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Re: [xml-dev] Is Web 2.0 the new XML?
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When social networks become the dominant control for
organizing information, finding facts will become
even harder. The current brouhaha in the American
culture wars over intelligent design is emblematic
of the process of power seeking over fact seeking.
In the process, the Americans are destroying their
educational and scientific foundations for competition.
Watching the web replicate this process in the name
of 'democratization' is almost absurdist (as in
the theatre of the absurd).
I'm an American who has moved to Canada largely because I can no longer
stand the cannibalisation of the "public good" in favor of security and profit.
However, I'd also caution against looking at the web in the same light as what's
happening in the US. The forces acting on the
web are much lower level than democratization - they are impulse feedback systems
within a complex non-linear system,with information flows taking the place of energy.
Such flows seek the paths of least resistance, which means that attempts to place
boundaries on the web can be achieved in the short term, but usually at the cost of
that information flowing around the fences in the long term.
The US is entering a particularly troubling phase, a time of corporate fascism and imperial
ambitions that's been building for decades, but it is also becoming increasingly reactionary
and fundamentalist ... meaning that creatives are leaving the country in droves. Given that
the chief export of America is its creativity, this ultimately does not bode well for the ability
of the country to sustain its self-destructive behavior. On the web especially, creativity has
far more currency than paper wealth.
--
Kurt Cagle
http://www.understandingxml.com
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