RE: tolerating anarchy (was Re: Personal reply)

[Danny Ayers <danny@panlanka.net>]

The word anarchy has had a lot of bad press - its meaning has drifted into
the realms of chaos. A more positive word that does have some relevance to
the web though is 'anarchism' : "a political theory opposed to all forms of
government and governmental restraint and advocating voluntary cooperation
and free association of individuals and groups in order to satisfy their
needs" (Webster's)

Incidentally, the first person in history to write about anarchism was a guy
called William Godwin, who had a more famous daughter, Mary Shelley.

"I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created."

---
Danny Ayers
http://www.isacat.net

<- -----Original Message-----
<- From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
<- Sent: 13 March 2001 21:37
<- To: David E. Cleary; XML DEV
<- Subject: tolerating anarchy (was Re: Personal reply)
<-
<-
<- At 08:41 AM 3/13/01 -0500, David E. Cleary wrote:
<- >And this is supossedly a good thing? That a producer of the data and the
<- >consumer of the data can disagree about what the data means? I'll take
<- >data typing any day over anarchy.
<-
<- It's something we deal with every day in real life, even in
<- computing.  (Having been to the UK recently, I'm surprised that we call
<- these languages 'English'.)  How much anarchy can your systems tolerate?
<-
<- I'd suggest that anarchy is a lot of why the Web succeeded and previous
<- approaches failed.  Seems to be a matter of balancing structure
<- and chaos,
<- not banishing disagreements.
<-
<-
<- Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
<- XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
<- XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
<- http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books
<-
<-
<- ------------------------------------------------------------------
<- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org, an initiative of OASIS
<- <http://www.oasis-open.org>
<-
<- The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
<-
<- To unsubscribe from this elist send a message with the single word
<- "unsubscribe" in the body to: xml-dev-request@lists.xml.org
<-