[SPG_Active_Members] Robert Kahn's Digital Object Architecture

[Feigenbaum]

Dear all,

the tone of Henry's message is much too negative about Bob Kahn, CNRI,  
and the Digital Object Architecture.  It is an important set of ideas,  
was novel in its time (but may have become the "common lore" by now)  
and really need to be infrastructure.

Best wishes,

Ed Feigenbaum

p.s.  Bob gets out to Silicon Valley occasionally. Let's arrange for  
him to give a full scale
presentation on the DOA when he is out here, i.e. I mean in the  
lecture hall to a big audience.


On May 22, 2009, at 3:27 PM, Henry Gladney wrote:

> Ref: Your attached inquiry
>
> Kahn (with whom I had personal interactions about seven years ago)  
> is one of the original designers of the communication protocols  
> essential to the Internet.   He is the head of CNRI, which used to  
> derive (and perhaps still derives) all of its funding from DoD's  
> DARPA.  I.e., he is both very well connnected and also pretty much  
> constrained to follow "the party line" in his public statements.   
> I.e., they cannot reasonably be regarded as independent thinking.
>
> From a technical point of view, nothing in the text you sent is even  
> close to novel.  E.g., everything he is quoted as saying can be  
> found, with careful elaboration, in Preserving Digital Information  
> IPDI).  The (almost obvious) objectives of long-term preservation  
> force the few technical hings this press release includes.   And  
> none of it was new in PDI, which merely selected, distilled, and put  
> into (hopefullly) readily understood terms what was known about  
> digital objects, their management, identifiers, and other EDP  
> concepts/designs mentioned or implied in this CNRI press release.
>
> I do not know the work Kahn alludes to in his assertion, "that CNRI  
> has experimented with some archival capabilities on the Internet  
> with the goal of fulfilling long-term archival storage needs".  Nor  
> does this press release identifiy it sufficiently specifically for  
> me (or anyone) to identify with certainty reports about the CNRI  
> work alluded to.  One could, of course, ask Kahn for citations.
>
> Best wishes, Henry
>
> H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/    
> (408)867-3933
>
>
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 14:46, Morris and Ward <morris.ward at verizon.net 
> > wrote:
> HMG:
>
>
> What’s your take on this LDP news?  AM
>
>
>
> Robert Kahn: A Different Kind of Internet
> Government Computer News (05/14/09) Kash, Wyatt
>
> Robert E. Kahn of the nonprofit Corporation for National Research  
> Initiatives (CNRI) envisions an Internet that manages information  
> rather than just moves it around. He says this can be facilitated by  
> Digital Object Architecture, whose core element is a digital  
> objector, or structured information that incorporates a unique  
> identifier, and which can be parsed by any machine aware of the  
> structure of digital objects. Areas where Digital Object  
> Architecture applications have potential include archiving, with  
> Kahn pointing out that CNRI has experimented with some archival  
> capabilities on the Internet with the goal of fulfilling long-term  
> archival storage needs. "My hope is that we can make the digital  
> object technology, which operated in the Internet environment,  
> available as we did with the original Internet technology, and get a  
> lot of people in the public and private sectors to understand its  
> power and the capability," Kahn says. "Because it's an open  
> architecture, it has the potential to grow organically as did the  
> nascent Internet." Kahn sees medical informatics as another  
> potential application area for Digital Object Architecture. He says  
> the architecture intrinsically incorporates public key  
> infrastructure to ensure user identity authentication. "The  
> government's role in things infrastructural is absolutely  
> essential," Kahn says. "It really is very difficult--I would say  
> almost impossible--to create national infrastructure without at  
> least the imprimatur of the government."
>
>
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