medieval art, collective intelligence, & language abuse - a story of apis
DESCRIPTION
On October 28th, 2010 Apigee held an Open API Economy Meetup at the Mashery offices... This deck is a brief (15 minute) emphasis on the importance of the developer in innovation through APIs and positioning your API for future success (examples from specific learnings with IP Commerce).TRANSCRIPT
Medieval Art,Collective Intelligence,
& Language Abuse
tyler hannan
http://tylerhannan.com
platform evangelist, ip commercethursday, 28 october 2010
today we will discuss
- briefly -
medieval art,
collective intelligence,
language abuse,
network effects,
the definition of aplatform,
and
enabling innovationthrough
open APIs.
actually,
this is,in fact,
a medieval art
free
presentation.
you may thank me later.
(although i’m happy to discuss Brunelleschi’s
approach to perspective,at length,
whenever you desire.)
let’s begin
at the beginning.
(often a good idea)
provides a
managed commerce servicesplatform
& APIs
to enable
innovationin
payments
by obscuring the
“messy plumbing”
associated withtraditional payment
services.
developers can
integrate with
one set of open APIs
for all services they require.
paymentservices
dataservices
value-addedservices
&federated identity
services…
while,
importantly,
making money.
some examples:
unattended parking&
ticketing
movie theaterreservations
PoSconcessions
mobile payments
as the
platform evangelist
for a companydelivering
open APIsfor
payments
i have learned
someimportantlessons.
- language abuse -
the yearwas
1873.
a young college student
was appointedas
the assistant librarianat
Amherst College.
this man
Melville Louis
Kossuth Dewey
became frustrated with
categorizationinside the library.
in an attempt to
increasethe
utility
of the library,
withoutincreasing expenditure,
he created
a method ofclassification.
theDewey Decimal System.
the systemwas
devised
solely for
cataloguing
andindexing
purposes.
but,he found it
to be equally valuable
forarranging books on
shelves.
interestingly,
or perhapsfrighteningly,
he also becameenamoured
with the concept of
“Simplr Spellin”,
or
english language spelling reform.
which is responsiblefor
the spelling of
catalog
instead of
catalogue.
this also prompted
a desire to change his name
to
melvil dui.
and,most disturbingly,
responsiblefor
menus,
in the local area, reading:
hadok,poted beef with noodls
parslior
masht potato,
butr,steamed rys,
letis,
andys cream.
NOTE:powerpoint hates those spelling errors. red lines
under all the text.
ahierarchical system
of categorizationthat
led to a
measure of insanity
andlanguage abuse.
at an event,
in NYC
2 weeks ago,
billed as
“Financial Innovation”
for banks,
the term
“platform”
was used
47 times
in the first
8 hours
of presentations.
most of these
were not,
in fact,
platforms.
*nerd rage*
why is this?
why platforms?
what drives the
“me too”
effect?
1906London
Francis Galton
visiteda
livestock fair
wherea
contest
would demonstrate
collective intelligence.
an ox was on display
andvillagers,
farmers,
ranchers,
doctors,
women,
children,
professionals,
labourers,
basically...all townspeople...
were invited to guessthe
weight
after slaughter.
787 guesses.
none right.
however,the mean of the guesses,
was
1,197 pounds.
actual weight...
weight for it...(boo. hiss.)
1,198 pounds.
“The results seems more creditable to the
trustworthiness of a democratic judgement...”
with that said,
this came froma
man
earlier steeped in the study
of
anthropometry.
“The systematic quantitative
representation of the human body for use in
classification and comparison.”
in which the sum of hisresearch
indicated that
peopleare
idiots
andonly the
“select, well bred few”should control society.
collective intelligence.
thenetworkeffect.
platforms&
open APIs
matter
because ofthe workthat
you
are doing…
are thinking about…
are planning…
will do in the future.
platforms
succeed
because of the
enabled innovation
represented by
your work.
in this enablement,
there is
an
inherent
tension.
for example,
commerce web services,
the ip commerceweb service
API,
we faced the choice
yes,
“THE CHOICE”
REST
vs.
SOAP
and,
while we can debate
theoretical implementation,
the answer
(for us)
was
both are necessary.
but we
madethe
decision
to begin with
SOAP.
why?
when buildingan
abstracted message interface
that obscures the
fixed bit length,
ISO 8583,
name::value pair,
painfully legacy,
payment interfaces
things change.
and if
“things change”
in a newREST interface
things fail.
remember,
it’s not the verbing that weirds the language,
it’s the
renounification.
by delaying theREST
implementation
we had a
“known good”
underlyingdata
structure
and ourREST
developers are
thrilled.
a,
seemingly,
strange
technical decision
made based ondeveloper needs.
a tension.
a healthy tension.
or,
consider a
relatively major problem
in traditional payments…
“transactionoriginator
authentication”.
the majority ofpayment services,
in market today,
do not implement
any
form of originator authentication when
processing transactions.
instead,
they simply pass
identity data
unprotected
in the transaction body.
strong authentication,
of the originator,
is a requirement.
and there may be
“easy” fixes…
ip commerce
built a
holistic
federated identity implementation.
SAML 2.0 compliant
supports all authentication methodologies
issues identity tokens(long-lived)
coupled withsession tokens(short-lived)
to enable
SSO,claims-based
authentication,policy management,
etc.
overkillwhen only
authenticating atransaction originator.
but,wildly necessary,
when enabling
developers tobuild
add-ins,workflow,
stand-alone solutions…
commercemodules
formerchants...
that other developers
can simply
“plug-in”.
the tension
between
today’s needs
and
future requirements
is what makes
a platform
grow.
why do platforms matter?
because of
your work.
how does API quality
improve?
through
your work.
inany
platform
the most important partner
is the one with pain…
the one being enabled…
the one who can innovate…
It
Is
Us.
when building a platform
when offering APIs
recognize the nature
of this
tension.
embrace the discomfort
and let the
developer community
drive the innovation
others cannot.
recognize your contribution.
own your value.
slide #279
With thanks, and apologies,to:Lawrence Lessig
Rolf Skyberg
Written while listening to:Bombazine Black, Here Their Dreams
.::more resources::.
http://commercelab.ipcommerce.com
http://www.paymentsapi.com
http://www.tylerhannan.com