Some of this is a bit of a repeat from several years ago but the example works in this instance as well. Let's start with the parable of "On, Off".
The reasons why I found myself owning a computerized voice changer are irrelevant to the following point, but suffice it to say that for a sophomoric prank not too long ago I found myself a proud owner of a computerized voice changer for my Verizon Kyocera phone. I put in the batteries, turned it on, and proudly called my wife upstairs. Chuckling I spoke to her only to have her interrupt and say – “it sounds like you”. Darn. I flipped it on and off a couple times, back to on, and spoke some more – but it still sounded like me. I took the batteries out, rubbed them, rubbed the contact points, battery back in, turned it on, spoke – still me. Because my wife is a good person, many years used to me, she sat there on her phone, waiting for me to get over the disappointment. Wondering why it wasn’t working I stood there flicking it on-and-off, on-and-off. All of a sudden – my wife yelled – there – you sounded like a robot. I looked at the device – and it was off. “Ahhh…”, I thought., “cheap, imported electronic junk device.” They put the contacts in up side down, they mislabeled the battery compartment – and “off” really means “on.”
After this success – for some reason – I decided to THEN read the instructions. And at this moment I realized how hard metaphor is to deal with. Because staring me in the face was the fact that even concrete, binary concepts like “ON and “OFF” are culturally and experientially based. The instructions told me “in order to operate, turn your voice ‘off’”. So – it was not mixed up terminals, it was not bad labeling, it was the fact that from the point of view of the device maker – the product concept was about turning my voice on and off – not the device.
So, if we can’t assume shared definition of “off” and “on” clearly across different cultures and experiences – how do we have enough common shared metaphor and language to begin cloud interop standards? The answer is – in dribs and drabs, gradients, and shades of grey.
I am not saying we should just stand pat, and I applaud David Berlind and Stephen O' Grady for running the recent cloud interop event. And some of the first simple actions like "work on a taxonomy" are, I think, the place to start.
But this is not merely a technical situation we need to quickly muscle through - there is a lot of our inner mammal at work here - and we need to be steadfast in simple forward steps and patient with how many of those steps there will be.
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