Discovering what’s already out there, and journalist archaeologists
Steve Yelvington, a big name in the online journalism world, wrote last week about many programmers’ unnecessary desire to reinvent the wheel with every new gig. Near the end of his post he writes (emphasis added):
Vernor Vinge’s notion of the “programmer archaeologist” really is about discovering what’s already out there, and placing it into valuable context. The mashup, the journalist-blogger and the participative website are aligned with this concept; the traditional requirements-driven “software engineer” and the traditional newspaper journalist are not.
Yelvington seems to be focusing on what happens when programmers put a halt to their ego and start using tools already out there. Another question worth asking is “What kind of newspaper would happen if journalists could only use the information that had already been published?”
The actual paper would be much thinner, sure. But I can see reporters diving into old content and figuring out new ways to piece together existing information — basically, adding more context to the news. More on this later…
November 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Hm. Judging by the number of programmers working with and contributing to initiatives like Drupal, Plone, etc., I would begin by asking whether Yelvington’s concerns are empirically warranted.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Hi Stephen, thanks for writing. You may be right, but I think the “hammer” is still a useful lens to apply to the newspaper world.
Also, do you think the type of programmers drawn to open-source / non-profit work might be different than the ones with jobs at for-profits?
November 21st, 2006 at 4:33 am
Interesting how you equate open source and non-profit, even if only implicitly.
My feeling is that people working for commercial enterprises (ie., non-open source) are not programming at all, they are working with commercial products developed for the Microsoft or Apple environments.
People who do commercial programming almost by definition cannot be involved in re-inventing the wheel, because the wheel is seen as someone else’s intellectual property, and hence is probably patented.
I know where Yelvington is coming from, and I have even participated in the ‘reinventing the wheel’ syndrome myself. It is not all bad; it’s how I learned how databases and CMSs are built. But its impact is, I believe, overstated.
As for the reuse of content by journalists, it seems to me that most journalists see themselves constrained by the same factors as commercial programmers. Even if appropriate content exists, reuse is much more of a problem because of IP considerations. You can’t just borrow large chunks of someone else’s work, even if you give them credit.
So insofar as a hammer is being used, I’m not sure it is appropriate journalists are the appropriate targets. Their publishers, who continue to perpetuate the system of intellectual property, might be more deserving.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:38 pm
I wasn’t as clear as I could have been on the journalist side of the hammer — “What kind of newspaper would happen if journalists could only use the information that had already been published by their newspaper?” is what I meant to ask, and I think it’s a question that leads to plenty of new-product (and more-relevant-product) opportunities for newspapers and newspaper-dot-coms.
I don’t know have enough experience in the field to comment on the work of commercial programmers or non-open source developers, though I’ll give it more thought and see if I can pull something worth discussing.
And yeah, I thought about what level of connection exists between non-profits and open-source projects as I wrote that comment.