LEN BULLARD: We will be stuck dead center in the battle for legitimacy and legal authority of international standards vs consortium specifications. What is in a name? Quite a lot.

1. An airliner crashes into a housing project. Investigation reveals that the diligent implementation of a consortium-specified semantic language created a fault in the real time control system of the airliner. Who is culpable?
   
   
2. A wireless vendor reveals location data about a customer, gathered under the Enhanced 911 law, [is provided] to a private detective who then photographs the customer in a compromising but ambiguous situation resulting in a lawsuit with substantial possible damages. Is the information admissible in court? If the suit is resolved but the public reputation of the customer is destroyed, can the customer sue the vendor?
   
   
3. A company consortium uses an international standard as a resource for creating a technical specification. It then puts that specification on the web with an URL allocated from the consortium. A semantic web portal then uses that URL in all RDF resource descriptions. Who owns the concepts? Who has the right to edit the definitions? Is the portal obligated to use prior record of authority definitions from the international standard or can it make the standard disappear by refusing to maintain two URLs for the same "named" resource? What rights do the intellectual property owners have with regard to renaming?

We think we have seen the worst of the Internet revolution. We haven't even seen the last of the first act.

Len Bullard
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


DOUGLAS MC DANIEL: Let go. Just let go. Ask Hindu Guy. He's among the most abstract yet most correct thinkerS amongst us. If the Web is just the latest edition of Alchemy 1.0, The Encyclopedia 'Alexandria' Suite XML version and MultinationalCorporateNationState.com, who cares who the president really is? Or whether Linux prevails over Bill Gates. That rented room in the White House was bought and sold by bigger forces a long time ago. The current passion play in the Supreme Court is more a less a kind of ceremonial requiem to Democracy. Sure, now the degradation of the planet is really going to have a field day. But maybe this polarizing effect will have a positive influence on all of the redemptive thinkers out there. Autocracy does have its creative effects as an initiator and lightning rod for everything it despises. And King George may be such a wimp that he'll lean left just to keep from getting bad e-mail.

Douglas McDaniel

http://mythville.blogspot.com/

BAR CODE IS LAW - by Douglas McDaniel

The 107th US Congress will finally get serious about Internet regulation, thorny privacy issues and taxation, under pressure from our European cousins. And the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will have influential input into the regulatory process worldwide as it determines how new Top Level Domain Names (TLDs) are created and administered.

Finally, the dot-com deathwatch of this last year will open new avenues for the gatekeepers and broadband providers to force aggregations (think: malls) on the e-commerce players left standing.

Not very poetic or esoteric, I know, but that's what This Observer sees coming down the tracks with plumes of smoke rising from the engine's smokestack. That light at the end of the tunnel is indeed an on-coming train.

eToys was whining in the New York Times this weekend that sales were so low this holiday buying season in the United States that it might not have enough cash to survive until next April.

Everybody from Steve Jobs of Apple Computer to our Federal Reserve Bank chairman are mumbling that dreaded word "recession." What? Wasn't Fed Chairman Greenspan just claiming months ago that the economy was heating up too fast, inflation was looming and he thought raising interest rates was the solution? Economics is called "the dismal science" because even the best economists are as dismal as television weather forecasters at telling us what to expect tomorrow.

The same economists (and politicians) who were telling us only months ago that the wonderful and extended prosperity of the American economy was based on the high-tech and dot-com boom are running for cover as you read this.

High-tech stocks are uniformly in the toilet right now. And then there's that darned dot-com deathwatch. Thanks for nothing, eToys.com!

Those of you who have followed the commentary provided here over the years, or read my columns elsewhere, know that the preceding was a "quick scan" of the landscape as we enter the new year. I tend toward more rumination than that. This instance is no exception. I do see an upside.

Over the last few weeks, preparatory to a survey that will be published elsewhere, I've had the privilege of speaking with some of the people I respect in IT and Web development. It shouldn't surprise you that this was a primarily 30 - 50-something crowd who have been around long enough to ignore the hype and look at business and economic fundamentals --- and how a medium like the Web develops.

I've harkened back to people I used to discuss these issues with, from Howard Rheingold, an old compatriot on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL) to Esther Dyson to Mark Hurst. I telephoned fellow publisher Eric Meadows at Troika Magazine, too, to get a less network-centric perspective. My pal and G21 alumna, Felicity Ussher, who was a Senior Reporter at Silicon.com, shared a few notes.

Len Bullard is right in his assertion that we're only seeing the last part of the first act, as regards the Internet, right now.

As far as Information Technology goes, I think we're moving into the end of Act Two.

Here's why:

1. As is the case with any new medium or enterprise, lots of flim-flam artists manage to get over on the Web. As I've written elsewhere, the biggest recipients of the rewards of the California Gold Rush ran whore houses, sold picks and shovels and durable clothing. (Think Levi Strauss.) The miners themselves came away with stories of disappointment and heartache. The term "claim jumping" resonates for a reason.
2. The automobile, the telephone and the television only became ubiquitous when you didn't have to know ANYTHING about their inner-workings in order to use them. (Are you listening Linux devotees?)
3. The hype about the Internet and the Web has been fantastically overblown until now. As the US economy cools down, I expect this will finally change. Sure, everyone will continue to promote their dot-com presence, but those presences will be fewer and far more targetted because it just makes good business sense.

And that's when we can kiss many of the flim-flam artists good-bye. I'm happy about that. You should be, too.