Identity journey 4 of 6 · Soil Probe 17 and Harvest Lot A
An instrument and a material
What remains identifiable when a sensor moves, is recalibrated, replaced, or retired — and when a grain lot is divided or combined?
A device is not its readings, its model, or its deployment. Follow Soil Probe 17 from installation to evidence, and Harvest Lot A through custody and division, where the registry has no material kind yet.
What this journey shows
- Device, deployment, calibration, observation, and derived evidence are distinct.
- Custody and movement are relationships and records, not meanings encoded in the RID.
- Where no naming kind is registered, the gap is shown, not papered over.
What it does not imply
- That a device RID doubles as the RID of its observations.
- That a divided lot silently keeps one identity across physically distinct parts.
- That a material kind exists in the registry.
Steps
Journal
Instruments, Materials, and Observations
A soil probe is recalibrated, moved, and eventually retired; a grain lot changes hands and is split for two buyers; a software agent acts for a cooperative. This Journal follows each through its life to show what is the referent, what is a measurement or record about it, and where RSM ID deliberately leaves an identity question to governance.
Seednote
Instrument and observation
An instrument is the device that measures; an observation is a distinct referent recording what was measured, never the device itself.
Fieldnote
A sensor is not its reading
Why a soil probe, the place it is deployed, its calibration history, each measurement it records, and the evidence later built from those measurements need distinct identities or records — and what goes wrong when one identifier is made to stand for all of them.
Viewgraph
From instrument to outcome
Follow one soil reading from Soil Probe 17 to an assessed and then challenged outcome, and see why the device, its observations, the claims built on them, and the judgements about those claims each keep their own identity or record.
Seednote
Provenance
The recorded origin and history of an identity, a name, or an assertion: who did what, under which authority, and when.
Seednote
Claim and evidence
An assertion about a referent, kept with its source and authority, and the evidence offered for it; neither makes the assertion true.
All journeys and pathwaysRelated pathway: E, Real-World ApplicationsNext journey: A formation and an outcome