Monday, April 03, 2006

The Blind Men & the Elephant


With apologies to John Godfrey Saxe and his poem.

It was five followers of IM
To privacy much inclined,
Who pondered on User-centric
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by exploration
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached User-centric,
And happening to face
from the viewpoint of the desktop,
Proclaimed with great haste:
"Law #1 - User-centric
can only be met by common interface!"

The Second, thinking of local storage,
Cried out with strident tone:
"From the privacy advantages
to me 'tis clearly shown -
the demands of User-centric
argue for a phone!"

The Third, at User-centric,
myopically squinting,
And thinking of correlated behaviour
and resultant IDP-hinting,
Declared, "To do this we must
do digital-ID minting!"

The Fourth, with gaze
less than broad and full,
Considered user-mediation and
after pondering did mull:
"User-centric must
place push before pull!"

The Fifth, thinking of the geeks,
and to excite them what to try,
After restful examination,
and market analysis did cry:
"It can only be,
that user-centric demands a URI!"

And so these followers of identity
Disputed loud and long,
Each in their own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
Yet all were in the wrong!

1 comment:

Paul Madsen said...

Coincidentally, Robin Wilton recently used the same parable in an interview on ID Theft.