Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
Knowledge is the new free.
The world economy organizes itself around free resources. Yesterday morning I had a long breakfast conversation with Doc Searls. In addition to being a font of free knowledge himself, Doc tantalized me with an image of the golden age of construction, when timber was free, and stick houses across America were built from it. Now we are in the golden age of knowledge, and each citizen with an iPod carries in her pocket a personal mansion of knowledge, stick-built from digital files.
Knowledge is the new free. What does this mean? It means that the timber of intelligent action is abundant and at hand. The challenge for us is not so much “how to know,” as “what to do” with our knowledge. What design considerations will we apply to our houses of knowledge? Will our stick-built mansions of knowledge be sustainable? Will they harmonize with the planet? Will they contribute to peace and mutual understanding across the vast diversity of human values and life styles? Will our particular mansions hold together, keep out the rain, shelter us from the winds, and allow us to make a home for our families?
OK, what in the world does this have to do with OPML?
OPML is a language for assembling sticks and timber of knowledge into useful systems that can be shared with others, that can be improved upon by a community, and that can be published to the entire online world at almost no cost.
OPML is the architecture of a system of knowledge. An architect of a stick-built home expresses a vision in plans. She draws floor plans (top view), elevations (side view), and specialized drawings for electrical, heating and ventilation, and so on. Similarly, OPML structures, as we will see, are used to assemble valuable pieces of knowledge that are wildly scattered across the web. Just as architects of buildings constantly consult books of materials and catalogues of lighting fixtures, heating systems, roofing materials and windows, architects of the web are masters of locating rich sources of potentially relevant knowledge. The artistry of OPML is to combine sources in an appropriate and elegant manner.
