After more than 15 years expectation that Theoria can/will unify What Is and What To Do, it may be time to admit that no foreseeable progress on either question is likely to substantiate fondly imagined links between them.

Certainly a case for Treasuring Diversity can me made, and no doubt a few more of the same, but such links are really just juxtapositions and judgement calls, far short of creative entanglements.

The nominal plan has long been to use whatever is achieved through Praxis through 2006 as a tool for work on Theoria thereafter, though increasingly for the past year or so progress on Theoria has appeared closer at hand.

Praxis has long been conceived as an Information Technology Platform, once upon a time in the guise of The PICA System, but in this era of Open Systems and Internet Browsers, reconceived as a suite of middleware services: TransForum 2.

SVG has long looked to be the desirable path to an essential component, interactive manipulation of schematic representations, but SVG has slowed to a crawl, last week's Vancouver conference notwithstanding.

But then out of left field a clue appears to remind us that the surface of the JavaScript (ECMAScript) DOM track has only been scratched, and especially that constraints on the client side are very different to the server side. In the same conversation we are also reminded that SWF can most likely be used to similar effect.

However all this leads back to the old question of where such a project should sit within the ever narrowing gap between business and academia. All that is really needed is the confidence to get on with three more years work in collaboration with whoever can be satisfied to take their rewards in the form of first mover advantage.