To all my readers,

Many of you know that I’ve been working with/for OpenLink Software for a while now as a Professional Services Consultant in the realm of Linked Data and particularly in the UK and Europe. Well, I would like to announce the launch of two commercial/business orientated seminars that I will be running for OpenLink Software which will be running in late November 2011 in London (England):

• “Linked Data – Commercial Perspective for Strategic Decision Makers and Executives” is an exciting new seminar for Strategic Decision Makers, Executives, Investors, Directors, Management, CxOs etc. It will cover, in non-technical fashion, how Linked Data is simple, its rich and mature history, its business opportunities, its business challenges and its societal implications.
  • Visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2069248177 to register your interest in the “Linked Data – Commercial Perspective for Strategic Decision Makers and Executives” seminar. Late November 2011 in London.
• “Linked Data – Commercial Perspective for Technologists” is also an exciting seminar, which is specifically tailored for technologists of any level (Technical Directors, Senior or Junior Programmers, Analysts, Knowledge Engineers, Knowledge Managers, Information Architects, Web Developers). It will be introductory in style, and will cover the technical areas of the rich historic tapestry of Linked Data, it will cover some of the more technical issues that Linked Data solves and it also covers the simplicity of implementing Linked Data.
  • Visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2405888076 to register your interest in the “Linked Data – Commercial Perspective for Technologists” seminar. Late November 2011 in London.

If you are interested in attending then please do register your interest on the eventbrite pages listed above. Once you have registered interest you will receive updates about the date, time, location and the cost of the seminars. Please note that as commercially-orientated seminars, these seminars will cost – registering interest however does not cost and will not commit you to purchasing a standard ticket.

If you would like to get in touch with me directly about these seminars, or any of my work with OpenLink Software, then please do so by email: dlewis@openlinksw.com

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the course, and I hope to see some of you at my seminars in the future.

Daniel Lewis

• Professional Services Consultant for OpenLink Software
• Email: dlewis@openlinksw.com

Facebook, the home of profiles for People, Comments, Groups, Pages, Games and Interests. It has traditionally been a very closed wall system with only the ability to link internally (i.e. Many Facebook People Profiles link to a Facebook Group Profile), or link outward (i.e. this Person gave this comment about this website).

However, this is slowly changing, we now see:

• “Facebook Like” buttons on websites around the web, allowing a Facebook user to easily say that they like a page.
• “Facebook Comments” on websites rather than being only within Facebook itself. For instance, the commenting system on Techcrunch.com is provided by the Facebook Comments system.
• The Social Graph API allowing developers to use the proprietary schema built using the JSON language. This effectively, using a few mappings, allows people to link into the Facebook system – and potentially grab the data (for data portability, or query purposes)

You see that all this Facebook data is starting to whirl around the world-wide-web in an increasingly “open” fashion. So we should start using it for our own good, and not just for the good of the Facebook Corporatation.

So how can we do this? The first way is to see what you can do with the new RDF/Turtle API interface that Facebook has developed. If you have curl installed then you’ll be able to do this:

curl -L -H ‘Accept: text/turtle’ graph.facebook.com/danieljohnlewis

Which returns the results:

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
@prefix api: <tag:graph.facebook.com,2011:/> .
@prefix og: <http://ogp.me/ns#> .
@prefix fb: <http://ogp.me/ns/fb#> .
@prefix : <http://graph.facebook.com/schema/~/> .
@prefix user: <http://graph.facebook.com/schema/user#> .
</277003772#>
user:id "277003772" ;
user:name "Daniel Lewis" ;
user:first_name "Daniel" ;
user:last_name "Lewis" ;
user:link <http://www.facebook.com/danieljohnlewis> ;
user:username "danieljohnlewis" ;
user:gender "male" ;
user:locale "en_GB" .

There are of course other things you can do and “grab” once you’ve used authentication etc. I should also point out that neither the RDF/Turtle format nor the RDF framework is not actually required for “Linked Data”, it is only really the use of URIs/IRIs as dereference-able object identifiers.

However, this is all very developer centric, and wouldn’t make much sense to the average user. So why not plug the Linked Data from Facebook into a Data Exploration engine such as the Virtuoso Description Page view, see my version here:
http://linkeddata.uriburner.com/about/html/http/www.facebook.com/danieljohnlewis

For more information about exploring a Facebook Person Profile using Virtuoso and OpenLink Data Explorer see the documentation: http://ode.openlinksw.com/FacebookPersonProfile.html

In conclusion Facebook, which traditionally has been a data silo is becoming a linkable data set. This is a good thing, granted Facebook does still have many rough edges (particularly regarding privacy/security issues) but hopefully we will see more of a progression into a truly Distributed/Decentralised Data-orientated Web. Facebooks progression into “opening up”, should be a call to many other data-silo/walled-garden type data services to better Facebook by becoming truly user-friendly systems, by opening up their data which is rightfully owned by their users.

[UPDATE - Highly recommend you read the following]

On 30th September my good friend Kingsley Idehen summarised “Facebook and Linked Data” in a wonderfully understandable Google+ Post (available here: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/posts/6cqa1Sxk5KV (last accessed: 13th October 2011 at about 3:30pm BST)). Kingsley highlights how Facebook has given the Linked Data Web a bit of an evolutionary bump, using its Graph URIs and accessibility functions.

I would very highly recommend reading through Kingsleys post, as it seems to make a lot more sense than my own quickly made “quick post” from earlier on.

[/UPDATE]

A couple of months ago I wrote about “Professional Memberships“, and how I was considering leaving the BCS (British Computing Society). Well, I’ve got a few months left, and I have decided to definitely not renew my membership.

The 7 reasons for my leaving:

1. It costs quite a bit of money, which in this current economic period isn’t great. Granted its not as much as some societies, but there are more reasons.
2. The only thing that I really “get out” of my membership is the use of the “MBCS” letters after my name. Granted this does mean that other people can understand that I am at a certain level of professionalism, but I can be at that level of professionalism without the letters and without the membership.
3. The BCS is far far too business orientated, its audience is primarily involved with the running of computing businesses. Granted it does have some technology based articles, and many of its interest-groups are academic in nature, but it just doesn’t fit with my niche.
4. The BCS has no events that I’m particularly interested in, and nothing really happens in Bristol / North Somerset. Granted that its probably one of those societies that you only get things out of it if you can put stuff in, but putting stuff in seems incredibly strenuous.
5. What I was trying to find in the BCS, I have found in the WCIT. The WCIT is practical, it has a better framework for personal development, it is both business and technology focused, it has some rather interesting panels and it is easy to “put stuff in” and “take stuff out” – therefore I am pleased to be a WCIT Journeyman.
6. There are events out there which are no-membership required, that are more interesting and more suited to my (technical and non-technical) interests.
7. I can rejoin BCS in the future if I wish to.

Of course, my reasons for leaving are clear for the here and now, but I should say that I’m sure that the BCS is useful and interesting for many. I do believe that the reason for the existence of the BCS is pure, and I do hope that I don’t sway people to leave it, or put off people from joining it just because of my current dissatisfaction.

At this present time I’ll be focusing on my computing-society-related involvement with the WCIT, but I may explore other areas in the future.

Feel free to comment!

Back in 2005 when I was first learning about “Agent Oriented Development” I was taught that agents must Perform in some Environment which it manipulates using Actuators and perceives through its Sensors (this is known as PEAS).

What reminded me about this was Kingsley Idehens 2006 blog post on the Dimensions of the Web… which is very much still a valid concept. What came to me though was that if Intelligent Agents are to be truly Autonomous on a Linked Data Web they will probably have to be mobile – and I don’t mean mobile as in developed for mobile devices, what I mean is that they should probably be capable of moving themselves from one computer to another…. otherwise they will just become some kind of “clever” web service which is stored in one place and gets its data from other web services (i.e. we revert back to Dimension 2 in Kingsleys post).

But there is a problem with this model… it sounds a bit like a virus, and something initially quite good could potentially become a bad thing with an evolutionary technique such as Genetic Programming. An intelligent agent capable of adapting to its environment through genetic programming techniques is incredibly powerful, but with great power comes great responsibility.

I have mixed feelings about Singularity philosophy, and I am particularly wary about the Singularity University, however maybe we should be thinking about the ethical/security/identity implications of Autonomous Intelligent Agents on the Linked Data Web.

Some food for thought… on this lovely Monday morning… ;-)

I could do with your opinion…

I’ve been a full Member of the British Computing Society (BCS) since 2007, and I have mentioned in the past to various people that I don’t feel like I don’t get much benefit from it. It is probably one of those things that if you put effort into it then you’ll get benefit back, however nothing incredibly suited to me happens in the Bristol or South West regions of the BCS. One benefit that I may eventually take up is becoming “Chartered” as either an Engineer (CEng) or as an IT Practitioner (CITP), which can be done through the BCS.

The fact that the BCS seems to be targeting the IT Business niche, and trying to keep fingers in a few other pies means that my interest in the society is lacking. Therefore I am seriously considering resigning from the BCS in July, particularly as the cost of maintaining membership is also quite high when I’m trying to save some money so that I can put it into other interests (for personal, business and family interests).

So if I decided to leave the BCS, then I will still be a member of the three year Journeyman Scheme with the Information Technologists’ Company (a Livery Company of the City of London), also known as WCIT. Although the WCIT is quite similar in niche to the BCS, it provides a framework of support and development for its members and is also backed up with lots of lovely history and tradition from the ancient Guilds and Liveries of London. So I shall maintain my affiliation with the WCIT, even though it does cost quite a bit.

If I did resign from the BCS, however, I would feel like I had lost my professional body (and I would not have the postnominals “MBCS” anymore). But there are some alternatives, which might be more suited to my interests, skills, style and political-views and are potentially a lot cheaper than maintaining a membership at the BCS:

• The ACCU – originally a society for C and C++ developers, but has expended its interests into other areas of programming and software development.
• The IEEE Computer Society – an international society with a lot more of a practical feel to it than the BCS, primarily because it is a subsidiary of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering society. It has a huge amount of free stuff for its members, and is good value for the price.
• The ACM – an international society, but mainly based in the USA. It has more of an academic feel to it than the BCS. It has some nice benefits for its members, it isn’t incredibly cheap, but I think it might be cheaper than the BCS. I used to be a student member of the ACM, but decided that the BCS might be better for localised stuff when it came to full membership.
• The IAP – an interesting British society, about the same price as the BCS. It has a very practical feel to it, and some nice simple benefits for its members (particularly those who are consultants).
• The Association for Logic, Language and Information – a rather interesting European society for the bridges between Logic, Language and Information. Sounds quite me. It is a free to join, but it costs to receive their journal.

So, to the reader – what should I do?

1. Stay with the BCS and the WCIT, don’t join anything else
2. Stay with the BCS, the WCIT and join one of the above (which?)
3. Stay with the BCS, the WCIT and join something else (which?)
4. Leave the BCS, stay with the WCIT, but don’t join any professional body
5. Leave the BCS, stay with the WCIT and join one of the above (which one?)
6. Leave the BCS, stay with the WCIT and join something else (what?)
7. Leave the BCS, stay with the WCIT, but come back to the BCS in a couple of years, particularly for the CEng/CITP status

What do you think? Do you have any experience of any of the above societies, or have something else to share? Has membership of a professional body helped you to attain/maintain work? Has it benefited you in other ways? Please do share – either publicly using the comments system or privately by email ( daniel [at] vanirsystems [dot] com ).

Thank you,

Daniel

On the 5th May 2011 the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum to decide whether to change from the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system to the Alternative Vote (AV) system. Here is my blog post about why I truly believe that the Alternative Vote would be good for the United Kingdom.

Why I will vote “Yes” to the Alternative Vote

AV is more democratic than FPTP

Imagine that you’re living in a place where the Fictional Party MP that was elected by FPTP received less than 50% of the overall vote, that actually means that the majority voted for one of the other parties. This means that more than 50% of the people did not want the Fictional Party to get in. The AV system allows each voter to have a second and third choice, therefore if their first choice just doesn’t have enough support and no one receives the majority, then second choices will count (and then third choices). This is surely more democratic. Of course, in our example the Fictional Party could still become elected through the boost of the second choices, but it allows those people who didn’t get a real say to now have a second chance to say what they would prefer. Lets go through this step by step (I’ve made it top four parties and left out 10% of the votes, just to make things a little clearer to visualise):

1. Alpha Party receives 43% of the first-choice votes
2. Bene Party receives 40% of the first-choice votes
3. Caza Party receives 6% of the first-choice votes
4. Fictional Party receives 1% of the first-choice votes

The above would lead to a count of the second-choice votes of those who voted for the Fictional Party. If they all had the Alpha Party as their second choice then the Alpha Party would be boosted up to 44%, still not 50%. If the Caza Party then all voted for the Alpha Party with their second votes then the Alpha Party would hit the 50% mark and democracy happens. If however those who voted for the Fictional Party and the Caza Party voted for the Bene Party as their second choice then Bene would have 47% and would be a higher percentage than the Alpha Party, but it still wouldn’t hit the 50% mark. So the Alpha Party voters second choice would kick into play, and if 3% of the voters voted for Bene Party as second choice then the Bene Party would hit their 50% mark, thereby allowing the Bene Party to win that constituency as it represents what the majority would prefer. Democracy in action!

Of course the above is just describing two very particular scenarios, and although either the above may happen its actually more likely that the shift of power would not be hugely significant, however it does mean that MPs will need to fight a bit more for their constituencies in places that they’ve only just won. This is a good thing.

AV is just as simple as FPTP

AV is simple for the voters, it is just a case of marking 1, 2 and 3 on the voting slip. If you don’t want to have a 2nd or 3rd choice, then just don’t place them on there – you can simply have a first choice if you wish (a bit like FPTP-style voting). It won’t require any fancy machinery and will be paper based and will use a manual counting system (just as FPTP has got currently) [1] [2].

A chance to progress our voting system

I truly believe that if we vote yes to Alternative Vote then we are progressing. Not only that, but if we vote no in this referendum then I believe that we’re less likely to have a referendum to further refine the voting process (say to AV+ or Proportional Representation), or have direct democracy referendums in the future. Our last national (i.e. UK) direct democracy referendum was in 1975 and was related to the UKs membership of the European Community. Since the new government came into play we’ve had a rather successful welsh-localised referendum on the devolution of Welsh Assembly, this forthcoming referendum on voting, and they will have a referendum for all future EU treaties that are related to powers of EU members (specifically UK) in the EU.

Who is supporting the change to Alternative Vote

• Campaigns:
  • There is a “Yes to Fairer Votes Campaign“, which is sponsored by (just to name a few) Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, Electoral Reform Society, The Electoral Commission and Make Votes Count. It is politically supported by some members of parliament and many of the general public.
• Parties officially supporting a “yes” vote:
  • The Liberal Democrats
  • The Labour Party
  • The Green Party of England and Wales
  • The Alliance Party in Northern Ireland
  • The Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland
• I’m not particularly interested in celebrity-ism, but for those who are. The following celebs are in favour of the Alternative Vote:
  • Eddie Izzard
  • Tony Robinson
  • John O’Farrell
  • Richard Wilson
  • Kriss Akabusi
  • Jonathan Ross
  • John Cleese
  • Chris Addison
  • Nicholas Hoult
  • David Schneider
  • Greg Dyke
  • Billy Bragg

Please do note that there are also a group of Tory MPs who are for the change to the Alternative Vote system, even though the party itself is against it.[3]

The Plea

I humbly request that those who are entitled to vote in the United Kingdom Referendum please do vote “Yes” for the Alternative Vote system. The referendum is on the 5th May 2011, polling cards will be around soon if you haven’t got them yet (contact your council if you haven’t received one in a couple of weeks), polling stations should be close by and are usually open from about 7am until about 10pm. So those who can, please do vote “Yes” for a fairer vote system as its a step in the right direction.

Footnotes

1. As indicated in the Independent Newspaper (“Voting reform will not cause more cuts, Treasury insists“) and the Yes to Fairer Votes
2. If the government eventually did go to machine-based counting systems then it would happen no matter what the voting system employed, and is certainly not related to this referendum.
3. Please see the “Conservative Action for Political Reform group” who wrote a press release welcoming the change to AV. The centre-right think tank “ResPublica” are also supporting the change to AV.

QUICK UPDATE – 19th April 2011

Many people have been saying that First Past The Post is traditional and British… well just because something is traditional doesn’t make it right (e.g. slavery), and just because something is British doesn’t mean people have to like it (e.g. jellied eels).

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been using a programming language (Python) that I’ve not used extensively in the past to work on a unit of a production website, increasing the simplicity of the unit and hopefully also increasing the efficiency (Occam’s Razor stylie?). I have been learning “as I go along”, and with a little help from a borrowed book[1]. It has been fun, and I’ve found myself liking Python a lot more than I was expecting (as I documented in my previous blog post about My Python Learning Curve).

Within the past week I’ve also picked up a small project (almost finished), which was essentially “Web Design“. Those of you who know me, probably know that I’m not really a “designer” but a “developer”. So this has been a bit of a learning curve for me too, actual practical – production level use of CSS (both 2.1 and 3 – focusing on getting it working for Chrome, Webkit, Firefox and IE >= 8), and also some graphical work using the GIMP.

Being freelance means that I’ve been able to focus on learning new things, and doing it quickly – its something that I love. I may, or may not, use the new Python and Design skills in the future – but hopefully it helps me to become a more well-rounded freelancer. Variety is also a spice, and so it has been nice to step away from the PHP/MySQL and Semantic Web stuff that I’ve been doing for quite a while.

The next step is progression. Next week is the beginning of a new tax-year here in the United Kingdom, and I hope that I will be able to progress using some variety (as indicated above), some reuse of my existing skill set, some hard work, some networking and a bit of luck!

Where am I going (i.e. where am I progressing to)? Who knows where the path may take us? but travel it nonetheless in good faith taking decisions when needed.

I have figured out that at any one time I have:

• A favoured set of skills (skills that I already have, some of which might be rusty)
• A set of skills that I’ve recently been using or learning (skills that I have and are refreshed in my mind)
• A set of skills that I want to acquire
• A set of interests which I wish to apply my skills to

So I look for freelance work that will combine as many of the above as possible (so if you can help then please let me know!).

As I am becoming a Journeyman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, I shall be “paired up” with a mentor (someone who has many many more years in industry than I – although I do have quite a few already to be honest). This mentor will hopefully help to guide me on my career path, hopefully help me to avoid pitfalls that I have made in the past and choose good choices to make. I always hope that I can get more involved with the British Computer Society, but haven’t yet found their events particularly interesting (and when they do seem interesting, then they are usually somewhere else at some strange time).

So, time to plan combining skills and interests for the new tax year then!

Footnotes:

1. Learning Python by Mark Lutz

This is a continuation from my first blog post on “Business, Politics, Technology and Religion”. Please note that much of these two articles comes from my previous research and my current conceptualisations, it also comes out of my head exactly as you see it. When I write blog posts I try not to edit it too much, and therefore I apologise for any fragmented and disjointed flow to the articles.

Last time I highlighted the Guild system, and highlighted some of its contemporary counterparts. Notably Livery Companies, Guild Socialist groups, Co-operatives and Friendly Societies. I also noted that the Guild-style groups share some kind of connection with political ideology, yet they have supporters and enemies from the whole of the political spectrum. My attempt in this part is to try to reach some kind of personal conclusion.

With Guilds and guild-style systems there seems to be some kind of connection with business, or at least the way to personally run a business. As I mentioned before, Guilds themselves were made out of self-employed members, and Co-operatives these days are also a form of “shared independence” (either as an entity employing people, or as a collective of self-employed people).

We can also see some kind of connection between co-operatives and political parties. In the United Kingdom, for example, there is a “Co-operative Party” which is strongly allied to the Labour Party (you’ll often see some MPs as belonging to the Labour Co-Operative Party). However, Co-Operatives in general do try to maintain political-party independence, and will do their best to promote the co-operative way of working to all political parties. Co-Operatives have a following from many people, and the Liberal Democrats of the United Kingdom have a informal group dedicated to Co-Operatives being a good Liberal and Democratic technique for business.

Livery Companies seem to have a strong interest in helping individuals do the best that they can for the progression of their industry. This is through schemes such as the Journeyman Scheme (as mentioned in Part 1), or through Charity (in the form of University/Research bursaries, or funding community initiatives). From what I’ve read so far, they don’t seem to provide any kind of way that a business should work, although in many cases they can act as professional bodies and provide professional advice. Livery Companies do, however, have some ceremonial hand in the politics of the “City of London Corporation”, as they provide the construct for a man or woman to become a Freeman or a Liveryman of the City of London (which I understand to have certain privileges relating to the election of the Lord Mayor).

I’ve not said much about how technology hooks in with all of this. Technology, in particular the world wide web, provides a platform for the ability to work across all localities, states and countries. Merchants of yesteryear used to sail the seas and traverse the lands in order to trade, nowadays a lot of trade happens on the world-wide-web. Many businesses and many self-employed people now have their own website, their own portal to their work – this is new merchantry. This means that the freelancers of today, myself included, that work primarily on the web (Thomas W. Malone, whom I am drawing from some of his ideas, would call us e-Lancers [1]), are new merchants. But we lack a professional basis, granted that there are professional bodies such as the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), but they are often “too professional” for the grassroots style of the web. There are also a handful of co-operatives which have started up to provide software and web development services (one such service can be found in my home area of the South West of England and are called the “Software Co-Operative”, an organisation that I would highly recommend), but I am not sure if I am ready to commit myself to working within a co-operative just quite yet (but I shan’t rule it out for the future). I believe that “e-Lancers” could probably do with being part of a Guild, something that can act a bit like a professional body, at the same time as providing some kind of co-opertition, with some “friendliness” (possibly in the friendly-society meaning).

Almost every Livery Company of London is styled as a “Worshipful Company”, this is because they have a Royal Charter from the Monarchy of the United Kingdom. The Monarchy is a religious organisation, it is Protestant Christian – the Queen being seen as the head of the Church of England (Anglicanism) and the Church of Scotland (Presbyterianism) [2]. The Livery Companies therefore have some spiritual basis, but I must state that the companies are open to any man or woman. The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists also have a “Ethical and Spiritual Panel”, which I find quite interesting and will try to find out a bit more about.

I am currently (3:15pm GMT – 23rd March 2011) writing this line of text in a Costa Coffee shop just in front of St Pauls Cathedral in London, drinking a Cinnamon Latte. I am within the City of London area, the very capital of the Livery Companies of London. At 5pm, I am due to have some meetings at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (WCIT) – as I have applied to become a Journeyman of the Company. I suspect that I’ll possibly write yet another blog post after I’ve had the meetings, just detailing whats happening and maybe also anything that I may have learnt that is relevant to these two blog posts.

Now lets put this all into a personal context. Many of you will know that I try to promote the act of “building bridges between communities”, and also the act of “knowing thyself” – and hence my stringing together of Business, Technology, Politics and Religion in these two blog posts. You will know that I am a rather Liberal individual, I am happy in the knowledge that other people have different religious and political views to myself, and I accept our differences. I also try to promote equality amongst all peoples (no matter about age, gender, race, cultural background or political views). I condemn those people, organisations and schools of thought that try to destroy freedom and human rights. I promote organisations which try to better society, and try to make things more efficient. I somewhat favour distributist or decentralist political theory. I am a card carrying member of the Liberal Democrats of the United Kingdom (and support the actions of ALDE, ELDR and Liberal International). I try to promote the use of the Alternative Vote (AV) system, and also (preferably) the Proportional Representation (PR) election methodology – for the use in all elections in the United Kingdom [3]. I am a Christian, albeit one with a slightly unorthodox (or heterodox) theology based around mysticism, esotericism, liberalism and progressivism, but I was baptised and confirmed in the Church of England as an Adult by the Bishop of Oxford (John Pritchard). I am also a Freemason (in the Craft under UGLE, and in Royal Arch under the SGC of England), and I am happy to admit that as I believe that Freemasonry has nothing to hide, plus I’m quite open to talk about it and what it means to me (I am also acknowledge all three forms of Freemasonry: Male, Female and “Co” Masonry – as each have their reasons for existence, and I would say that the members of all are my Brothers/Sisters). I am a self-employed Computer Scientist, and a Member of the British Computer Society (BCS). This is how I approach Livery Companies and Guilds, and hence why I believe that the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (WCIT) may be useful to me, it will hopefully help me to help my clients, through professionalism, cooperation, coopertition and inter-independence.

I believe that knowing myself as I’ve shown above (and this doesn’t mean that I have finished “knowing myself”), I can place myself in the context of life, and try to maximise my efficiency by noticing my flow of ideology in the various spheres. For instance – I have a love of predicate and “semantic” logic, and that permeates my political ideas of human rights, my religious ideas of comparative religion, my technical ideas of software/web development and my business ideas of organisation structure. I’m certainly not saying that everyone should have these exact ideas, because they may not fit for everyone, but the idea that an abstract ideology flows and permeates every aspect of life is certainly an important and universal concept.

Footnotes

1. For instance see the book The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life by Thomas W. Malone. Also see a rather interesting book called “The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
   “, which also details how software development is similar to (or at least should be similar to) the guild system.
2. Interestingly the Queen, in Scotland, is the head of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland – which is different to the Anglican Organisation in Scotland which is called the Scottish Episcopal Church. I don’t believe that this causes any arguments, and generally the Anglicans/Episcopalians, Presbyterians/United-Reformed-Church and Methodists get on well with each other in England, Wales and Scotland.
3. No doubt, this demands another blog post, but I’ll try not to get too political on my technical-orientated blog *wink*

I have recently started to become interested in the Livery companies of London (most notably the “Worshipful Company of Information Technologists” (WCIT)), and how they evolved from the Guilds of yesteryear. The livery companies seem to do a great deal, not only for London and the rest of the UK but worldwide too, primarily through charitable doings. The more practical/vocational livery companies, such as the WCIT, not only do charity, but seem to further develop their industry through schemes such as the Journeyman Scheme (i.e. pairing up a new member with a full member (aka “Freeman”) who has plenty of industry experience).

Now, one of the bigger differences between Guilds and Livery Companies, is that Guilds were primarily made up of self-employed members. Livery companies on the other hand have an intake of employed and self-employed members, and often work in cooperation with companies. So we could see the Guilds of yesteryear a little bit like loose (and pre-socialist) co-operatives.

In the early 1900s, when socialism in the United Kingdom and Europe started to boom, there seems to have been a few socialists who were also fans of the old Guilds. These notable socialists included: Arthur Penty, G. D. H. Cole and S. G. Hobson. The early 1900s saw the birth of what was called “Guild Socialism”, which although similar seems to be distinct from the (pre and post- socialist) “Co-operatives” and the socialist “Trade Unions”. [1]

This is where business hooks into politics. There are references out there which state that both Adam Smith (of Capitalism fame) and Karl Marx (of Marxist Communism/Socialism fame) were very strongly against the creation of Guilds, however, supporters of all political camps (Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, Greens, etc) can be seen as supporters of Guilds, Livery Companies, Co-operatives and Friendly Societies [2]. This also happens to be the case with Freemasonry, which some say derived from the Medieval Stonemasons Guilds [3] – various people of all political camps are against it, and various other people of all political camps are for it [4]. Guilds are therefore non-political, yet political theorists have taken Guild ideas and applied their ideologies to them.

This ends part one of two posts on “Business, Technology, Politics and Religion”. This post has focused primarily on business and politics, and my next post shall focus more on technology and religion – and will bring everything together (hopefully coherently).

Footnotes

1. One thing that I have not yet found out is whether the early theorists of “Guild Socialism” were members of any of the Livery Companies (or any existing Guilds) – or, indeed, what they thought of it. If anyone reading this has any idea then please do let me know, I would be very interested in hearing about it.
2. Yes, Friendly Societies do appear too. Many Friendly Societies were born out of industries, as mutual benefit societies to help their members. Somewhat similar to Guild ideology don’t you think?
3. I don’t necessarily believe that Freemasonry came from Stonemasons Guilds, although many people do believe this to be the case – However, it is certainly the case that the old Guilds put on “Mystery Plays” which were related to their industry – and these Mystery Plays may have inspired modern Freemasonry. Other people also believe that Freemasonry came from Rosicrucianism and/or the Knights Templar. The history is vague, and I haven’t made my mind up on it yet, it is quite possible that it was inspired from all three (Stonemasons Guilds, Rosicrucianism and Knights Templar)
4. Politics is not allowed to be spoken in English Masonic lodges (i.e. UGLE based/related lodges) as it can cause disharmony in the order. However, many early English Speculative Freemasons were in favour of a protestant government and monarchy. Many Speculative Freemasons took part in the American and French revolutions. But one must note that English Freemasonry itself is not a political organisation, and the noted revolutions aren’t themselves a product of Freemasonry.

Comments

Please do comment on this post. Maybe you can answer any or some of these questions:

1. What do you think about Guilds, Livery Companies, Guild Socialism, Co-operatives, Trade Unions and Friendly Societies?
2. Do you think that any of the above societies/groups have a place in contemporary society?
3. Research question: Were the early Guild Socialists involved with any Livery Companies (see Footnote 1 above).
4. Is there anything that you would like to see in the next part to this post? Or would you like me to mention anything that I may have missed?
5. Do you have any other thoughts/feelings/suggestions/comments in addition to this article?

[UPDATE]

Part two on £Business, Technology, Politics and Religion” is now available.