Web Resource

At Thinking Space, the term Web resource has its particular meaning that is different from some other common definitions of Web resources, such as the one defined in Wikipedia.

In common, a Web resource is anything that has an identity, typically the identity would be a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

The Web resource used in Thinking Space has its different definition that is derived from the study of Web evolution. By contrast to be an identifiable object on the Web, a Web resource in Thinking Space is specified to be a self-contained piece of productive information on the Web.

1) A piece of information on the Web is a piece of embodiment of human mind. (based on the WWW definition by W3C)

2) By "productive" a Web resource can be used for producing or manufacturing. Hence a Web resource is not just a random piece of embodied mind, but a piece of mind asset.

3) By "self-contained" a Web resource can be transmitted from one place to another on the Web alone without information loss. Or in other words the interpretation and usage of a Web resource is not ambiguous. By this property, a Web resource represents a unit of mind asset that has its consistent value.

Based on this definition, a Web document is usually a Web resource, and so is an independent Web service or a Web link. By contrast, a single word such as "adam" is often not a Web resource because its meaning is generally undecidable without a local context, i.e., it cannot be transmitted alone on the Web without information loss.

Informally, we may say that a Web resource by the Thinking-Space definition is a piece of intentionally produced item on the Web that is with consistent value and can be unambiguously reused and further manufactured.

In general, a Web resource could and should be associated with an URI. By contrast, however, anything that is referenced by an URI may not immediately be a Web resource (based on the Thinking-Space interpretation).

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