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Re: The Allure of Gothic Markup

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
• Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 09:40:50 -0400

On 8/18/13 6:29 PM, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> Entertaining and thought-provoking paper, as ever, Simon.  Makes me miss
> the days we had such cross-disciplinary conversations more often.  It
> seems to me to be largely an update an continuation of Monastic XML [1],
> so I'm surprised you didn't reference that in your paper.  I guess you
> were keeping the argument self-contained.

I didn't make the connection that directly, though yes, it's there. 
Monastic XML <http://monasticxml.org> was an effort to come to a similar 
place through technical austerity.  It didn't yet have the human 
context, but it's a good foundation.

> Most importantly thanks for the extended Ruskin quote. I haven't really
> read Ruskin since I was a teenager, when he influenced me deeply. I
> should take another round with the original text.  What he writes still
> affects me deeply, and still resounds with my feelings about how
> industrial-scale commerce has affected the arts (e.g. [2]), which I
> agree with Ruskin largely derives from the fact that the early
> industrialists looked to Athens rather than, say Thebes or Lo-Yang for
> their models.

Excellent!  I'm looking for ways to bring Ruskin back to public 
attention.  He and William Morris have both faded from view as the cult 
of industrialism has become taken for granted.

Your link to Ezra Pound is also fascinating, as other lines of modernist 
thought absorbed the industrial vision and ran with it.

> I do think it's a very tricky analogy to make with markup, though, and
> I'm not at all convinced that JSON is any sort of oasis from imperial
> constraints-making or top-down design patterns.

JSON is definitely not an oasis (or an OASIS).  Its virtue here is that 
it wasn't bound by XML's standards-driven culture, and provides an 
opportunity to see alternatives.  It's hard to escape imperial imperatives.

> But the important thing
> is that there is always value in re-examining the parallels we draw
> between computing and the arts.

Absolutely!

Thank you,
Simon


> [1] http://monasticxml.org/
> [2]
> http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/uogbuji/2009/04/only-one-poem-for-the-implosion-of-capital/
>
> --
> Uche Ogbuji http://uche.ogbuji.net
> Founding Partner, Zepheira http://zepheira.com
> http://wearekin.org
> http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/uogbuji/
> http://copia.ogbuji.net
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
> http://twitter.com/uogbuji


-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

• References:
  • The Allure of Gothic Markup
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
  • Re: The Allure of Gothic Markup
    • From: "Jeremy H. Griffith" <jeremy@omsys.com>
  • Re: The Allure of Gothic Markup
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche@ogbuji.net>