Re: Something new for the New Year (2008).

Wow, I sure stirred up a hornets nest.

Let me see if I can make a few observations and then back away from this. The USPTO delivered a particularly inspiring Office Action and my first responsibility must be to respond to them, not to cdt.

1. Rob said the following:

> Some (like JOG) interpret the data structures (relations) of a
> relational database as sets of "true" logical statements.

In reply, JOG said:

>>I'm sorry Rob, but that's not an interpretation. Thats /what it is/.
>>The relations of a relational database encode true facts about the
>>world.

But according to Marshall:

>as far as the RM goes, it models our
>ideas about real-world entities and our ideas about real-world
>relationships in exactly the same way: as mathematical relations.

So as long as there is no universal consensus about how relational databases and the relational model allow us to represent "true facts" and "entities and ... relationships", I think I should be allowed to have my primitive view of a relational database as a set of sets of vectors. (Please, hold your applause until the end.)

2. Marshall asked me a number of questions which I tried to answer. And although I told Marshall that I just wanted to show cdt folk something that I thought was new and interesting, Marshall insists he needs much, much more.

But, JOG tells me that "If [I] can't respond to Marhsall's [sp] questions directly in a paragraph or so, then alarm bells go off."

Rome wasn't built in a day.

3. Curiously, the only indisputable comment came from Jan Hidders:

"I'd prepare myself for a tidal wave of negativity, if I were you. "

4. Here are two Q&As from a July 28, 2007 interview of Scott Berkun by Guy Kawasaki. See if they remind you of anything:

"Question: Why do innovators face such rejection and negativity? Answer: It's human nature -- we protect ourselves from change. We like to think we're progressive, but every wave of innovation has been much slower than we're told. The telegraph, the telephone, the PC, and the internet all took decades to develop from ideas into things ordinary people used. As a species we're threatened by change and it takes a long time to convince people to change their behavior, or part with their money."

Question: What are the primary determinants of the speed of adoption of innovation?
Answer: The classic research on the topic is Diffusion of Innovation by Rogers, which defines factors that hold up well today. The surprise to us is that they're all sociological: based on people's perception of value and their fear of risks -- which often has little to do with our view of how amazing a particular technology is.

For the full interview, see

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/ten-questions-w.html

I would also commend you to Geoffrey A. Moore's classic "Crossing the Chasm" and Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". These aren't database texts, but treatises on how some innovations and inventions lead to sucessful products. Received on Fri Jan 04 2008 - 04:49:46 CET