>  Combined with the "markup" meme of course ... I didn't stress 
>  enough how much I think that technology evolution is driven 
>  by cross-fertilization of good ideas from
>  seemingly different domains...

I think a lot of innovation can be attributed to cross-disciplinary 
efforts.

<musing> 
Firstly, you get to go back to first principles to get each side 
up to speed with the concepts associated with each discipline. 
This results in a fresh perspective, and allows fundamental 
concepts to be tested.

Secondly, when you end up with a mutual understanding of the 
problem domain it may turn out that another discipline already has 
the tools to solve that problem -- it's not often we get to peek 
over the shoulders of people working in other, even parallel 
disciplines, because the learning curve can be too high.

And at the end of the day, if there's not a ready made solution already 
in the tool box, they will be a bunch more hammers to whack at 
it with. :)
</musing> 

Cheers,

L.

-- 
Leigh Dodds, Research Group, Ingenta | "Pluralitas non est ponenda
http://weblogs.userland.com/eclectic |    sine necessitate"
http://www.xml.com/pub/xmldeviant    |     -- William of Ockham

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