On 14/06/2008, at 3:43 AM, Mike Liebhold wrote:
> stephen white wrote
>> The challenge is ...to start considering some of the wider
>> questions ...
>
> Stephen given the general intellectual poverty you observe here, why
> don't enlighten us all with the wider questions you see, and
> research directions suggested by these big unsolved mysteries.
I changed the subject line because you're framing the issue. This
isn't about me flaming, this is about what we can do to get past where
we're stuck in mash-ups.
Look at the last 10 messages that freely criticise the NSF and how
they're a decade behind the times. The NSF group would not be at all
happy about those messages, and you are not happy about me making the
same observations about this group. That's an interesting point all by
itself. Why is it OK to criticise the NSF but not this group?
To cut/paste selectively from some messages I wrote in private: The
durability aspect is definitely one that we need to talk about more.
The difficulty with the existing approaches is that it's at the crux
of two totally different issues:
1) The specific interface of the mash-up means that data cannot be
pulled out and used elsewhere.
2) A generalised approach to storing and retrieving data is needed,
but lacks the usability of the specific interface.
The way out of this conundrum is to come up with something that is
generic enough for all data, while still allowing selection of
interesting data. The objective is to make people seriously think
along the lines of "how to make data universal despite specific
interfaces". So it seems there's a few options:
1) Anything that assists in mirroring reality, placing data in
virtual worlds (rather than a red dot on a map).
2) Anything that enables personal machines to capture, display and
handle its own data instead of always on the Net.
3) Anything along the lines of general purpose interfaces that
analyse data that it can handle, without limiting data it can't.
Overall, stuff along the lines of specific data, specific interfaces,
generalised data, generalised durability. There are two conflicting
approaches at the moment and we keep falling into that valley of death
every time a mash-up is made. :)
Some meta-solution is needed to resolve the head-on collusion.
--
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