Recycling information: the innovation behind the mashups

Business Pundit is currently featuring an article that frustrates and annoys me yet leaves me in semi-agreement, which only serves to frustrate and annoy me all over again ("The dangers of re-use: how mashups can stifle innovation").  The premise of the item appears to be that unless you know a technology to its deepest level, you are doing little more than playing make-believe, pretending you are doing something new when instead you are drowning the world in your own mediocrity.  The argument has a distinct Keensian elitist tone, inferring that unless you understand your tools you have no right to be using them.

I felt somewhat mislead about the article in general.  It's not until the very end that I discovered (hence my annoyance) that the core assertion was not that mashups were mediocre and boring (they can be) but instead was that mashups need to be kept in perspective (which I agree with) and urges the reader not to confuse "imitation with innovation" (which I didn't think I was, but there you go).

Like the author, a lot of mashups leave me cold.  After all, I don't really care if I can geo-tag a photo on Flickr and locate it in Google Earth so I can see exactly where on this planet an out-of-focus photo of a bee was taken.  However, that is not the point.  It is not the mashup that is the innovation, rather what makes the mashup possible.  RSS feeds, open APIs, enabling services like Pipes - the ability to mine and manipulate vast quantities of previously unavailable data has enormous potential.

I see this as a classic forest/trees, baby/bath water confusion.  Just because the results don't inspire you (and are used indiscriminately by the great unwashed) doesn't automatically diminish the value and importance and potential of the underlying framework.

Now if you will excuse me, I think I will go off and see if I can combine my low quality cameraphone photos of my son with Google Maps.  Spite is such a wonderful motivational technique after all.