[CrackMonkey] Monday Read

[sween]

excellent!

It has XML stink all over it.

But the bottom line Phil never got to was the single point of the NATURE
of the information technology.  Is it going to be open and free? I feel he
made a huge assumption here unless someone can point out otherwise.

Kendall Clark of monkeyfist.com has written along these same lines that
even if the network effects were solved, a global, compatible language
(XML) would not solve the inherent natures of information availability
(open or proprietary).

http://monkeyfist.com/articles/755

>In practice, network effects usually occur in close conjunction with
>another economic phenomenon, economies of scale. Economies of scale are
>found whenever a good can be produced in quantity more cheaply through a
>substantial initial investment. Information goods are famous for the
>economies of scale because virtually all of the cost of producing them
>goes into the first copy (Arrow 1984: 142). 

Incorrect.  

>A standard computer operating system, established through networkeffects,
>will create economies of scale for applications vendors, and the
>resulting
>variety and low prices of software will further reinforce the dominanceof
>the standard operating system, whereupon the same effects will probably
>lead to standardized winners among the applications as well.

ok.  I can't help to think that information compiled into proprietary
.dll's is not considered lost.

>If a computer derives inputs from the four corners of the country, or
>from
>all around the world, then its outputs will be meaningful only if those
>data were defined and captured in a uniform way.

so remember, use proper signature delimiters, x-headers, and killfile
Outlook users.

On 9 Jul 2001, Edward C. Lang wrote:

> Phil Agre's 'Designing the New Information Services'.
> 
> http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/scoug.html
> 
> Credit to Neil van Dyke for putting me on to pagre.
> 
> 


--

 ---  -sween                               
| M | http://www.modelm.org                 
 ---  "force feedback computing since 1984."