« SPICE for Project Re:Build | Main | Ethics, Blogging, and Journalism » Adaptable SoftwareOn an email list, somone said my point has been that the blog isn't structured enough. My response: Blogs and wikis are part of the changed approach to software development that includes free software, open source, and various "open source-ish" projects. With proprietary software sold in shrinkwrap, especially when far fewer people had net access and bandwidth was narrower, you would make software adaptable by making it feature rich, building in everything any potential user might need or want. Now we build adaptable software by making simple pieces that can be adapted through user-imposed structure (think wiki) or and a modular approach (integrated or aggregated). From this perspective, I wouldn't say that blogs aren't structured *enough*... I figure we define blogs formally (where the form includes reverse chronological order, short form, permalinks, feeds, etc.), but we can also integrate other features, or incorporate blogs as modules of systems with more features (a la CivicSpace) in order to adapt. In my response, I didn't quite complete the thought about the impact of a network environment that makes is so much easier for us to get access to software packages and modules and use various web-based application services to create custom environments that give us the features we need. There is a trend away from all-and-everything software packages. (I wouldn't call this a monolithic trend; I think Microsoft and Intuit and Symantec &ndash with proprietary approaches and at least partial delivery via shrinkwrap distribution – will always be there. However even those companies are tending to deliver patches and modules via the network where it makes sense according to their business plan.) I'm interested in hearing your comments. jon posted this at 10:48 AM |
read weblogsky! latest posts: |
