Remembering the Future

Another interesting analogy that has come out of the "Mediator Evolution" paper is the role of money in economic systems.

This problem was solved by the evolution of a single reference resource that functions as a mediator between the different demands: money. The functional equivalent of money has evolved independently in different historical civilizations. ... Thus the "invisible hand" of the market is actually a distributed control system or manager emerging from the mediator that is money and the medium that is the market-place. This manager coordinates, regulates and initiates interactions between agents of the collective so as to --theoretically -- maximize their synergy.

In many way XML may play a very similar role, as the medium through which data processing interactions can be coordinated. As XML standards form, this results in an implicit control system that constrains how data processing tools and organizations evolve. The untimate expression of this kind on control is something like Biztalk, which is an XML based workflow control system for the coordination of how an organization manages its internal processing of data as well as how it exchanges data with other organizations.