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   RE: [xml-dev] Is Web 2.0 the new XML?

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There is a possible flaw in your discussion about the web. That flaw 
relates the web-developers freedom from limitations imposed by the 
"boundaries of organizations".   

   Those boundaries were in the past merely organizational.  They varied 
from organization to organization and fit within the organizational model 
of the organization.  But newer, stronger, and more insulate boundaries 
have now been imposed on the web-developer and all all who attempt to use 
the collaborative powers inherent in the net.  Those new stronger, 
generally universal boundaries about which I speak, not only limit the 
effective use of individual skills and human productivities to the 
boundaries imposed by the organization but more broadly to the boundaries 
imposed by the rule of law.   

No longer does the freedom seeking web-developer have to contend merely 
with the boundaries of the organization.  The modern developer must 
contend with the legal boundaries imposed by the rule of law.  Those 
boundaries are not just nation state boundaries, nor just federal 
boundaries, but they extend to international and even interplanetary 
spaces.  

    The manufacturers of the fences which outlines those boundaries are 
the WTO, the ITPO  (trademark and patent), and the legal output of every 
local congress of every nation state  that imposes rules on the behavior 
of its citizens by making rules that are called law.  These same rule
making bodies require that the citizens over which they have jurisdiction 
adhere to the rules of law made by treaties.  Remember that treaties have 
been negotiated between heavily lobbied special interest weighted 
representatives of the participating  nation states.  These lobby factions 
have caused the laws and treaties to be imposed on citizens of all nation 
states in more or less a uniform fashion.  

The courts have electrified the fences which protect the boundaries 
imposed by the rules of law and treaties.  The monopoly holders [ 
copyright and patents are enforced monopolies] now have unlimited and 
worldwide use of the awesome powers of the nation state to capture all 
human cognition and to re-bundle it into little packets of private 
properties that they can own.  

The sum of these private properties are the essence of all human 
cognition.  

The law  captures any expression of any and all kind and makes it a bundle 
of rights and bestows on the inventor or author private ownership.  By 
itself, that might not matter, but these bundles become the property of 
non human entities ( like corporations) who enjoy infinite lives and who 
can use the monopoly powers which attach to these bundles to make profit 
for human generation after human generation.  Hence, the non-human 
entities have obtained a piece of the power and have gain the might of the 
state (monopoly power) to enforce their monopoly interest in the products 
of human cognition. 

So, the idea that the computer has democratized the world is false.  
False, not because the evolution of the technologies found in computer 
and information science has not made it possible, but false because the 
law has quickly redirected and transferred the benefits of the technical  
developments to the wealthy powerful parts of the private domain.  And the 
laws and treaties have been lobbied to be written and to have the effect 
in actual practice of making the large, powerful organizations the owners 
and benefactors of the output of all human cognition.  

In the old world, the large and powerful were granted by the monarchy 
all of the resources that were factors of human production  (like land 
and the right to make law over all who occupied the land (i.e.  the feudal 
lord:monarch partnership). 

In the new world the large and powerful are granted by the law 
making congresses and the treaty making international organizations the 
private ownership over all of the output of human cognition wherever it 
exists in the world.   The congress, instead of the monarch makes the 
laws that save and protect the private ownership to the large and 
powerful. This new partnership is called the corporate:congress 
partnership and it represents the modern form of feudalism.

me

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Didier PH Martin wrote:

> Hello Gerald,
> 
>    Any comments? Any thoughts?
> 
> After some time swimming, another though came to my mind about the subject.
> 
> The computer world evolved:
> a) It started with a central location of data and processes. (The mainframe
> era): something analogous to the train, the subway or the bus.
> b) We then saw the appearance of the desktop era: Something analogous to the
> car.
> c) When the web appeared we came back to a central location of processes and
> data.
> d) Now the world seems to evolve slowly toward distributed processing (some
> processes running on the server some on the client) and shared data:
> something analogous to an always connected car.
> 
> Previous generation developers where confined to the boundaries of limited
> organizations. Now the web is a much bigger entity and the latter contains
> more diversified data. Developers can now access data packaged as XML
> documents or through a kind of function call (SOAP or REST with parameters).
> 
> 
> An interesting trend is also democratization of the data. People have now
> their take by providing some part of the data. They vote, they comment, they
> label things.
> 
> Maybe the web is becoming what Teilhard De Chardin was calling the
> noosphere. For more practical minds we can say it is becoming distributed
> intelligence. Planet earth has now an evolving brain.
> 
> Cheers
> Didier PH Martin
> 
> 
> 
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