Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: OpenCulture.org

Author:Joshua Allen
Posted:9/25/2000; 11:46:08 PM
Topic:OpenCulture.org
Msg #:21698 (In response to 21691)
Prev/Next:21697 / 21699

I am so sick and tired of finding half-assed "New Economy" intermediary plays to consign to the scrap heap.

Even in the BruceS protocol, there is no mention as to what happens if the performer fails to adopt the protocol. Yesterday Dave talked about how "software is hard", and how it can be a humbling experience for someone to shift from talking about something to actually making it happen. This is something I wish all of these folks would heed. I agree with Clay Shirky that XML is a TLA used to invent other TLAs. It seems these days that everyone wants to write a spec or a standard, and the ratio of practitioners to politicians is frightenengly low. In this new world, we have thrown aside the old-economy saddle of hard-knocks. Experience writing real software that real people use? Fuck that! Actual domain experience in the field that you are trying to standardise? Fuck that! You've written a book? Good! You speak at conferences? Great! Can you get other book-writers and conference speakers to endorse you? Fantastic! Is your standard about something that makes a good story and revolutionizes some entrenched goliath? You have a deal!!

Any fool can write a standard. Any fool can have an idea. The world is full of good ideas that never got implemented, and if anyone ever thinks that whatever they are implementing is truly innovative, they need only post somewhere like XML-Dev to find out how many times the idea was attempted in the past. I've found that no matter who claims to have invented something, there will probably be someone else who can make a convincing claim for having done it before them (and so on). The really newsworthy thing, IMO, is when something stops being an intellectual or activist exercise and actually becomes a reality. That is what's hard.

-J

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