Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The tragedy of the commons
 [Jeff Lowery:] > The success of XML in a wide variety of domains and > purposes may have lulled some people into thinking > that such astounding and unmitigated success is > reproducible. As we build technologies on top of this > achievement, it is becoming more apparent that such > success is an exception rather than a rule. We all stand to lose the value of the public asset that is the Web. I think we're losing it right now. The tragedy of the commons is inexorably devouring it. As I understand it, the "tragedy of the commons" is a concept from Economics: the tendency of individuals to over-exploit publicly-owned assets. The "commons" is archetypically a grassy area held in common by an entire village. The commons loses all of its grass, and all of its value, due to the tendency of everyone to let their sheep graze there first, in preference to exploiting their own private grasslands as grazing areas. Needless to say, this practice destroys the commons; no grass can grow where everyone prefers their sheep to graze. Nothing prevents or inhibits the destructive feeding frenzy of those who are in a position to exploit the commons for personal gain at everyone's expense; this is the "tragedy of the commons". The Web's leadership has thus far been characterized by a laissez-faire attitude that lets many flowers bloom. It is a development philosophy that relies on Darwinian natural selection to decide which standards should live, and which should be ignored. In fact, however, natural selection only makes the *less aggressive* standards extinct, regardless of the lost benefits that these overwhelmed standards are uniquely able to provide. The long-term result is that the aggressive standards -- the weeds -- take over, while those standards that respect the boundaries that have been set for them are starved out of existence. Successful, maximally-productive gardens are Planned. They have Gardeners who decide which plants will grow, and where they will grow. They make distinctions between weeds and non-weeds, and they act accordingly. What kind of Web standard is a non-weed? A non-weed provides the benefit it was intended to provide, it stays within its scope, and its scope establishes the situations in which it is a non-weed. Everywhere else, by definition, it is a weed, potentially choking off the ability of *other* non-weeds to provide the benefits that they are intended to provide, within their own scopes. Web standards that violate modularity are weeds. Instead of confining themselves to the particular situations in which they provides benefit, they take root elsewhere, and they deprive the standards that were intended to grow there of the nourishment they need in order to provide the benefits that they were intended to provide. The public suffers, because the general availability of these benefits is curtailed. The benefits (if any) provided by the weeds are often accidental and specific; they sometimes turn out to be windfalls for certain individuals and organizations -- windfalls whose cost to the public is far greater than their value to their beneficiaries. It's bad public policy to allow weeds to thrive. Among XML standards-making bodies, the widespread attitude that "the standards organization that creates the most aggressive, virulent standards wins" is simply another expression of "the tragedy of the commons". Under this viral philosophy, major opportunities for human productivity enhancement are missed, everyone loses, and the Web becomes a weedy mess that will ultimately have to be plowed under. The glowing promise of the Web as a permanent public asset fades away. Eventually, it becomes axiomatic that some private interest can do a much better job of being the Gardener, so what was once held in common ultimately becomes a private asset. After all, the privatization of high-maintenance public assets, especially ones whose current business model is perceived as not working and/or unworkable, is often a good thing. Strong leadership -- a Gardener -- is preferable to anarchy and confusion. A Garden Plan is preferable to No Garden Plan. Still, I hold some small hope for the Web's survival as a "commons". For example, the microwave bandwidth that is exploited by cellular telephone technology is an example of a public asset. (It's a "window in the air" through which these electromagnetic frequencies can pass; it can't be owned by anyone *but* the public.) Cellphone technology, however, is gradually causing a significant loss of individual privacy; if you keep your cell phone with you 24 hours a day, your personal location and movements can be known 24 hours a day. Individuals must choose between (1) the ability to send and receive personal communications wherever they are, and (2) personal privacy -- which means leaving their cell phones at home. Once the public realizes the extent of its loss of privacy, maybe the public will exercise its rights of ownership of the microwave window. Maybe there will be strict public-interest-driven laws governing the operations of networks of cell phone transceiver stations, such that cellphone network-based privacy invasion will become expensive and impractical. Given a more activist, informed public, maybe the Web's meta-bandwidth can also be preserved from the tragedy of the commons. Public involvement is essential, though, and nobody is paying the cost of educating the public. Who will pay for it, and why? If, as I predict, no one is willing to pay for public education, and the public remains predictably apathetic, there is a big business opportunity here. Here is an exercise for the reader: if you were well-funded, and you wanted to begin to position yourself as a Gardener to whom the public would turn in desperation when the weediness of the Web becomes totally intolerable, what would you do? -Steve -- Steven R. Newcomb, Consultant srn@c... voice: +1 972 359 8160 fax: +1 972 359 0270 1527 Northaven Drive Allen, Texas 75002-1648 USA 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
