Sunday, March 30, 2008

The new old thing

The new old thing is e-mail.

As today's new users (read 'kids') use computers, they adopt new technologies faster than the 'old guard'. Not only do they adopt new technologies, they also drop old technologies.

People have been adopting new technologies and dropping old technologies for years. Decades. Centuries. Who uses buggy whips nowadays? Or builds pyramids? Or uses carbon paper?

The new old thing is e-mail.

The new new things are instant messaging (IM), text messaging, social networking sites (MySpace and FaceBook), and sites like Twitter. Kids today use these technologies for communicating with friends. They grudgingly use e-mail, to talk with their parents.

The new old thing is e-mail.

This blog used to be distributed via e-mail. Today it is hosted on the Google site called 'Blogger'. The blog site is easier for me to administer and easier for users. Google supplies the storage space and provides the RSS plumbing.

The new old thing is e-mail. For now.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Third Age

I think that we are entering (have entered?) a third age of computing. The technologies coming on-line (XML, RIA, Web 2.0, and such) are giving us the capabilities to create new types of applications.

The first age is what many folks think of as 'the mainframe age'. Some folks will call it 'the bad old days', and other folks will wax nostalgic over it. I look at the ages in terms of data and how that data was organized, who organized it, and who could access it.

In the first age, data was structured and centralized. (Just like mainframe systems like it to be.) The typical applications were business applications: general ledger, payroll, inventory, and billing systems. The technology used was mainframes and COBOL, but then, that was all we had. (I am conveniently ignoring FORTRAN, but while FORTRAN applications were for science folks the data was still structured and not really shared.) The system owners organized the data and the users had to comply with the imposed structure. Data was not shared, at least not very much. And data was limited to the business problem at hand. The 'killer app' for the first age was the 'accounting set' of the aforementioned typical business applications.

The second age is 'the PC revolution'. Data was non-structured and distributed - everyone had their own computer and stored data as they saw fit. The main applications were word processors and spreadsheets, running on PCs with either MS-DOS or Windows. (I'm ignoring the pre-PC microcomputers such as Apple II and Commodore PET. I'm also ignoring minicomputers and Unix.) The primary users in the second age were businesses, as in the first age. The data did not follow the first-age flow of 'input-process-output' but was composed and then distributed, usually on paper but sometimes on floppy disk or BBS. There were many originators of data but each originator had few recipients. The killer app was the spreadsheet, but the word processor helped.

The third age changes the rules again. The data is not the rigidly structured datasets of the first age or the non-structured documents of the second age; data is semi-structured with markup tags. Data is stored on central servers but accessible from anywhere (well, anywhere on the internet).  The technologies include web servers, web services, AJAX, XML, and other 'new stuff'. Typical applications include LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and DOPPLR. I don't know that we've seen the 'killer app' for the third age (yet).

The big difference in the third age applications is the user set. The third age is driven by customers, not businesses. Individuals enter the data (journal entries for LiveJournal, contacts for LinkedIn, and travel plans for DOPPLR) and share it with others; the sites do not create the data and provide it to users. In third-age applications, the users who enter data are also the users who share the data and retrieve the data. (Not always in proportion to how much they create.)  The site provides the API and the storage area; the users provide the content and organize it themselves.

I don't see the applications of the third age replacing earlier applications. Instead, I see the new applications opening up new functions and features. Just as the second age expanded the computing universe (we still have accounting running on mainframes, don't we?), the third age apps (OK, if you insist 'web 2.0 apps') will create new capabilities that do not replace our beloved word processing and spreadsheet applications.

There may be some overlap, for example collaborative document composition, and I predict that some applications will move from the PC to the web because the data sharing model is a better fit. (Project management, for example. MS-Project will die as a Windows application and move to the web. The data sharing needs of team members will force this change.)

The lesson here is to embrace the new technology and more importantly, embrace the new capabilities for sharing data. Not all applications have to use them, but some will, and we will all be more effective with the change.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Clever people

I'm back from the O'Reilly 'Emerging Technology' conference. Wow, what a show!

I really like the O'Reilly conferences. The folks know how to run a con; everything went smoothly from check-in to keynotes to individual sessions. They can get a good set of speakers with an eclectic set of topics. And they can attract clever people to attend.

The big ideas from this show, the ideas that I took away, are these:

 - Cell phones can be used for a lot more than phone calls and text messages. They can be used for interactive, multiplayer games. They can be used to track individuals and feed analytics web sites. (How you use the data from cell phones is the clever bit.)

 - Web 2.0 is coming on-line. Web 2.0 is more than just Google maps; it is mashing information from one web site into another. Web sites are adapting to use Web 2.0 techniques; they are exposing APIs for other web sites to use.

 - Lots of applications can be built in the web space, and these applications are different from the traditional PC applications just as PC applications were different from traditional mainframe applications. PC apps didn't kill mainframe apps, they created a new space for applications. (Visicalc didn't replace General Ledger but complemented it.)  The new Web 2.0 apps won't kill PC apps (MS-Word will be with us for a while, I'm afraid) but they will extend the usefulness of computers and create new opportunities for developers.

 - Clever people are still out there. There are a number of clever people available, and you can find them if you try. Clever people are, well, clever, and don't fall for the stupid tricks that work on average folks. If you are looking for clever people you must work at it.

The future is happening now. New web sites with Web 2.0 tech are available now. People are developing them now. If you are not developing them now, you will be in the late-comer set. Which is fine if you are comfortable with the idea. Not everyone is a leader. But if you want to be a leader, Web 2.0 is happening.

All you need is an idea... and some clever people.