. This is thus the philosophical thought beneath a web space. With this philosophical understanding, we may derive a few analogues as follows.

(1) We can watch a person. In similar, we can read a web space.

(2) We can tell more facts to a person. In similar, we can write more data to a web space.

(3) We can educate a person meanings of the facts he has learned. In similar, we can semantically annotate content in a web space and apply the annotation with proper logic reasoner. By this way, we also educate a web space as if it is a virtual person.

Can we extend this list? Yes, please, try it by yourself.

This post is part of the collection of terminology, which explains several heavily used terms in Thinking Space.