Dan Brickley
Dan Brickley,
Jul 23, 2003
This link is to an RDF file (which means it might not display very well in your browser). The purpose of this link is not to discuss the subject (Dan Brickley, who you can read about here) but rather to show an example of a FOAF (Friend of a Friend) file. If you are not afraid of XML squiggles, have a look. I point, in particular, to the element at the top of the page. What we have here is an XML description of Dan Brickley, including his current email address, date of birth, image, nearest airport, school home page, and more. Now the purpose of FOAF is to create a web of trust - the file includes the identities Brickley knows and trusts; the idea is that, if you trust Brickley, you can probably trust the people he trusts, and hence, trust people who might be (via a FOAF chain) complete strangers. But I am more interested in the concept as a means of identification. think about it. When we enter a value into the field of a Dublin Core or Learning Object Metadata file, which would be more useful, Brickley's name, typed as a string, or the address of his FOAF file? Keep in mind, his FOAF file is under his control. If he changes his email address, his place of employment, or even his name, this file changes. The answer is pretty obvious. So why, then, are we doing it the other way?
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