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November 27, 2006
Interfaces vs databases
Interfaces vs databases: Bill Thompson raised a good point this weekend, although he may have obscured it with his historical metaphors. The penultimate paragraph is what grabbed me: "We can build a network that doesn't care or notice if your libraries are local or remote because the stuff you use regularly is always where you need it to be, cached on your local storage when needed, on a remote server when you're online. And we can do it all without ceding control to Google, Amazon or even Microsoft." In the first sense he's talking about the need for occasional connectivity; and in the second I believe he's talking about centralized data silos you cannot control. I think his main point is that much of the conversation about interfaces completely ignores the data model and its ownership: if you generate digital info through your everyday behavior, then do you control your record, or does someone else? John Battelle had a similar question today, about how Google Checkout means that his purchase info becomes Google's property, rather than his chosen vendor's property. Much of the conversation about "proprietary vs opensource software" misses the mark, I think... I believe we should actually be wondering about what happens to the digital bits we create, where data about is held, and how transparently we can audit and update it... whether our digital bits are held in a proprietary data silo somewhere else, or whether we actually have access to our own source data.
Posted by JohnDowdell at November 27, 2006 04:15 PM
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Comments
I'm not sure what you mean by pentultimate. That means the next level below ultimate. I'm sure we cannot choose an ultimate or next-ultimate paragraph, nor can you. But maybe you mean most significant.
[jd sez: The paragraph before the final one, the next-to-last paragraph, that's the one which contained the quoted text.]
Posted by: Lance at January 2, 2007 04:40 PM