“Design depends largely on constraints.” — Charles Eames
Saturday, 24 August 2002
This article (you can google for the original paper) is, to me, pivotal to emerging Web standards. Both Semantic Web and Web Services are about machine-to-machine communication; the promise that machines will be able to act as an agent, and to integrate business processes, respectively (yes, there's a lot more to each). The question is, when will people trust and actually use machines to do this? If Storper's paper is correct, the pie-in-the-sky visions of a 'Web of Trust' *and* those of dynamic markets of smart Web Services are both without ground. To me, this is a good thing; both technologies have significant benefits to offer the world, if they'll just get their heads out of the clouds and back down to earth.
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To use an athletic metaphor -
At certain levels, it is the will to win that determines the winner. Within a level all competitive athletes are at very similar physical condition. Barring mental error, the winner is typically the athlete that, for personal reasons, "has to win." Sometimes the athlete hates to lose, but more often it is the one that is obsessed with winning.
Companies with equivalent web service infrastructure will be able to compete in levels. The companies that will "win" will be the ones that have applied their human talents and are obsessed with winning. Technology and the level to which a company researches, implements, and uses it, will only determine the league that a company plays in.
Tuesday, October 22 2002 at 7:13 AM +10:00