I, Brentus Esotericus : Communication, Information, and Open Standards
Brent Peters March 24 2009 03:46:46 PM
Through the cold war, and I have read many books, the US military had long placed "electronics/communications", at the highest levels of their list. Others would place it on weaponry, ...I found this interesting, when I was younger, but at closer look through history, I often found that this was one of the most critical and fundamentals in any endeavor. The ability to communicate accurately, or the ability to take advantage of opportunities IN communication. This is loosely done, as this is a paper on it's own.
I will break down the communication in 2 parts:
1. The ability to share information between people, in a specific way or method. (producer/consumer) (peer2peer)
2. The ability to perceive information, react, and change history. (opportunist).
I will start with the Opportunist first (item 2). History can be altered with peoples ability to communicate, and capitalize on it. When a political feud began between the North African territories (Boniface) and Rome, some assistance was sent to a Geiseric (a vandal). His perception, cunning, and observance, allowed him to chase an opportunity. This was one of the pivotal moments in history in which the fall of the roman empire was sparked. His ability to perceive what was really taking place, and react. OK, a somewhat loose connection. One man!
Fast forward to 20th century. When the Bolsheviks took over, with the October Revolution, or even attempted, one of the first things they would go after the newspapers and telegraphs. In the early attempts, this failed, as the Czar recognizing the vitality of this, usually had these well guarded by the Czar's guards. In the success of the October revolution, however, they succeeded control and was mandated as to what information could be communicated through these mediums.
Look elsewhere, I won't mention more recently as not to offend any peoples of more current times. In any modern invasion, however, communications is vital, thus disrupting it is also, ... US Military. US investment in intelligence, satellites, ...
Standards come up on how to communicate, (Item 1), the Producer/Consume:
1. Well after the work against Rome was done, there was a rather dark period on communication. One man was pivotal in history in constructively pulling together a standard of the written word (communicating), as a key pillar in building the Holy Roman Empire. That person was Charlemagne. His standard was, named after himself, called "Carolingian Miniscule".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the small literate class from one region to another
This standard or unity for the written word, helped to make sure that manuscripts could be more easily read and interpreted from one area of the empire to the other, which before was found to be extremely difficult.
Printing later came, even standards on terminology of printed letters, like "uppercase" or "lowercase", these came from the capital letters being stored in the "uppercase" or drawer of a typeset desk, or the "lower" letters, being stored in the "lowercase" drawer of the typeset desk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppercase Manual typesetters kept them in the upper drawers of a desk or in the upper type case,
2. There have been standards around secure communication, encryption. Enigma (Germans), KH (US), ... the ability to communicate and prevent the Opportunist from taking advantage. One interesting point, not many people realize it but one of the best cryptographers of all time was who?
He even had a few "crypto's" that withstood being deciphered, in one case, for over 150 years. One of those done in May year 2000. http://www.bokler.com/eapoe_challengesolution.html
BTW, that person was highly revered in the 20th century world of cryptography, even in US intelligence. His name was Edgar Allan Poe.
3. Standards for computers, ascii, file formats of various types, ...
Summary on file formats....
It is this last one that I am particularly on. We are at a point in history of having great change. Just like with the Carolingian Miniscule, we should have a modern standard for communication. A standard that is there for the good of all of humanity. Charlemagne's, while there are different views, I believe was in fact doing both for the good of humanity, as well as a somewhat selfish need of making the empire efficient. Now efficiency can be achieved through ODF standards, just as well as any others. The main difference is that as history has proven, having one company purely pushing on a file format computing standard is TOO much power for any 1 person or any company to control. So ODF, IMO, is extremely critical. Now, I know people will claim that a company of which I am speaking will actually adopt the ODF file format, but I feel that there will be a meager attempt at it, and thus there will be "fidelity" issues between file formats, ... and so people will more and more move away from ODF. Don't believe me? "History repeats itself...", please take a look at the lack of commitment and poor support for Posix 1003.1 and Windows NT, remember Java api's on Windows*, ... If I am wrong, then we are all winners. If I am write, then I have it well documented and can claim that I am a prophet.
So my point is, we should all be pushing and saving documents as much as possible in the ODF file format. When you send a file out, you could send it in ODF, if the other person doesn't have it yet, then write yours in ODF, and then save later to another format, but send both pushing that person to ODF also (viral acceptance). Make ODF the default. Always import and work again in ODF. Changing technology, ... is the easy part, introducing new behaviors, changing people, ... is very difficult. We must make a conscious effort to force ourselves and our colleagues to adopt this new file format. It is time to embrace this new inflection point in history, and start an open means of communication. The alternative would be one in which file formats change, and we become controlled by a single vendor to get access to our information. These editors are nothing more than a modern typewriter. We should keep the data that we type in as free and open for our ownership and not let it be owned by someone else.
Brentus Esotericus
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