Um... Paul? I'm confused... (01)
On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 23:45, Paul Prueitt (ontologystream) wrote:
> Cory's excellent note is copied below (for my bcc)
>
>
> My note will be brief. When a group of four or five of us really work hard
> to get to root causes we can sometimes form a new community of practice.
> This is what we are looking for, something really new.
>
> Now for some "corrective action". (smiles)
>
> Cory, in a different note you were critical of John Sowa's questioning the
> motivation of those who developed the current W3C RDF/OWL standards. I know
> that John was not intending to question motivation, and I remember well the
> interactions last year I had with Brand and Patrick in the ONTAC forum.
> Questioning motivation might be truthful, but it is often not a community
> building exercise. John pointed this out to me, last year.
>
> What John is doing is describing history. The fact, as you state, that
> people work hard and are committed to their sense of legitimacy is something
> that can be observed. But like the algebra student who "tries hard" but
> cannot produce the answer, the W3C is building on precisely what John has
> described as a matter of history.
>
>
> Do we as a society merely accept arithmetic illiteracy on the part of almost
> all citizens, or do we question the educational process? I agree that John
> did not, and does not now have something that is an alternative. Common
> logic is not an alternative to RDF. But I do, and Azamat does, and five or
> six others do. These are true fully blown alternatives... that are (each)
> ignored by funding mechanisms... up to now. Will this change? I believe
> so, and soon. But I may be wrong.
>
> I might say that "we" work just are hard as those who defined the W3C
> RDF/OWL specifications.
>
> The why , no alternatives are funded, is interesting and I have written
> extensively about this topic.. and will not repeat any of that here. But
> "motivation" is a large part of my answer. (stated bluntly.)
>
>
>
> The paper by Leonid
>
> http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm
>
>
> is describing a history that has no. or little critic of bind alleys or
> incorrect development pathways. (If I read his work correctly... perhaps
> you will correct me, Leonid). Leo O (at Mitre) does the same thing, as does
> Jim H. at UM. These are histories that have little or no insight into
> possible wrong paths and wrong development processes. Everything done is
> good, and more good is only done by following the current pathway.
>
>
> There is never a paper with the title "How we spent 30M on something that
> sits in a desk drawn unread; and got away with it (again)." Or "why the
> x-y-z model we invented did not work".
>
> This telling of positive histories is very IT profession centric, and is in
> some people's mind not helpful to an industry whose back is against a wall
> (even if some do not really realize it). We (the IT community) must raise
> our eyes to the community of human being whose lives are degraded by an
> absence of real information science. (One looks positively to library
> science for help..... any one here in that field?)
>
>
> For example, the take home message I get from Leonid's paper is that one has
> to wait at least 30 years with no expectation that a by-pass to entrenched
> conceptual and technical problems will shock the market. (many of us do
> not think humanity will survive the next 30 years without a deep by-pass of
> the current IT mess.)
>
>
> Not being able to seriously question the process (which is what John is
> doing) is not helpful if one is thinking outside of the IT community. (Not
> questioning may be helpful to the IT sector. Since it is clear that if
> information science is not corrected that the over all (short term)
> consequence is beneficial to the IT industry - since building information
> systems that fail will be accommodated as "normal and expected".) More work
> to go around.
>
> The two categories of community response to challenge are incomplete. But
> war is not the only other option.
>
> You state below:
>
> " However, when a member of the community violates the understood fairness
> (legitimacy) of the community, one of two things happen. One outcome is
> that it forever disrupts the community, and the community eventually
> ceases to exist. There are a few examples of this in [1].
>
> The other example of this outcome is that the community sees a need to
> more clearly state these shared concepts of legitimacy. "
>
>
>
>
> In the case of IT, this community may need to be ignored, and allowed to
> dissipates eventually not because the community sees a disturbance but
> because there are other more interesting things to do. This dissipation may
> take 30 years. But the break through is near by. (One year, six months..)
>
> Thus I talk about the development of a K-12 curriculum in the knowledge
> sciences as part of the proposed national project to establish the knowledge
> sciences. The curriculum development will focus on things like
> non-locality of meaning and pragmatics as discussed in the BCM
> specification.
>
> Are you willing, Cory, to leave some of the difficulties of legacy behind
> and move with us into a brave new world?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: soa-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:soa-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andrew S. Townley
> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 6:48 AM
> To: Service-Oriented Architecture CoP
> Subject: RE: [soa-forum] Business Need for SOA (Was SOA Semantic Variation )
>
>
> Ok, some sleep helped a little. I think the answer is to figure out
> what SOA *really* is (as I believe was suggested eralier).
>
> Advance warning: I'm not really going to be talking about technology at
> all, and I'm going to relate a few things which some may find a bit
> tangential. However, I think if we can solve this, the rest is going to
> be a lot easier.
>
> In 1722 Benjamin Franklin wrote (as Silence Dogood), "'I have...found by
> Experience, that it is impossible to talk distinctly without defining
> the Words of which we make use'".
>
> So, that's the challenge. I think what we've seen thus far in the
> discussion has really been somewhat affected by this issue. We're
> making progress however. :)
>
> I think the most important term we've been using within this context is
> the word 'community'. However, I think how it is understood (or not)
> has massive implications about how successful our efforts will be with
> SOA (industry-wide). For many years, I have had the intuitive feeling
> that you can't legislate morality--it comes from something much more
> fundamental than laws. Recently, from discussions on the XML-DEV
> mailing list, I was directed to the writings of Aldo de Moor. In them,
> I finally realized where my intuition originated: the concept of
> legitimacy.
>
> Whitworth and de Moor define legitimacy as the common sense of fairness
> which binds a community together [1]. As such, it is what allows the
> community to grow, because continued acts in and towards the community
> based on the same sense of fairness end up building trust amongst the
> community. The more trust, the more openness, communication and
> cooperation, and therefore the more benefit to the community as a
> whole. Those of you familiar with Systems Thinking will recognize this
> as a reinforcing system.
>
> However, when a member of the community violates the understood fairness
> (legitimacy) of the community, one of two things happen. One outcome is
> that it forever disrupts the community, and the community eventually
> ceases to exist. There are a few examples of this in [1].
>
> The other example of this outcome is that the community sees a need to
> more clearly state these shared concepts of legitimacy. In society,
> this is done by passing laws. In computer systems, it is done using
> access control and by introducing other design constraints.
>
> In society in the large, option one really isn't a runner, so more often
> than not, the second one is chosen. I suppose, in the interests of
> completeness, I should point out that there's a third option, war, but I
> don't think it fits into the current discussion.
>
> Assuming that the second option: making laws to enforce the understood
> legitimacy traits of society, is chosen, this eventually leads to an
> evolved framework defining various aspects of legitimate behavior within
> the community. It works, because they are, by definition, *legitimate*,
> i.e. fair. People who understand legitimacy in a community normally
> don't have to be told what is right and what is wrong for every decision
> they make. When implemented properly, everyone's actions generally
> reinforce the legitimacy of the community, thus contributing to the
> reinforcing system described above. I have written about this
> previously in the context of enterprise security [2], but not in this
> pure of a form.
>
> Of course, there are always participants in a community who don't
> subscribe to the same legitimacy principles. That's where the laws kick
> in and either prevent them from doing any damage, or reactively attempt
> to prevent others from following a bad example. Still, if coercion is
> the only option, this approach will eventually break down as described
> in [2] due to the trait of tolerance.
>
> When the system is working correctly, very little interaction with the
> codified principles of legitimacy within the community (laws) is
> necessary by the participants. I'm sure not many of us could, from
> memory, list the exact details of the laws that exist in a locality, let
> alone on a larger scale such as a state or a nation, but that fact does
> not generally prevent us from going about our daily business. Thus, I
> posit that this is primarily because we subscribe to the legitimacy
> principles of the communities in which we participate.
>
> If this is accepted, then what are the outcomes of the community? The
> main one is that the members of the community are fairly autonomous.
> Either implicitly or explicitly, they understand the context in which
> they operate, altering their behavior to conform to the legitimacy
> principles required for the various communities in which they
> participate. Before long, this alteration happens automatically,
> without conscious thought from the participants. Do you talk to your
> mother the same way you talk to your friends? (I do, because I have a
> cool mom, but most people probably don't. This behavior is an example
> of what I'm talking about).
>
> One of the largest benefits of autonomy is the ability to work
> co-operatively to accomplish a larger goal. However, this "directed" or
> "cooperative autonomy" is only effective if everyone fully understands
> what they are supposed to do and have the ability to do it.
>
> Bringing all this back a little closer to the topic at hand, the degree
> of autonomy in a system is directly proportional to the scalability of
> that system. I have elaborated on this concept from a messaging point
> of view [3]. However, what struck me this morning when I was thinking
> about this conversation was this relationship:
>
> scalability => autonomy => legitimacy
>
> Or, that in a system, scalability implies a certain amount of autonomy,
> but that this autonomy is only possible if the autonomous entity has an
> awareness of and subscription to the legitimacy principles of the
> community in which they are participating.
>
> Bringing this back even closer to the current discussion, my use of the
> road metaphor in the earlier mail was a better of example of this
> thought than I realized. I said:
>
> > > The SOA part kicks in when I can drive from McD's, to BK, to Wendy's to
> > > Arby's, or wherever, and send the same message and expect the same
> > > response. In W3C-speak, ordering food is the abstract service and each
> > > of the fast food places is a concrete implementation of that service (an
> > > agent). The SOA tells me how I can get from point to point, what rules
> > > I must follow, and maybe even gives me directions. It may also allow me
> > > to get fuel, buy a candy bar or even a newspaper--if those messages
> > > existed and there was an agent implementing a service providing them.
>
> Relating the architecture of the SOA back to the society in which we
> live and adding in the concept of legitimacy, the traffic laws say where
> and when we can drive from point to point. Mostly, people obey these
> laws, but I would say that the most fundamental ones (speed limits don't
> count here :D) are "obeyed" less because they are laws, but more because
> they resonate with our innate sense of fairness.
>
> So, these are the reasons that I actually don't agree with you that
> requestor/provider roles/concepts are too low-level within the context
> of the SOA. To me, these provide the power of the SOA. This leads me
> to conclude that the architectural constraints of the SOA define the
> legitimacy principles of the environment, in a similar manner to the way
> Whitworth and de Moor say that the programmer is ultimately defining the
> legitimacy principles of the social interaction systems they design and
> build [1].
>
> If a framework for what is and is not legitimate within the SOA
> community is defined, the participants within that community are free to
> be autonomous within that community as long as they follow the rules.
> This autonomy within the community allows the community to scale in the
> same manner as the Internet [3].
>
> Note as well that these rules of legitimacy are not restricted to the
> software agents acting within the community. It also applies to the
> manner in which the human participants interact with each other and with
> the software agents as part of the community. This is a model that has
> been proven to work (to various degrees) in both computer systems (the
> Internet) and society. Managing autonomy is harder than some of the
> alternatives, however it is the only way to provide sufficient
> scalability within the community to accomplish anything meaningful. The
> balancing system at work here is dealing with those that don't conform
> to the legitimacy principles. Once these cases are identified, steps
> are taken to augment the framework, and life goes on.
>
> This is exactly what happens between government and the governed. If
> one sees the other violating the community's legitimacy principles past
> a tolerance point, action is taken--in either direction--to re-balance
> the environment. I believe that this is the model that SOA must follow
> if it is to be successful.
>
> In large deployments with hundreds of services, thousands of people and
> millions of messages, it has to have the ability to adapt on its own
> behalf--within the framework that defines the architecture of the
> community. When this behavior does not occur, the scalability, and
> therefore the effectiveness of the architectural style, becomes
> constrained. If that happens, we'll be here in another 5-10 years
> arguing about the "next big thing" vs. "the last big thing" because we
> will have reached a point where the SOA model is no longer useful.
>
> As the Internet has proven, I think it is possible for this type of
> community architecture to exist. We just can't repeat some of the
> mistakes of the Web which did not consider the legitimacy concerns of
> the participants and which has led to some of the issues we have today's
> society (e.g. widespread identity theft and fraud).
>
> By allowing the business processes and roles (as you use the term) to
> fully participate in this community *as peers*, I believe that SOA is an
> architectural style which can achieve the business needs of
> collaboration, integration and agility. We just have to create the
> right community.
>
> ast
>
> [1] http://www.starlab.vub.ac.be/staff/ademoor/papers/bit03.pdf
> [2] http://atownley.org/published/2005/06/ISB1005AST.pdf
> [3]
> http://atownley.org/2006/03/self-directed-messages-the-key-to-scalable-soa/
>
>
>
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--
Join me in Dubrovnik, Croatia on May 8-10th when I will be speaking at
InfoSeCon 2006. For more information, see www.infosecon.org. (02)
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