![](\"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/images\/vectors.gif\")
\n\nAn important, nay, foundational<\/em> part of my mental model for how Internet scale systems work (and many other things, in fact), is that I view standards as axioms<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n In linear algebra, there’s the concept of span<\/a>, which is, effectively, a function that takes a set of vectors as input, and yields the vector space spanned<\/em> by those vectors; the set of all reachable points. Also, for any given vector space you can find a set of axioms<\/em> – a minimal set of vectors which are linearly independent of each other (orthogonal), but still span the space (note; I use “axioms” here to refer to a normalized set of basis vectors).<\/p>\n\n So given, say, HTTP<\/a> and URIs<\/a> as axioms (because they’re independent), I can picture the space reachable using those axioms, which is the set of all tasks that can be coordinated without any additional (beyond the axioms) a priori agreement; in this case, the ability to exchange data between untrusted parties over the Internet. I can also easily add other axioms to the fold and envision how the space expands, so I can understand what adding the new axiom buys me. For example, I can understand what adding RDF to the Web gives me<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n More interestingly (though far more difficult – entropy sucks), I can work backwards by imagining how I want the space to look, then figure out what axiom – what new pervasively deployed standard – would give me the desired result.<\/p>\n\n As mentioned, I try to evaluate many things this way, and at least where I know enough to be able to (even roughly) identify the axioms. It’s why Web services first set off my bunk-o-meter, because treating HTTP as a transport protocol is akin to replacing my HTTP axiom with a TCP axiom, which severely shrinks the set of possible things that can be coordinated … to the empty set, in fact. Oops!<\/p>\n\n See also; mu<\/a>, the Stack<\/a>, Alexander<\/a>, software architecture<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An important, nay, foundational part of my mental model for how Internet scale systems work (and many other things, in fact), is that I view standards as axioms. In linear algebra, there’s the concept of span, which is, effectively, a function that takes a set of vectors as input, and yields the vector space spanned […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,22,48,30,38],"class_list":["post-1596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-geb","tag-rest","tag-softarch","tag-standards","tag-webservices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}