Article:		Basic Training
Subject:		xml is insufficient
Date:		2002-04-01 08:41:10
From:		Fakee Fakerson
I can only assume that this sentence was written specifically for shock value... "First, the whole body of human knowledge, experience, and understanding can be expressed in terms of plain text; if something cannot be so expressed, it might as well not exist." This statement is so horribly wrong. In fact little of what humanity knows, experiences, and understands can be expressed in plain text (especially at this point). First off, you know how to balance right? Now explain exactly how you do that in plain text. This is why Artificial Intelligence and Robotics are such challenging fields. We know what we want to happen (we can do it ourselves) but we have no way of expressing that in words. It seems that some of the most basic things we experience are the hardest to explain. Secondly, we are capable of being irrational, emotional, angry. Plain text is insufficient, xml is insufficient, it encourages linear thinking, hierarchy, and rational thought. In general it converts our thinking into a computers and not the other way around. To sum up, xml is only useful to store a very small subset of our human knowledge, experience, and understanding. It is like a small patch loosely placed over a whole in a balloon. pop.

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• xml does the job
  2002-04-08 09:38:49 j ogden [Reply]
  
  And should I assume that you have never been moved by an author to laughter, tears, or anger. All of human experience can be and has been many times, expressed using nothing but the 26 letters of our alphabet.

  
  There has been much written that suggests that what we cannot express (vocally, or on paper) cannot be thought or felt.

  
  Obviously a Shakespeare or a Churchill can use words in a way the rest of us cannot - and perhaps the great communicators will never wish to use XML themselves, but I would find an XML-parseable version of Mark Antony's speech in Julius Ceasar quite interesting, since it would tell me how Shakespeare mean for "Fridends, Romans, Countrymen!" do be delievered.

  
  

  
  
  
  

  • xml does the job
    2002-04-08 11:35:05 Fakee Fakerson [Reply]
    
    No, I didn't mean to suggest that language isn't wonderful, just that it is only a small part of our communication. XML is good for many things, especially quantitative answers. It is not good, however, when it comes to qualitative answers.

    
    As someone who believes that technologies transform culture, I don't want to see XML change the way that we write (for the worse).

    
    XML has it's place, and it is wonderful. I am worried not about what XML can do, but what it will do to our communication.