<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 27/03/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Paul Prueitt</b> <<a href="mailto:psp@ontologystream.com">psp@ontologystream.com</a>> wrote:</span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style=""><div><div><span class="q"><blockquote type="cite"><div>- that bit I'm not so sure about. The thing is, everyone already has their own approach to building executable components - LAMP setups, scrappy bits of Python, J2EE monstrosities, MS/OS X/Linux desktops. How might one achieve a decent level of adoption of a new infrastructure? Surely it'll be better to look for existing common interfaces, and build against them, thereby reusing what's already out there..?</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div></span>The notion of being unsure about a "complete solution" may be contrasted with the mess we have with the current generation of "stuff". </div></div></div></blockquote>
<div><br><br>Ah, Paul, the glass half-empty again. It may be a mess, but it's a mess of billions of interconnected systems - and while what there is may be suboptimal, it's still useful. A key aspect is that standard interfaces are used, so you are free to choose your own local "stuff".<br>
</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style=""><div><div>Any proposed move-ahead, like Cubicon, reality should be questioned, but with an open mind that realizes we, and venture capital, have become numb with the false advertising that is now characteristic of the IT sector. Being open in mind means looking objectively at what Cubicon is and why it is the way it is.</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br>I don't disagree, but would note that venture capital doesn't seem yet to have tired of throwing money at systems that offer little more than shiny baubles - check some of the material that goes through <a href="http://techcrunch.com">techcrunch.com</a>. <br>
<br>I must confess to being rather skeptical of some of the claims around the Cubicon site - though will be happy to be proven wrong. The following did make me chuckle however: "Cubicon
overcomes the complexities of W3C <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/" title="New Page: W3C RDF Primer" target="w3c1">Resource Description Framework (RDF)</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/" title="New Page: W3C OWL Web Ontology Language" target="w3c2">Web Ontology Language (OWL)</a> specifications.". The material displayed in the diagrams appears at least an order of magnitude more complex than the Semantic Web technologies.<br>
</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style=""><div><div>The key here is that recombinant components are produced from a framework having a power to factor processes and data into specific dimensions, and thereby provide commonality that arises from user use patterns, rather then from programmer behavioral patterns. We free the marketplace from extra and non-useful (from the users side) control and entitlements. The programmer community has to adjust, but the over all value to the world, or information systems, economic systems etc is huge.</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br><br>I'll wait and see on that.<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style="">
<div><div>The first round of development is provided with IP protection, and thus will benefit a small portion of the programmer community, and then after this the demand for "programming" should go down radically. Reuse means reuse, yes?</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br><br>Well, such an approach isn't particularly new - it's not far off what Microsoft have been doing for the past few decades (with some success).<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style=""><div><div>This is what is new, the shift from programmer oriented IT to user oriented communication in an infrastructure that empowers collective real time behavior and thus "collective intelligence".</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br><br>I believe we are generally heading in that direction, the infrastructure being the Web.<br> <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style=""><div><div>We are, as a world civilization, just beginning to see this phenomenon with the popularity of Obama being captured by a growing community of new voters in the US, perhaps to change forever the nature of politics and the mass media. (This is just one example.)</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br><br>I'll wait and see on that too. <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style="">
<div><div><span class="q"><blockquote type="cite"><div>In other words -<br>[[<br>This automated service infrastructure will enable heterogeneous systems to effectively communicate and initiate rapid adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).<br>
]]<br>- something like that, only my bet would be on using (RESTful) HTTP+RDF to leverage the existing Web infrastructure, in other words go for the Semantic Web.<br><br>For my own stuff I've been gravitating towards an (almost) lowest-common-denominator kind of abstraction based around simple agents which will typically be comprised of a HTTP client, (access from) a HTTP server, a local RDF model and local behaviour. The common interface is the (Semantic) Web. Coincidentally I've recently been looking over the old IdeaGraph code with a view to seriously componentizing it so I can refactor it more closely to this approach. </div>
</blockquote><div><br></div></span>Yes, the lowest common denominator approach. This is often seen. But like in a college mathematics class, if one teaches to the lowest common denominator, the students evolve the instruction in the director of having less and less capability.</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br><br>Perhaps I should have phrased that differently - how about "the minimum necessary to get the job done". The job here being to facilitate quasi-autonomous agents in the Web environment, in a form that doesn't introduce unnecessary complexity and leverages existing capabilities. Nothing new in that per se, but approaches to date I've seen have fallen down on one aspect or another. I believe the Web architecture essentially already has the solutions, it's just Web developers tend to slip into inappropriate abstractions - in no small part due to that "stuff" mentioned earlier. I should point out that this is just my personal exploration of potential avenues for making the Web better. I've no desire to go chasing VC funding, and far prefer the open source community over closed proprietary development environments. I'm fortunate enough to have a day job that pays the bills working for a company with similar aims, also working with Semantic Web technologies.<br>
</div><br></div>Cheers,<br>Danny.<br><br>-- <br><a href="http://dannyayers.com">http://dannyayers.com</a><br>~<br><a href="http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/">http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/</a>