Three Myths of XML
by Kendall Grant Clark | Pages: 1, 2, 3

3. XML is the Dog, Not the Tail

[M]achine-readable information would give the public much more power and add accountability to the political process. -- Alan Kotok, "Can XML Help Write the Law?"

The last myth I want to discuss applies to every kind of technology, including XML. The myth is that institutional and social structures reflect, or are determined by, the possibilities of computer technology, so that a radical change in the latter will mean a radical change in the former.

Computer technology reflects institutional and social structures far more often than it changes them. Technology is only possible within the context of the social and political practices that create, maintain, and extend it; including social and political relations that dictate public funding of, and private profit-taking from, technology. The social and political practices that constitute social institutions are the limits within which technology can mean or be anything at all.

The relationship is actually more reciprocal and dynamic than that. Technology can give rise to new social practices, but only to those that the larger social framework can accommodate. Technology alone cannot make a revolution.

Taking technology to be independent or determinative of the social context within which it always already operates is to misjudge its possible, practical alliances and uses. The powers-that-be always have the newest, best, fastest, most powerful stuff, and they always have more of it than anyone else. Notwithstanding an even sharing of technology by all sides, any tool can be used to impede social change as well as to foster it. Even if XML had some property especially conducive of citizen empowerment and social change, as propounders of the first two myths suggest, the forces that oppose such empowerment and change are free to use it too. Technology often amounts to a draw in social struggle. Like every other human tool, XML isn't immune to abuse; it's often both a help and a harm.

Most enthusiastic proponents of XML have the cart before the horse or, to mix metaphors, they have the tail, XML, wagging the dog, society and social possibility. Empowering citizens or reforming a wayward, corrupt political process will always be less about the technology in question and more about real-world political and social organizing and the creation and maintenance of truly democratic social practices and institutions. Those have always been and will continue to be the real engine of liberating social change.

---

---

2. True!
   2001-07-22 09:03:18 Pallavi Patil
4. XML cures cancer! (Its just a protocol)
   2001-06-28 11:57:13 William Childers
6. Schemas are Magical
   2001-06-21 10:59:07 Robert Kottke
8. A easy Standard to Share common Business Perceptions
   2001-06-20 06:08:56 Manish Bhatnagar
10. XML revolution??
    2001-06-17 07:51:01 shankaran krishnaswamy
12. XML Not a technology ??
    2001-06-17 07:08:46 shankaran krishnaswamy
14. Pound Pipe Caret Tilde Splat
    2001-06-15 11:21:45 Ed Welsh
16. No Silver Bullet
    2001-06-15 06:44:27 Tim McCoy
18. Developers as Magicians
    2001-06-15 05:43:29 Randy Grenier
20. making myths reality
    2001-06-15 00:39:39 bryan rasmussen
22. Magical Thinking
    2001-06-14 12:05:25 Matt Helmick
24. Much needed dose of reality
    2001-06-14 11:45:46 Gordon Benett
26. But XML is not a technology...
    2001-06-14 09:48:33 Michael Lazzaro
28. You're too pessimistic about technology
    2001-06-14 08:42:06 Frank Richards
30. HumanMarkup Initiative and XML
    2001-06-13 23:40:44 Ranjeeth Thunga