July 26, 2003
Cut to the chase
Marc Canter picks up on the point. It's about cutting through the misdirections and misunderstandings. Some of this stuff is complicated and it's easy to think that means there's something wrong with it. There are, of course, plenty of things that grow in complexity well beyond what's needed. But I try to approach some of this stuff using a turn on the old 'spilled milk' analogy. My take is "you spill the milk to see just how big the table is". As in, let's not whine about what might happen to that expensive rug if the milk spilled on it. Let's actually see how much we can spill. Let's see how wide the range of complexities might become if we took them to their logical extremes. For some folks this it tremendously difficult because it involves risk and fear of the unknown. Or, more pointedly, fear of them being found out for not knowing something. How quaint. Let's not bother to research things because it might reveal we don't really have it all figured out. Analogies of ostriches and sand seem applicable here...
What Marc also did was present a link to the k-collector. Heh, some of my posts really do take a rather biting position, don't they?
There's a real sense of looming serendipity lurking out there, just out of sight in the mist. It's both a mist of the past and the future. A lot of this stuff has been covered before. Yet, a lot remains to be considered. As different efforts take the chance to 'spill the milk' I think we're going to see some really cool stuff get discovered.
Do the semantic web folks have it all figured out? Not entirely. Do the oversimplification fanatics have it figured out? Most definitely not. But I think as the two camps pull their heads up from the depths and look at what the others are doing there's a chance a new middle ground can be found.
Maybe it's as easy as suggesting: simple folk, look ahead and wonder why. And advanced folk, look back and find out why they're not following.
Or are we going to have to wait for some proprietary "we can do it all without you" approach?
Aaron chimes in with:
Bill, that's a terrible analogy. You're suggesting wasting milk and ruining a perfectly good carpet. That's not a fear of finding stuff out. That's a reluctance of, well, wasting milk and ruining a perfectly good carpet.
Over at:
http://aaronland.info/weblog/archive/5168
Now, let me address this. I'm inclined to think he's joking but a fair number of folks think this way and they're not joking. My spill the milk idea is *precisely* intended to assault the sensibilities of those deathly afraid to even think of the idea, let alone try it.
It's sort of like, if you're so worried about the risks involved you'd never be able to enjoy the pleasant surprises. What if the milk never reaches the edges? Then a certain sense of confidence emerges about just how far that metaphorical tabletop extends. What if it does reach the edge and spill over but it stopped by the unexpected chair below? The analogy starts getting a little convoluted so I'm not going to try to extend it to an illogical extreme.
The point of this is TAKE THE RISK otherwise you'll most certainly NEVER see the reward.
Posted by: Bill Kearney on August 10, 2003 12:18 AM
