From Software to Infoware Tim O’Reilly O’Reilly Media, Inc. W3C Tenth Anniversary December 1, 2004

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." --William Gibson

(Control by API) Desktop Application Stack Proprietary Software Hardware Lock In System Assembled from Commodity Hardware Components

Free and Open Source Software Cheap Commodity PCs Intel Inside

Infoware: Data-Rich, Proprietary Software as Service Lock In by Network Effects Data Lock In Integration of Commodity Software Components Internet Application Stack

The New "Killer Apps"

What Makes Them Interesting To Me The Internet, not the PC, is their platform Built on top of open source, but not themselves open source Services, not packaged applications Exploring how to become platform players via web services APIs Data aggregators, not just software Network effects from user contributions key to market dominance The most successful are “semantic learning systems”, leveraging implicit metadata

Yahoo! Directory

Google Search

Listening to Napster (and Open Source) Three ways to build a collective database: –Pay people to organize (Yahoo!) –Ask volunteers to do it (Open Directory) –Architect for participation (Napster, Linux, the WWW) Setting defaults for what is shared the most important architectural decision in software development today!

Listening to Google Storage is cheap - save everything Algorithms are powerful - leverage implicit relationships between data items In a world of information richness, close is good enough, serendipity is added value Leverage the “architecture of participation” implicit in the web

Amazon - JavaScript

BN - JavaScript

Listening to Amazon There’s more than one way to do it! –Leverage both implicit and explicit metadata Build an “architecture of participation” by constant small invitations

MapQuest

Navteq

Listening to MapQuest Didn’t build an architecture in which user participation enriched source data Ended up without dominant position - three vendors (AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft) tracking portal share Control went to data supplier (NavTeq) - the “Intel Inside” NavTeq in turn vulnerable to new data supplier using an implicit metadata strategy, with enrichment by telematics, cell phones, GPS-enabled cameras

Microsoft research photomap

Social Networking - Orkut

Microsoft Wallop

Microsoft Wallop 2

Dashboard (Nat’s)

Listening to Social Networks Rethink the address book for the age of the internet Loads of implicit metadata in , IM, phone usage Standards needed for FOAF permissioning, not FOAF network building - that should be implicit in architecture of communications applications!

Flickr Tagging

CiteULike

Key Lessons Setting defaults for aggregated data is the most important architectural decision in software development today! Enrichment by user activity should be implicit - applications as learning systems Standards should be minimal, encouraging modularity, interoperability, and innovation from the edge

“I’m an inventor. I became interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.” -Ray Kurzweil

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