Re: Where you are leading may

Post #41,479 by dmarker2 6/6/02 9:02:12 PM 6/7/02 12:21:14 AM Reply	Re: Where you are leading may evolve, but is to complex for me to follow. I like to tell the story of the world before the automobile. When people had an affinity for horses & boats. A good man would often form a frienship with his horse, esp when survival was part of the equation. If the people of the horse transport era were told they would have to switch to what we have to day, I have no doubt that most would be shocked horrified and aghast. 'I ain't gonna ride in a box that has no horse to pull it', 'I ain't gonna ride in a contraption that uses flamable fuel to move it'. 'Are you seriously telling us you want us to go around in contraptions that kill more people in a year than we might lose in a year of a major war?'. Anyway, automotive transport changed the world - we live with it. Many don't particularly like the side effects but our kids take fast cars in their stride (am one of those whose early days was with horses & trains & trams - only a few people we knew owned a car or a truck - roads then where we lived were mostly dirt & all this was within 75 miles of a major international city (town back then). Also 'telly fones' - there were people from an earlier era who could not accept talking to someone they couldn't see & who would never do business with just a voice from a black box. But as we all know, the world has adapted. Now we have personal communicators & these are soon to have digital video added. Re data & Web Services. It really is a straight forward progression, no less complex that the act of moving from mechanical accounting machines (once worked on them) to electronic compters (which only became common in business in the late 1960s to 1970s), and personal computers (1980s), and networked computing 1990s culminating in the Internet, so the progression is networked computing based on services and open data exchange standards. This last phase would not happen without something like XML & the emerging services standards and concepts. You may be worrying too much abouut where it is heading - lets take it step at a time in a logical progression & not get too far ahead of ourselves. Cheers Doug Edited by dmarker2 June 7, 2002, 12:21:14 AM EDT Re: Where you are leading may evolve, but is to complex for me to follow. I like to tell the story of the world before the automobile. When people had an affinity for horses & boats. A good man would often for a frienship with his horse, esp when survival was part of the equation. If the peopl of the horse transport era were told they would have to switch to what we have to day, I have no doubt that most would be shocked horrified and aghast. 'I ain't gonna ride in a box that has no horse to pull it', 'I ain't gonna ride in a contraption that uses flamable fuel to move it'. 'Are you seriously telling us you want us to use contraptions that kill more people than many wars?'. Anyway, automotive transport changed the world - we live with it. Many don't particularly like the side effects but our kids take fast cars in their stride (am one of those whose early days was with horse - only a few people we knew owned a car or a truck - roads then were mostly dirt & all this was within 100 miles of a major city (town back then). Also tely fones - there were people from an earlier era who could not accept talking to someone they couldn't see & who would nerver do business with a voice. But as we all know, the world has adapted. Now we have personal communicators & these are soon to have digital video added. Re data & Web Services. It really is a straight forward progression no less complex that the act of moving from mechanical accounting machines (once worked on them) to electonic compters (only became common in the 1970s), and personal computers (1980s), and networked computing 1990s, so the progression is networked computing based on services and open data standards. This last phase would not happen without something like XML & the emerging services standards and concepts. You may be worrying too much abouut where it is heading - lets take it step at a time in a logical progression & not get too far ahead of ourselves. Cheers Doug Collapse All History
Post #41,506 by Ashton 6/7/02 6:28:55 AM Reply	ie 'change is inevitable" Of course it is. Those who want to 'conserve the status quo' - have never succeeded. But we know calculus: and d(dx/dt) describes not change but acceleration. It is as mindless to accept that: Anything which Might be done next is OK - as the reverse. I do see where 'encapsulated communications' Might lead, at least I believe I see +s AND -s. Don't you? We could try anticipating both, not just hoping for the +s. Because every choice works like that. I don't 'predict' the asymptote mentiond - but I know too many people who would not have missed its obvious presence in the 'possibilities' - to imagine I'm the first to see it there! (Or the last) Change is now occurring at evidently in-human speed, driven largest of all by dreams of personal profit by a very small % of the tenants.(well into obscene levels - if it can be gotten away with. No Limit to greed, experienced as obsession). At the very least: such tawdry motivation deprives 'us all' of more viable options: that's the cost I see as simplest to notice. As a planet - we have no plan for what to do with multitudes of persons following their own growth curve -- who won't understand the above shorthand. These need to have valid work for a sane existence. Just like us smart (and fortunate = lucky) ones are able to scrounge up - so far... Why? - 'cause they won't just stand around watching the Chosen Ones drive into their gated enclaves.. after a certain critical mass of dissension occurs. Sorry again but.. "there there, this is just normal er 'progress'" - is a proposition I oppose entirely. Not much is 'normal' about the just-ended Century of Wars.. and this opening of the next, with the national and international rules of the last, (all overlaid with ancient and some deadly superstitions too) ie we aren't required to be stupid, next. Y'know? Ashton (Hey... I watched the beginning of the 'nuc. industry' from scratch - remember, "electricity too cheap to bother metering" ? ETC. And I was interested in the details, so I learned them. I have heard Lots of fanciful musings of Insanely-great Ideas - and noted what actually occurred.) I noticed - but I don't 'worry'. That would be silly!
Post #41,514 by dmarker2 6/7/02 8:31:52 AM 6/7/02 8:41:42 AM Reply	Re: ie 'change is inevitable" "driven largest of all by dreams of personal profit by a very small % of the tenants." When did personkind's greed (or any other downside characteristic) change for the worse ? - I would argue that these characteristics have remained essentially static for the past 40,000 years (at least) but that because the human population has grown so dramatically, & personkind has discovered some secrets of the universe + how to manipulate bits of it, plus add to this our self awareness and our intellectual knowledge, and this may well amplify perceptions of everything we do in today's world (when in fact the only real change has been the world's population & perceptions). Semms to me that we today, be we Lawyers or prostitutes (very well matched), Priests or Sinners (usually both as far as Priests are concened :-), Businessmen or consumers, Congressmen or the masses, etc: etc: - that we have changed little over the era of cro-magnon man. It is only our exploitation of our environment that seems to have changed and that is directly related to population growth and indirectly related to our growing self-awareness (as some ancients say - we alone in Eden ate the big apple from the tree of knowledge). I get the impression that you have an issue with corporate world. I don't - they are an evolutionary species, - that could be because I spend most of my life in quieter backwaters than you are subject to (but Napa must be very pleasant?). I see corporations as little more than darwinian evolution & in the longer term they may not survive but then again they may be what they are because they are survival in an overpopulated world. Corporation vs nation state. But what the f*** has this got to do with a piddling evolutionary advance in the use of computers, that we are calling XML & Web Services ? Theirin lies my confusion with your directions :-) Cheers Doug Edited by dmarker2 June 7, 2002, 08:41:42 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #41,520 by drewk 6/7/02 9:38:28 AM Reply	Therein is the big issue IMO As a planet - we have no plan for what to do with multitudes of persons following their own growth curve -- who won't understand the above shorthand. These need to have valid work for a sane existence. I don't view the progression I outlined as the steps of turning humans into cogs in the machine, but to completely removing humans from the machine. If something can be automated, do you really want to do it over and over again? Do you want to work on an assembly line? Problem is, there are probably more people in the world who would be satisfied with that than not. What do they do for a living once we've replaced them with faster, more-consistent machines? A great quote I heard but can't locate, went something like this: We engage in warfare, so that our sons can engage in politics and construction, so that their sons can engage in music and art. Sounds great, but the insight Aldous Huxley had is that the weak link in building a Utopia isn't eliminating the things people don't want to do, it's finding something for people to make a living at. === Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #41,600 by Ashton 6/7/02 6:47:20 PM Reply	Yes - it seems to be that last.. Which is confounding even the appearance of anything like "planning-for". Hell, I'll admit that - in some moods, an hour or two of utterly repetitive simple tasks can be positively salubrious! Actually 'thinking to some huge Purpose' surely is the hardest work homo-sap ever (a few of them) manages to do. Most of us are aliens to such prowess anyway.. So yes, nice one! Replacing all the regular tasks with HALinux-XP, can only exacerbate the problem of ~8 billions here, or as LBJ said.. Don't spit in the soup Everybody's got to eat Ashton Properly translated, I think Will S. would have liked some of LBJ's homilies :-\ufffd
Post #41,689 by dmarker2 6/8/02 11:21:29 PM Reply	Re: Ashton, have created a new thread in open ... Have pre loaded it with enough fuel for a big blast :-) It should be a good opportunity to question the ethics and directions of the changes that XML & Web Services are expected to bring. Cheers - Doug
Post #41,770 by Ashton 6/9/02 8:06:15 PM Reply	Beyond call of duty :-) Mine should have been tagged OT No quibbles with your presentation of what seems a trend which has reached critical (thinking) mass. Apologies for interrupting a promising thread in its correct forum. I just tend to think in the direction that - such new models as putatively devaluate the (need for) individual knowledge of workers: is that Stimulus which ever shall evoke Response - For the truly-PHB, that Response is as inevitable as ... the next ad. People = Costs :: Cut Both. Trend is looking awful for that vast majority (in any field) who are merely 'average' - since already we read here signs of the commoditization. Always Room at the Top of course, and we each believe we are Top, yet -- (So it still sounds as if these developments will be ~= worsening the overall IT/Business (and especially Bizness!) "relationship". :( Regards, Ashton
Post #41,897 by mmoffitt 6/11/02 12:08:55 AM Reply	Indeed. such new models as putatively devaluate the (need for) individual knowledge of workers:... When my daughters ask me what I miss most about "the good old days" when I was young, I always say, "In those days, we had artisans. Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to see their demise."
Post #41,912 by Ashton 6/11/02 4:09:02 AM Reply	Tip of iceberg? First - they are still around - these days it seems: making superb one-offs (of lots of things) for the Yuppie class. (I guess that overlaps upper-Middle and Elite?). As with $200 dinners by $1M chefs. But overall, of course there are fewer and fewer. I notice this particularly re home work (not homework!). Many can sort-of install electrical fixtures for ex., but have none of the basic comprehension of Ohm's law, a bit of AC and DC principles. Some little thing is amiss: they can't even R&R sometimes. Surely couldn't create a "switch diagram" to make some small alteration. [These not needed, allowed in my house BTW] 'Specialization' - most obvious in the MD Trade, but becoming apparent more and more as businesses morph into 'bizness' - means that fewer have anything like a liberal education and act accordingly dull -while pretending 'chipper'? Allopathic MDs, with rare exception - have no idea about the many other approaches to 'health' worldwide, and often do not grok what it means to boast, "We Treat Symptoms!" Maybe a similar 'allopathy' occurs with 'consultant specialists' in bizness: they are being called in because: none of the present local Elite plans to stay very long, just want a parachute - and know pretty little about the intricacies of that overall business! (How Else explain: M$ hegemony ??) Anyway.. I don't see how 'we' can overcome the lead-time problem for training competent people - without some rilly Bad times coming. Those BTW will be the times when your 'maturity' shall take on a new cachet: "hey This guy grew up when they were still really Teaching stuff! Heh - he can even spel. And multiply without a calculator!!" Ashton

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