For a while, I have been developing a grand unified theory that reconciles the ideas about how information is structured and processed by TRDBMS, OO, XML, RDF, client / server and web information systems. And, actually, the iCite net is, in some sense, an environment in which I might be able to experiment with this theory.

So, the last couple weekends, I have started writing something about this to post on my blog here. But, yesterday I put aside writing while Anastasia and I went to the San Mateo County Fair (where Anastasia was working on a project for a night photography class).

So, instead of a lot of conceptual blah blah about my theory, the main substance of this post is some digital photos I took at the fair.

The reason I posted these photos instead of my theory has to do with why I was going to post my theory.

Some recent skirmishes and seeming bad feelings between proponents of these various information systems made me think that, perhaps, I could point to some more cooperative opportunities by explaining my idea about how these systems serve different ways of looking at the same thing.

At the fair yesterday, just being around lots of different peoples communicating and relating to "information" in so many different ways, I felt instead that these different approaches are more fundamentally different culturally than technically.

In other words, although I might have some ideas that have some technical utility, the presence or absence of such utility is not going to "solve" the conflict over the differences, because that conflict is a cultural one.

Significantly different cultures have created each of the structures and processes of TRDBMS, OO, XML, RDF, client / server and web information systems.

While I think there might be some techniques that give each culture exercises through which they better understand the others, I think these are insignificant in the context of any tendency in each culture to seek to totally invalidate the existence of the others.