David,
I agree with your observations, but would like to offer up some observations of my own on them. I believe you focus too much on the technology aspect of this issue, and not enough on the organizational investments required, not just in learning/adopting the technology, but also in the establishing the business relationships and honing them over time to be operationally effective, both in the business ecosystem and with the target end market. To illustrate my point, take your statement:
“It's a little hard for many folks to grok, but without decades old mainframe billing/provisioning systems, iPhones wouldn't be the ubiquitous consumer device they have become.”
The key point is not that the billing/provisioning systems are running on mainframes, or that they are decades old (and presumably running decades old software technology), which many certainly are. Rather it is that these systems embody business relationships/processes that evolved over many years not only between telecom providers and end consumers, but more importantly, between the various telecom providers themselves (and also between banking/credit card providers for online payments). And it is the world-wide (almost) scope of these relationships that is key to the value of the connectivity that the iPhone provides. Moreover, these relationships/deals and the corresponding implementation in billing/provisioning systems did not happen overnight (remember roaming charges and “no service available” messages? Remember when there was no telephone number portability?).
I submit that we under-appreciate the role of institutional relationships in building the “connected society/economy”, and the corresponding operational scope constraints that these relationships (or their lack) entail. Try using your US-based smart phone overseas sometime. And the GSM modulation issue is only one of the many impediments you are likely to encounter. Even if you have a GSM enabled phone, one can easily get into all sorts of service provider and rate/billing issues.
As to “what lessons can we learn” from this – pay attention to institutional/operational scope issues associated with your proposed ontology/system/service and target operational/knowledge domain. Technology is certainly one element of such scope issues, but it is rarely the dominant one. That’s why I keep pushing people to become more aware of implicit scope issues and assumptions they make. That’s why we developed the NCOIC SCOPE Model - to help people explore/expose their scope assumptions, and to help them more explicitly decide and specify/advertise what their target scope should be.
Hans
PS: love the use of “grok” in your email. Maybe I can get you and others on this forum to better “grok” the importance of explicit, institutional scope! J
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 10:48 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Dynamic Knowledge Repository
John -
On Jul 05, 2013, at 10:13 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
Then Steve Jobs copied it as the Mac in 1984, but it required
Bill Gates & Co. to copy it as Windows 3.1 to make it the universal
GUI for computers. That development took more than 20 years.
Are there lessons we can learn from these developments?
I'd observe that working from a blank sheet of paper takes at least 20 years to get something to the beginnings of widespread adoption.
We're long past green fields/blank sheet of paper in databases, information systems, etc.
As has been mentioned repeatedly here, something "new" has precisely 0% chance of replacing something already in place. If the "new" builds on top of and compliments legacy systems, then there may be uptake on the "new" thing.
Said another way... if there's a large installed base, something "new" claiming to be vastly superior to the installed base because of "superior" technology, likely isn't going anywhere. Organizations already have too much technology requiring too much expensive maintenance & just do not have the bandwidth to embrace complex new toys.
It's a little hard for many folks to grok, but without decades old mainframe billing/provisioning systems, iPhones wouldn't be the ubiquitous consumer device they have become.
How long did it take DragonSpeaking(?) take to become popular as Siri? At least 20 years, with massive fraud & bankruptcy thrown in along the way.