[Sigia-l] knowledge management

[Listera]

Karl Fast and Sean Lawerence wanted clarification on my contention:

>> Once IA is released from its West Coast, HTML-centric focus...

Re: West Coast, LIS

It's not like the West Coast is known to be a cauldron of intellectual rigor
as opposed to, say, of sun drenched hype, cultural phenomenon of the month,
movie of the week, etc. :-) To me, West Coast represents stereotypically the
dotcom pathos: technology driven, hype-laden, skin-deep, ahistorical. We've
had a generation of IAs, designers, developers and geeks who think the world
hasn't existed prior to mid-'90s.

As you may have noticed, I don't peg the start of IA at the creation of the
Web. I have given examples of IA that predate the Web by a few centuries.
While the title wasn't obviously used back then, the work done by a lot of
folks (from the early cartographers to naturalists, to name a couple) was
nevertheless IA.

So once you go beyond the antediluvian notion that a certain book or another
'started' IA just a decade ago, you get a different perspective for its
scope: IA is horizontal and pervasive.

That IA is still trying to shed its LIS-derived image problem or its
perceived attachment to the dotcom model is most unfortunate, but
nevertheless perfectly illustrates why it's important to not let a small
group define/hijack a nascent title: the world around moves on and you're
left with an outdated outlook/reputation.

Re: Enterprise, HTML

The fact that those who wrote early about 'IA' did not come from the
enterprise world should not blind us to the enormous opportunities awaiting
us in those unchartered territories. Given the size and depth of that
market, I'd say that's your best bet.

As evidenced by Microsoft's near-total stoppage of IE improvements for the
past two years, the web browser is in stagnation. (Improvements from tabs to
integrated search are somewhat marginal). The enterprise is slowly but
surely moving from the browser to a services model. Now I'm reticent to call
it the 'web' services model, because a lot of this will happen beyond HTLM
and the browser, which have come to symbolize the Web. The enterprise needs
(and had actually been using before the proliferation of the web browser)
apps that are more interactive than what you can typically get from HTML.

The new generation apps (be it in Flash, .NET, Java or some other platform)
excel where HTML (largely) fails: better UIs, speed, interactivity, session
management, security, etc. Sherlock/Watson, various blogging tools, RSS
aggregators or Java Web Start apps are all part of this new paradigm. Take a
look at iTunes4/Music Store. You'll never get that usability and fluidity
with HTML. Yet it's a (web) service masquerading as a desktop app and its UI
is defined via server-generated XML, thus capable of being ported to many
different XML-aware platforms. It's time to move beyond our current
HTML-centric focus, even if we keep useful notions like tagging for
structure or HTTP/port 80 for transmission.

Some of these are still novelty in the enterprise now, but wait till they
get traction there, it'll be loads of fun. The enterprise technology
landscape is also undergoing dramatic changes: at larger enterprises
programming has now been largely commoditized and even the most prestigious
Wall Street investment banks are now outsourcing overseas some their core
competencies like new product R&D.

So we live in truly disruptive times, as the saying goes. If we could move
beyond the 'nav bar on the left' or 'Comic Sans for children's sites' type
of debates, there's a lot of new territory up for grabs and in need of our
attention and expertise.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba