Why Tim Berners-Lee cries himself to sleep at night

 

In the 80’s every computer was isolated and incompatible with the next due to differing computer companies and file types. Now at this time computers were mainly only owned by universities and professionals, and, whenever they had to swap data – it was a nightmare. To swap data from one computer to another took hours of frustrating labour.

Tim Berners-Lee worked for CERN, a massive research centre with each researcher having a different pc to the next. This meant he spent a lot of time listening to people moaning about this hassle and came to the realisation of a solution.

Now Markup Languages (kind of translation sheets for how things should be displayed) had been used for years previous in print based media, but Berners-Lee realised if there were a markup language that all these different computers had in common, then without having to buy a new computer you could seamlessly swap your precious research with other researchers to be viewed on theirs. 

 

The vision I have for the web is about anything being potentially connected with anything”. – Tim Berners-Lee

Hypertext Mark-up Language (or HTML) is the Markup Language Berners-Lee created. A different – Yet similar – markup code, Standard General Markup Language (SGML) was used by the TEI. The TEI – or Text Encoding Initiative – is a worldwide drive to create an industry standard for the encoding and sharing of data with ten times the creative control than HTML as it has ten times the amount of tags (or rules), this is coupled with the fact recently, the TEI council have put into motion the translation of the standardised markups meaning that other countries can apply the markup more intuitively without a language barrier.

These languages(HTML and SGML) are good for publishers as they are software and hardware independent meaning they are not at risk of ceasing to work, increasing the longevity of the markup language.

However both of these languages however are described as ‘limiting language[s]’because even though they have up to 500 tags … you only have up to 500 tags.

XML – or eXtensible Markup Language,  Lets you add own tags (basically making your own markup languages) but, without any regulations on these tags you could be back to square one of everyone having their own set of tags. This would lead us back to the original problem of having a massive set of conflicting standards where no one can share their data freely.

“Open, publicly defined standards for data interchange formats are a key to protecting investments in electronic information”

( Sperberg-McQueen C.M & Tommie Usdin ,B )

This quote aptly sums up the core ideals of Tim Berners-Lee’s image of what HTML would achieve by no one owning/changing the language everyone uses – everyone can communicate more easily and securely. However XML does increase the creative control given to the author by being able to create your own tags; literally as many tags as you want.There are other ways of increasing the visuals and applications of these limited languages. CSS can be applied to both HTML and TEI’s SGML and allows a separate file –  linked to the content (SGML/HTML file) – which independently displays the content with the context dependent css sheet.For example if a publisher has a book which they want to publish on iPad, Smartphone and Paperback, but each with a different set of chapters or  fonts; this would be easily achievable without having to touch the content again after the SGML markup.

These advantages in technology allow a more seamless evolution of printing to incorporate their audiences’ needs and wants. This use of a common markup language and intricate design allowances from CSS mean that all avenues of publishing such as Newspapers, Books, Governments and many more can share their content with different mediums without having to rewrite either their content or style sheets. Once the CSS forms are created for example a Newspaper’s Website and iPad version. When new content is sent in marked up in SGML the independent style sheets will display the information applicable to that service.

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‘DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY’ IS A LIE! (DEPENDING WHO YOU ASK)

Disruptive technology is a term used differently

depending if you are a’traditionalist’ publisher who vexes technology, or the kind of person who has every form of electrical equipment you can buy – and money down on ones that haven’t come out yet.

“I feel positive about the future of publishing – not about the future of the publishing industry. An  important distinction. Digital publishing opportunities are huge. Publishers are not necessarily the ones who will benefit.” –   Reed (2010)

As I am writing this Amazon’s Kindle Fire was announced to launch next month at a cost of $199 ( half the price of Apple’s cheapest iPad). That is the ‘fancy’ version with a touch screen by the way – base price will be $50; seeing as that is the price of about 5 books you can argue that they have pretty good incentive to buy it, which isn’t good for traditionalist publishers at all.

According to the anti technology protester, this evolution of the industry is radical   and  means that it forces current technologies to become obsolete meaning customers move and change balance of industry.

After the dotcom crashes of the early 2000’s I can understand the hesitancy of existing companies to pile onto new marketing ‘buzz words'(although any company who hasn’t learnt everything marketing suggests should be passed through a common sense filter needs a wake up call) for the sake of the niche market sales. However  these niche market sales are quickly becoming mainstream.

The front page of the Financial Times today hailed the iPad and the Kindle “Two digital ‘eco-systems’” in which to sell and buy Books, Games, Music, Movies and Apps. Although both companies have different  competitive strategies   (Amazon’s profits in content after hardware, and Apple’s high profit hardware low profit content)

The latter of the two stereotypes will have a bookshelf looking like the one I mocked up above. His idea on technological advances in the publishing industry will be an image of Obama style utopia. This view sees the advances as ‘incremental’ , building on existing ideas to improve the technology while making it effective and accessible.

To be fair the idea that any technology has ever rendered another completely obsolete is untrue; as we still use landlines after mobiles because you never get signal and we still use candles when the power goes out ( although with new technology in LEDs and PV modules this will be debateable).

(Click Here for a fun Poster on Ebooks VS Print Books)

The sheer amount of increase in productivity and efficiency is enough to argue the case for technology as a positive. With computer systems in place to take orders at any time of day or night, connected to print on demand and drop-ship centres manual labour is virtually nil. The jobs that are lost here however do not fall out of the chain completely as new jobs are created elsewhere in the chain, like a tectonic plate being melted at one end and built at the other.

The time and money saved in not printing books until someone wants to buy them allows the company to keep this capitol available for publishing more books digitally   benefiting the publisher as they have more avenues of income and the publisher who gets his work published.

An interesting business model which uses modern ideas is Enhanced Editions’ way of settling set-up costs from initial sales and then splitting profits after 50/50. However due to the availability and accessibility of self publishing, authors not only publishing their own books on sites such as lulu.com (helping them retain their artistic control) but advertising them too for literally no or little cost!

My opinion is that publishers need to stop moaning that we are making them catch up with the last 30 years when they should have been there first – as always with business someone can do it better and cheaper; and if you can’t keep up you lose the race!

(And by the way; Amazon’s share price rose 4.4% in the 24 hours after the announcement of Kindle Fire.)

Click full blog for references