Working with ideas

I love working with ideas. Practicality may pay the bills, but ideas and working at the conceptual level is my real passion. Making a concept "happen" is marginally interesting, but delving into the depthc of concepts is what really interests me.

I have also always been far more interested in working on "base" technologies than specific applications of those technologies.

In truth, it feels as if I have allowed myself to get far too distracted by practical applications to the point where I am not focusing near enough energy on either my strength or my passion.

One of the things that is currently attracting me to the Semantic Web and Semantic Web technologies is that it is much more concept-oriented (literally and figuratively) and more amenable to working with ideas. Granted, the big challenge is to figure out how to make the Semantic Web more practical, but maybe that hard challenge could make it more profitable as well while also allowing me to work on core "base" technologies and how to think about ideas as well.

In any case, if working with ideas is my strength and passion, I should focus much more attention on moving in that direction.

I am much more interested in becoming more research-oriented than application-oriented. Still, I am interested in entrepreneurial opportunities, but I would much prefer focusing on transitioning concepts to the commercialization stage than in the actual commercial deployment. Classically, that has meant a focus on tools and maybe training. I have not been training-oriented, but I have leaned strongly towards being tools-oriented.

Maybe a focus on advanced tools for Knowledge Webs based on the Semantic Web could be a productive focus for me.

This still does not leave me with a crystal clear focus, but at least I feel that I do know that I need to find a way to get to a place where I can spend much more of my time working with ideas and concepts. Whether that can and will be profitable remains unclear as well.

-- Jack Krupansky