How I Explained REST to My Wife popped up on Hacker News today. While the way Ryan Tomayko frames his description of http protocols stikes many (invcluding me) as sexist, it’s well written and illuminating.

What hit me like a two-by-four up side the head was his characterization of URIs as being like “GPS coordinates for knowledge and information”. Great analogy!

He’s not really talking about the Semantic Web, but he ought to be. I think we should steal borrow his analogy and use it in explaining the central role URIs play for us.

Related posts:

1. On designing good URIs for your ontology
2. Alexa Web Information Services
3. Knowledge is the next “next intel inside”
4. SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organization System
5. IBM’s UIMA and RDF — extracting knowledge from text