Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

… According to Wordle:

(Thanks to Electric Archaeology for the link)

It makes you think actually. The prevalence of words like “posts” might suggest that I am often apologising for breaks in posting, and certainly I know several people called “Chris” that I might concievably mention. I should use the terms “archaeology” and “gis” more, though, and of course this post itself will influence the result in future!

I’ve been on holiday in Egypt for the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of posts. Sorry ’bout that, but I needed a total ban on computers, the internet, phones to regain my sanity. And what do you know, but two weeks away really did help!

Regular(ish) posting should return next week, once all the washing and unpacking is done!

All Points Blog pointed me at the direction of a piece on the mess of mapping and postcode data in Northern Ireland, which got me thinking a bit about this rush to rely on location-based services and always-on connections to “the cloud/interweb”.

At first glance, the situation in Ireland (National Mapping agency has copyright on maps, Post Office has copyright on property location) sounds very familiar. However, Ireland doesn’t have postcodes yet, so things are a not so cut and dried- in this day and age, if you had to go to an awful lot of trouble to implement a system for locating properties, would you invent the postcode system or something else?

What worries me though, is this assumption that the best solution is a technological one. Apparently LBS are the way forward, so much so that your Gran will know her position (in lat/long or a local coordinate system? not sure) the same way that she now knows her address. If she doesn’t remember it, then she can go to her mobile device or google maps and find it out. Clearly this writer is very lucky that he lives in an ultra-connected area with great GPS/phone signal, never has a powercut and has an entire family/social network of technologically adept people who won’t bat an eyelid at this.

It is only in the last 50 years that power of some kind has been laid on to every house in the UK, after many decades of trying. I think it’s dangerous to assume that ubiquitous computing will reach all areas and all social classes in a few years, and it’s also dangerous to assume that everyone will jump into it whole-heartedly to such an extent that you could rely on it totally for critical infrastructure like postal services.

I guess a lot of people will have seen the article on slashdot pointing to an article on a Stanford/Harvard paper on how businesses can win against open source software/technology. I don’t want to get into a debate about how the authors are in fact the spawn of the devil, as you can read the slashdot comments for that. Personally, I started off being slightly disappointed by a number of points that they made, and then quite up-beat about the prognosis for open source as a result.

Why disappointed? Firstly, the article (which is of course a summary of a paper and not the actual paper, so possibly a mis-interpretation) confuses free software with open source, again. Lazy. It assumes that the only reason people will choose an open source product is because it is free, and not because it gives the users better control and freedom from licenses etc. Secondly, they argue that particular types of software are popular because so many people use it (circular argument?, even more lazy?). Apparently this leads to less issues with training, and incompatibility. If this was the case, would Microsoft have had so many issues when they changed the interface for Vista, or Office 2007, and the default file format for Office? Ditto Autocad with their file format in every new release? Consumers are more intelligent than that, and these things do have a big impact on how easy it is to upgrade software.

Why up-beat? Well the point has been made elsewhere that this paper only exists because open source software is seen as a threat. Not only that, all of the strategies outlined in the paper are reactive- how can businesses deal with this threat by using aggressive practices. Even making better, more compatible software is seen as a reaction to this threat, rather than the modus operandi for the company. It’s disappointing that improvement is only seen as a reaction to a threat, but on the other hand if companies are forced to improve their product, and make it more interoperable, everyone wins.

All in all I think it’s disappointing that consumers are given such short shrift in this article, and as always we have this lazy assumption that the open source argument is all about price. It does, however, show that open source software can, and does, have the power to affect the proprietary market, and I find that very encouraging indeed.