Sam Hunting reminded me that if a method of identification becomes authoritative, that can lead to massive loss of data (prior methods of identification). We were discussing the Semantic Web Challenge. That assumes systems that do not support multiple “authoritative” and alternative identifications.
While I can understand the concern, I think it is largely unwarranted.
Natural language and consequently identification have been taking care of themselves in the face of “planned” language proposals for centuries. According to Klaus Schubert in the introduction to: Interlinguistics: Aspects of the Science of Planned Languages, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989, there are almost 1,000 such projects, most since the second half of the 19th century. I suspect the count was too low by the time it was published.
The welter of identifications has continued merrily along for more than the last 20 years so I don’t feel like we are in any imminent danger of uniformity.
And, as a practical matter, more that a Billion speakers of Chinese, Japanese and Korean are bringing their concerns and identifications of subjects to the WWW in a way that will be hard to ignore. (Nor should they be.)
Systems that support multiple authoritative and alternative identifications will be the future of the WWW.
PS:The use of owl:sameAs is a pale glimmer of what needs to be possible for reliable mappings of identifications. The reason for any mapping remains unknown.