Anne Truitt Zelenka

Kind of old hat to talk about trying to match up relational data with an object-oriented programming language, huh? Technically, the answer might be using an object-relational mapping capability like Hibernate or TopLink. Maybe iBATIS, does that count as ORM? I think so, based on my quick perusal of the website.

In case you don’t know what impedance mismatch is, here’s the deal. Most companies store their data in relational database systems (RDBMS) that arrange data in tabular format, that is, rows and columns. But modern software languages generally use an object-oriented approach that is more hierarchical and networked; object-oriented languages support semantics like inheritance (”a dog is an animal”) and relatedness (”an airport has one or more runways”). It’s a big hassle to transform tabular data into object data. That’s the impedance mismatch, trying to translate from one way of representing data into another.

There’s also impedance mismatch between old media and new. It doesn’t make sense to write a traditional book, for example, using collaborative and social tools like wikis. A wiki is appropriate for producing decentralized and frequently updated data–an encyclopedia, for example. For me, the joy of reading a good book is experiencing the strong voice and coherent perspective of one person. My favorite book on Buddhism is Steve Hagen’s Buddhism Plain and Simple. His prose is pure and concentrated; his ideas slash through the folded logic of the dharma like a newly sharpened knife. That’s the ideal of a book, to me: a relatively lengthy tour through someone else’s vision.

There’s a mismatch between the blogosphere and corporate communications, as you might have noticed if you read my post about how AR and PR people can reach out to bloggers. The latter five tips, about connecting with specific bloggers, were vague and wishy-washy. Why? Because there’s no easy way of bridging the gap between the old way of communicating and the new way. As far as I know, no one’s come up with a way of mapping from the top-down, controlled messages of analyst and public relations people to the loose, decentralized, expressive ways of bloggers.

I suspect that some of our discomfort over PayPerPost has to do with trying to bridge the gap from old media to new. Old media advertises and markets in a broadcast manner. New media personally expresses through niches and communities. I don’t know what to make of it all, but I resonate with Jeneane’s commentary.

I have my doubts as to whether there is any way to get from there (old media) to here (new media). It’s not a continuum. It’s a crevasse, a chasm, an abyss.