[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
It is your problem and it will matter in ten years.
Keep in mind that the W3C did not invent ninety-nine
percent of what it is given credit for. Public
perception is often misinformation made fact by
repetition (why googling is a good way to search
but a disastrous way to denote). It is very
often the case that the names on the document do
not reflect the credit for the work and particularly
the research. The Web fouled up, perhaps irremediably,
scholastic work for some time to come because it only
references; it does not validate. That's a license
to steal, not a mandate to innovate.
But innovation feeds the kitty. Unless someone
sits down to carefully think the problem through,
we get political progress but little else. We
get short sighted lurches, but no clear forward
jumps in evolution. We get locally elegant
conceptual neighborhoods, but the inner city,
the environment is a mess. Think California.
Think Silly Valley.
In short, everything right depends on the initial sources
doing a very good job, accredited or not, because the
system simply absorbs and implements, good, bad or mediocre
ideas if they look popular. What you see in XML starts out years ago far
away from MIT. What you see in all the current faddish
enterprise designs starts out years ago far away from
Sun, Oracle and Microsoft or ebXML. That survey on the
XML Journal web page is not only wrong, it is completely
bass-ackwards. That is public perception at work; it
is a bit like the American Presidential election. The
guy with the minority vote takes the office, and then
leads us straight to economic and political hell, but
few will stand up and call it what it is: a rip off.
It very much makes a difference what the independent
developers come up with. Very much. After working
in this field since the early eighties, I can tell
you with deep conviction that the only thing that
you can't control very well is how the accomplishments
are accredited on The Web because it is now a political
conglomerate of bad journalism and research tied to
greedy self-aggrandizing poli-sci-wise leaders.
But you can dang sure turn the boat if you don't care
about that. If your mantra, "It isn't my problem" is
another way of saying, "I don't care", c'est un mal
geste, n'est pas? But it WILL matter.
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeni Tennison [mailto:jeni@jenitennison.com]
Oh dear, I'm forgetting a little exercise that I'm supposed to do when
I start getting concerned about this. "It's not my problem. It's not
my problem. It's not my problem. None of this will matter in 10 years
time."
|
