I met MiSu Zi-PartyPepperPants online (Portuno is not a good role model for the kids.). She described herself perfectly – I embellished a little. I wanted a picture. I knew better than to send one of me. She said no pictures – privacy issues, you know. But she gave me a stream of text over a period of weeks that let me put together my own image.

My image had big thingies.

As much as we wrote, the entire record of both our conversations would not add up to the bytes used in just one color glossy jpg. Now, the picture would have told me what I wanted to know immediately. But important information would be lost in a static snapshot. How she laughs, how she walks, how funny she is when she plays with the stupid dog. For that, I would have needed streaming video. The left coast Pac-Bell infrastructure where I live won’t give me that option. I’m lucky if this setup will carry me 28Kbaud forget 50 – no DSL either for a while.

I am a victim of geographic inaccessibility. Somebody needs to tell Mr. I.T. Procrap because he lives in a T1/DSL world and doesn’t care about my tech-disadvantaged butt. He keeps pumping more graphics, more sound, more more more. Whatever happened to the Text-Only button on pages? Did those go away?

I intend to uncover your own techno-snobbery in the upcoming days and explain why it will hurt you in the future. You need to start thinking more broadly than da-web, da-internet, da-palmpilot.

Your first thought was “Text only??? Who wants that?” Babu the Tea Merchant in India would love to have just that. He doesn’t need DSL for text – he does just fine at 28Kb. If you force him to use media, he has to have broadband. Calcutta is a little short on broadband this year – and next. Check in about 20 years. But they do have telephone.

Hmmm… If the Iridium satellites don’t get burned up, you could use that comm system to exchange textual streams ANYWHERE in the world. As long as you don’t HAVETAHAVE media – and that includes low info-density streams like audio. Oh well – I guess the US Govmint will get the Iridiums and burn a bunch of dummies.

OK, Kids. Tell Uncle Portuno the two most important things about XML: (the little voices squeal)

1. XML is able to transmit entire bodies of data complete with meta (data about data), schema (data structure and instructions on how the structure works) and applets to transform the datablob once it gets to Babu’s computer.

2. XML is all textual. Tiny and fast. If you want it smaller, compress and decompress.

Good. You’ve all been listening – all except for Lucent Larry. Still clicking his buttons like they’re really attached to something.

If you don’t get it, push away from the computer, turn off the TV and think about radio. Words carry information. When Flash Gordon foiled Evil Emperor Ming, you had the entire battle playing in your head. Your own imagination selected, staged and integrated the media in full kiddie technicolor and special effects. I could fly. I had kiddie fantasies about Dale Arden. I got in trouble a lot – couldn’t purge the autostart media files.

So if I want to talk to a lot of sub-tech customers I need to stick to a simple platform. I can add media whenever I need it, but my task is to deliver information to a large under-teched region with comm speed restrictions.

If I make my platform simple, I can talk to low and hi-tech customers alike – much faster, lower infrastructure cost, easier maintenance and monitoring.

Most west-world websites depend solely on their media. Extract the neat stuff and your favorite stock site can pile all it’s relevant information in a few K – spit that out in under 0.5sec even on a REALLY bad line.

Most east-world media sites are the playgrounds of a privileged few that can afford the connection.

In any-world, a 10K chunk of XML can work magic - if it’s set up correctly.

I.T.’s content teams are mostly kids… mostly. They never listened to a radio – they seldom read a newspaper offline – they wish their Palm could speak video. They rebelled against the UNIX/CPM/DOS command line and took over the computer world under the banner “1jpg = 1Kwords”. Andreeson and Jobs are their heroes. Mine too – to a point. But, their disciples have gotten out of control.

I know what computers do best. I think I know what humans do best.

I wanted to get all this out of the way before Part 4. You need to drop the MediaGulch disposition and think in simpler terms to grasp what XML will mean to international trade. You also need to understand why XML is the only technology able to meet east-world specs.

China has her reasons for wanting her privacy. Someone needs to put together a framework that will include “the rest of the world” while the hi-tech haves dance the broadband boogie.

Might I point out one sobering thought before we go? My parents bought little windup tin-toys and funky transistor radios from Japan. Today, I buy everything I need from Japan. China says they want the Internet their way. MediaGulch says noway – Mr. I.T. and his business model says China won’t be able to pull it off and talk to the rest-of-the-world.

Not a good idea to tell any big customer noway. The big guy will always find a way – without you.

I think VCSY understands the value of textual streams. I want to dig deeper and find out just what they do know and what their plans are, but for now the plans are secret.

All I can do is speculate and my speculations are cooking. I’m forced to eat like a bum on the side of the road with the bus broke down, but I eat good just the same. The mechanics are going to do a little more tinkering for a few days. They showed the big riders yesterday they know what they’re doing. Now they’ll see if they can rev the engine without smoking.

You guys who think you know how these engines work, don’t get your long position get caught in a short stroke. The machinery is still on auto and not your friend. The mechanics are hot and sweaty and embarrassed from FEB24. If you know how to grab low and let go high, you can screw with the machinery, but I wager you’ll get the hood dropped on your while you’re trying to match the timing.

If you are just interested in seeing where the VCSY bus is going – get on, find a seat and take a nap. I’ll wake you when we’re ready to serve somebody’s lunch.

Don’t worry. I’ll have part4 in time for the road trip to begin.

I think I just heard the dinger.

Portuno
2-29-00