SQLite enables new extensions like Zotero
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Firefox 2.0 RC2 Review
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· Score: 4, Informative
Firefox 2 includes a critical new underlying database engine--SQLite--which enables new kinds of extensions, such as the free, open-source citation manager and digital research tool Zotero.
As others have pointed out, in many ways this is very old news. I remember attending a lecture at Yale in the mid-90s where Gelernter mapped out this future where the desktop/files/folders metaphor would be replaced by the metaphor of a stream of information receding in time. More recently he's been trying to commercialize this idea, and so this article is also in many ways free advertising.
However, is Gelernter's metaphor really better than that of the "aging" metaphor from Xerox PARC? To their advocates, computing metaphors have a way of seeming obvious and universal. "A 3D stream of documents/info receding in time--that's actually how we human beings perceive things!" Well, some of us do, some of us don't. Also, some of us would prefer to have our computing environments differ significantly from commonsensical schemes because more geeky/difficult to understand schemes actually get things done more efficiently for us even though others would have a hard time booting up our machines and figuring out how to do anything on them.
And if Gelernter is betting on the obviousness and ease of his new metaphor/environment to gain acceptance in a mass market, he's got his work cut out for him. Just the other day I watched my 7 year-old nephew start playing around with files and folders on a Mac. In no time he was creating new folders, putting folders within folders, storing his digital photos and drawings in logical places, etc. There's clearly something extremely powerful about that 30 year-old metaphor of the desktop/files/folders--now the centerpiece of Win/Mac--that will pose a tremendous challenge to Gelernter and his futuristic ideals.
OpenCourseWare is MIT's initiative to share course materials via the web. Dspace is an attempt to solve the long-term storage problems associated with born-digital research materials.
It will be possible to put things into a Dspace archive that will not be accessible to certain people; OCW materials are by nature meant to be universally accessible.
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Firefox 2 includes a critical new underlying database engine--SQLite--which enables new kinds of extensions, such as the free, open-source citation manager and digital research tool Zotero.
As others have pointed out, in many ways this is very old news. I remember attending a lecture at Yale in the mid-90s where Gelernter mapped out this future where the desktop/files/folders metaphor would be replaced by the metaphor of a stream of information receding in time. More recently he's been trying to commercialize this idea, and so this article is also in many ways free advertising.
However, is Gelernter's metaphor really better than that of the "aging" metaphor from Xerox PARC? To their advocates, computing metaphors have a way of seeming obvious and universal. "A 3D stream of documents/info receding in time--that's actually how we human beings perceive things!" Well, some of us do, some of us don't. Also, some of us would prefer to have our computing environments differ significantly from commonsensical schemes because more geeky/difficult to understand schemes actually get things done more efficiently for us even though others would have a hard time booting up our machines and figuring out how to do anything on them.
And if Gelernter is betting on the obviousness and ease of his new metaphor/environment to gain acceptance in a mass market, he's got his work cut out for him. Just the other day I watched my 7 year-old nephew start playing around with files and folders on a Mac. In no time he was creating new folders, putting folders within folders, storing his digital photos and drawings in logical places, etc. There's clearly something extremely powerful about that 30 year-old metaphor of the desktop/files/folders--now the centerpiece of Win/Mac--that will pose a tremendous challenge to Gelernter and his futuristic ideals.
OpenCourseWare is MIT's initiative to share course materials via the web. Dspace is an attempt to solve the long-term storage problems associated with born-digital research materials.
It will be possible to put things into a Dspace archive that will not be accessible to certain people; OCW materials are by nature meant to be universally accessible.