The Allure of Gothic Markup

[Simon St.Laurent]

I'm not sure exactly where this fits in the range of either philosophy or software, but it definitely seems like an intersection.

I gave a talk last week at Balisage (http://balisage.net) on John Ruskin's The Nature of Gothic and how it might transform markup (XML and beyond) practice.  The Nature of Gothic, a chapter from The Stones of Venice, is an amazing leap between aesthetic interpretation and social and political philosophy.

The talk and the paper explore Ruskin, William Morris, and Christopher Alexander on the aesthetic side and SGML, XML, JSON, and Web practice on the software side.  Among current architects, Alexander seems like a good fit with the proposals of Ruskin, and perhaps uniquely among famous names recognizes that not just the look but the practice needs to change.

Imagining computer practices based on craft rather than industrial models is difficult, and I suspect that my proposed model of transformation and customization is only halfway (if that) there.  I suspect that the entire practice would have to change, and we'd have to abandon our fondness for maximum scale.

The paper is at:

<http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol10/html/StLaurent01/BalisageVol10-StLaurent01.html>

Slides are at:

<http://www.slideshare.net/simonstl/the-allure-of-gothic-markup>

and notes (oddly botched, but including an expanded transcript) at:

<http://www.slideshare.net/simonstl/gothic-notes>

All thoughts and suggestions are welcome.  I'll be revising the paper for further submission elsewhere at some point.

Thanks,
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/