Steve,

Yes. I've been thinking about this for several years, and it looks like my thinking has been following the same tracks that your has.

IT is a comparatively young profession - It took two hundred years for the assembly of country doctors, barber chirurgeons, leech healers and votive healing nurses to reach a stage where they were considered as pillars of the community, and much of that had to do with the combination of growing knowledge, the emergence of professional organizations, and from that a consensus on standards of conduct. In medicine this is typified by the Hippocratic Oath, in accounting by FASB, and in law by the American Bar Association and the network of bar exams necessary to practice law in most states.

What also differentiates these professions is a certification process that's become widely recognized, one that combines professional knowledge with experience. In most fields of engineering, there are similar certification processes, and you can not call yourself an engineer or represent yourself as one without such certification. IT tends to suffer at the moment from a bloat of certification processes that largely mean that the person in question has mastered company X's APIs, but nothing that gets at what the distinction is (if any) between a developer and an architect, nor anything that deals with the ethical issues involved in systems or information architecture.

I think this extends beyond information interchange, however, to the topic of Information in general. Note how all the examples that Steve gives fall cleanly into core disciplines that have very real (and potentially tragic) consequences. Doctors have control over a person's life and health, and a failure on their part can result in people dying or becoming incapacitated for life. Accountants control most aspects of an organization or person's finances, and a failure on their part can result in people losing their financial health - going bankrupt or facing punitive action by the state. Lawyers who fail in their duty can result in criminals going free or innocent people being incarcerated. Life, Money, Freedom ... the next pillar, the one that's emerging now, is Information.

What constitutes an information professional? What differentiates an information professional from someone who simply uses the tools? What ethics does such a professional follow?

I think the need for answering these questions is becoming more persistent daily.

Kurt

Kurt Cagle
Invited Expert, XForms Working Group, W3C

Managing Editor, XMLToday.org

kurt.cagle@g...

443-837-8725

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Steve Newcomb <srn@c...> wrote:

Consider the medical profession.  Doctors serve the interests of their
patients, except when those concerns are overridden by concern for
everyone's health.  The greater good trumps the lesser, and doctors
accept responsibility and have the authority for making such calls.  We
Trust Them To Do The Right Thing, and that's what makes medicine a
profession.

Consider the legal profession.  Lawyers serve the interests of their
clients, except when those concerns are overridden by concern for the
Rule of Law.  The greater good trumps the lesser, and lawyers accept
responsibility, and have the authority, for making such calls.  We Trust
Them To Do The Right Thing, and that's what makes the practice of law a
profession.

Consider the accounting profession.  Accountants serve the interests of
their clients, except when those concerns are overridden by the
interests of everyone who participates in the economy.  The greater good
trumps the lesser, and accountants accept responsibility, and have the
authority, for making such calls.  We Trust Them To Do The Right Thing,
and that's what makes accounting a profession.

Consider any other profession.  Its goal is always impossibly lofty and
idealistic, and it always plays a critical role in the maintenance of
civilization.  Its practitioners always accept awesome responsibilities.
 For many reasons, We Trust Them To Do The Right Thing.  That's the key
feature of every profession.

Now let's consider the Information Interchange profession.  What
civilization-maintenance role should its practitioners be entrusted
with, and why?

And let us also consider that no existing profession achieved its
current stature in one step.  There were multiple steps:

(1) *Individuals* decided that they were, uh, "called" to be
professionals who act in the interests of civilization and individuals,
in that order.

(2) They thought carefully about what that meant, and they explained why
they should be trusted to play the role.  Basically, they explained how
all the rest of civilization's actors can predict their behavior, COME
WHAT MAY.

(3) Finally, they institutionalized the profession.  The profession
became a custom of civilization.  It became customary.

Personally, I have felt this calling, and I have considered myself an
Information Interchange Professional for many years.  I know that many
readers of this list have similar convictions.  Is now a good time to
explain how our behavior can be predicted, and how that behavior can
become a customary pillar of civilization?

Steve Newcomb

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