What’s up with you people? Here is an opportunity to initiate widespread automation in the workplace based on mechanised records - a recommendation that goes back to 1945 to my knowledge.
Is it because new opportunities for general public participation appear to conflict with “unlocking a new level of value to Mozilla and Mozillians”. If so, then this needs to be discussed because it’s simply not the case.
I’m sorry I still can’t understand how this is related with the work we do at Mozilla or participation.
Maybe this is not the best forum to talk about it? Probably that’s why you are not getting a lot of replies.
Do you think this situation might be similar to the second of the classic trio of responses to innovation: “OK it works but it will never catch on”? If so this is the most difficult part to get to grips with. I remember personal computers initially being branded “just for hobbyists” and the Internet “just a passing fad.”
First bureaucracy should not be allowed to smother ideas. Second we should recognise this idea as an extension of, not alternative to Mozilla’s good work. And thirdly we should use it to acknowledge and pay tribute to the foresight of the Internet pioneers that allows us to build on first principles to satisfy the mission.
The term “Participation” seems to be a problem, so how about hoiking eWorking out of that section and giving it one of its own? It is quite a big idea after all. It could be renamed if you like.
I believe the more the Internet is used for mechanisation by more people in addition to browsing, the greater will be the influence of citizens (voters) to maintain it as sacrosanct as postal services.
I strongly recommend reading Vannevar Bush’s "As We May Think "(section 6 onwards). He may not be revered now as he was by MIT and other cognoscenti in the past, but Douglas Englebart and Tim Berners Lee acknowledged his influence on their developments of graphical user interface, mouse, online systems and so on as well as the Web itself.
Innovation is notoriously awkward in the initial stages but can become exciting if we can try and bridge the gaps. That’s the purpose of Discourse, right?
Yes but this concrete category inside Mozilla Discourse is to talk about the participation efforts inside Mozilla:
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/about-the-participation-category/1760
I’m not sure where your post would fit better, sorry.
I have just returned from a trip around the Indian Ocean. In Hong Kong we booked single tickets to Mauritius and three nights in a hotel in Port Louis, its capital. After that we moved around Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka booking hotels and flights on the hoof on the web. We used our credit and bank cards for payments and different types of cash. eVacationing if you like.
I mention this not just to praise the technology but to explain it changed the way we did vacationing, in my view more creatively. Since there is no doubt it works for vacationing, the only question should be simply how to get it going for working. Objections about not fitting with bureaucracy is surely contrary to the Mozilla mission, almost as iniquitous as the infamous “no reply” that has dogged innovation for centuries.
Can I ask you @george now that I see you have been able to get back to Discourse, either to explain to your people that eWorking really can be exciting or to me why this cannot be the case. Thanks.
Hey, your enthusiasm about this idea inspires me. Are you trying to say that everything on the Web should have a json api and mozilla should be the standardization body that standardizes the API, and also makes it easy to create a standard API?
I definitely believe “OK it works but it will never catch on”. And I don’t agree with the logic that Internet was called a passing fad by some people and therefore there can’t be any bad idea in the world.
Are you trying to say that everything on the Web …
I am not trying to say anything. I am saying that if people get the opportunity to create their information as objects (in JSON format), the IT industry will get more opportunities to automate tasks for the good of the Society as a whole. I would like a non profit like Mozilla to take over and distribute an open source JSON machine, much as Mozilla did with the Netscape browser. I did not say or infer anything about APIs - that is your non sequitur.
I definitely believe “OK it works but it will never catch on”.
I’m glad you agree it works. I have some ideas why it may never catch on but would be interested in why you think so.
And I don’t agree with the logic that Internet was called a passing fad by some people and therefore there can’t be any bad idea in the world.
Again I did not say or infer that - please be more careful with serious discourse.
So, you want to give people an easy way to create information in json format? So that for example, if say the govt published data on e.g. crime rates, a non technical person could convert/create it in Json?
I think your example could be misleading since the vast bulk of information is produced by the general public in their day to day activities. The basic idea then is to enable anyone to create (or use if already existing) digital representations of things of interest. They can then attach information as key/value pairs that are useful to progress their tasks (whether for work or leisure). These can be simple values or criteria that provide the basis for automated computation. The representations are of course digital objects that can be parsed and used to generate different types of multimedia output including text, voice, graphics and animation.
It might well be, if the representations (objects) are in the public domain, that governments will analyse aspects of them from bottom up to produce the much vaunted BIG data of the type you mention.
Makes sense now, my concern is, the average user doesn’t really care about these things
Exactly … hence the problem is more social than technical … the real challenge … but then there is offset marketing … more tomorrow.
My experience is in the building industry and although I have been deeply involved in iconic projects like the Hong Kong Bank, Chek Lap Kok airport, Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Ishtar Sheraton Baghdad, my real interest is in social housing. Responsible parties I see range from the voters (supposedly the strongest but most difficult to influence) to the designers (the staunchest proponents of the status quo).
So if social housing is to be made cheaper, quicker and more creative by automating essential tasks, then marketing the idea needs to be offset progressively away from the self-interested towards society as a whole (via its institutions and elected government). Not many people here will grasp this immediately but I saw it happening to some extent with Computer Aided Design. It was only when institutions like UNESCO and HK Airport Authority required electronic documentation that CAD became widely adopted as standard.
This aspect of eWorking needs to be discussed; technical solutions require little effort.
It is generally a good idea to avoid comitting zip files to git because it makes git useless as a code versioning system.
Read more about using git more effectively here or in more detail here.
I’m sorry I’m on a metered connection and can’t download these large files, and therefore, can’t comment on the code now.
Yes I understand that. But here is the problem perhaps you might help me with:
The blazer and monitors work on the desktop in nwjs (node-webkit) windows. This software needs to be downloaded from nwjs.io (about 24mb). My part of the blazer is about 60 kb. The libraries in the remote folder (they might be anywhere in the future) are selected jquery (491 kb) and selected threejs (1 mb). I understand both of these can be linked but that requires being on line.
The images for the product models account for 2 mb (not used yet) and the rest of my stuff in the remote folder is about 115kb.
So version control is needed for files totalling about 175 kb (2.2mb with images).
I can ask visitors to download nwjs and the other libraries separately and tell them which folders to put them in … but that seems a bit much for an introduction.
I am happy to do that as an option. What do you think? And thanks by the way, your comment is most useful and appreciated.
One option is to put those 2.2 MBs in git and the binary that visitors need in releases.
I would even use bower or npm to exclude jquery and threejs too.
Check this nw boilerplate repo to see how it can look.
Thanks. Please bear with me …
Done it now … thanks
What I forgot to mention was:
Release 1.0-alpha is now available for download - https://github.com/chrisglasier/eWorking/releases
and
Home, Blazer, Namesets, Word store, Monitor and Library Wiki pages now drafted - https://github.com/chrisglasier/eWorking/wiki
The wiki may suit your metered connection.
Release 1.1-alpha - “Criteria fed computers” - is now available for download - https://github.com/chrisglasier/eWorking/releases
The main idea behind this release is to elaborate on the idea of providing criteria for computers to work on rather than giving specific commands.
Also I have started to add some issues that may interest some of you.
