Devs have eaten the world

By contrast, consumer software tools that enhance human agency, that serve us when we are most creative and intentional, are often built by hobbyists and used by a handful of nerds. If such a tool ever gets too successful one of the Marl-serving companies, flush with cash from advertising or growth-hungry venture capital, will acquire it and kill i... See more

to the extent that there's a part of software that will still retain more of the economics of software, it will be integration tools that are end-product-agnostic.

Nowadays, companies tend to pitch their business models of siloed and quasi innovative problem-solving technology. The whole idea of specialization and offering solutions to particular problems has been haunting us since the time of Adam Smith. Somehow, people seem to forget that no problem arises in isolation. Do we even consider anymore that for ... See more

As Web 2.0 companies began to deeply understand the powerful potential of their innovations — the game-ish reaction buttons, the follower graph, the algorithmic ‘newsfeed’ — they became adept at a clever stratagem. Rather than committing to perpetual openness, they could offer new user tools or developer APIs and encourage the community to use them... See more

It recently occurred to me that the really obvious comparison for what’s going on here is the open source software community back in the 90s. Eric S Raymond’s essay Homesteading the Noosphere, a reference text on the social norms and incentive structure of the free software movement, explains exactly what’s going on. We’re no longer dealing with a ... See more