* * * * *
                                        
                      The status quo must surely hate this
                                        
Normally, I just tollerate Dave Wiener and what he says and his Scripting
News [1] site comes across as one extended advertising for his software, but
maybe what he has to say is worth listening to at times. [2]

> Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been
> forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP,
> HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To
> go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop
> struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have
> developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision.
> 
> …
> 
> First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is
> to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay
> Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in
> teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling
> issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company
> appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent
> offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-
> grab business.
> 
> …
> 
> If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you
> will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and
> at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are
> angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so
> insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk
> it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the
> Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
> 
> …
> 

[1] http://www.scripting.com/
[2] http://davenet.userland.com/2000/02/04/howToMakeMoneyOnTheInternet

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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