An interesting
piece by Om Malik (not on
GigaOM) about the rise of the widget. But no surprise here really: the atomisation of programs is just another reflection of the tidal wave that is open source currently sweeping over programming in general. As I've written several times, modularity is key to free software's success: widgetification is simply the same idea applied to Web services.
I'm also very interested in this idea of modularity. I enjoy these analogies to biological systems. For example I remember reading about a "clone and mutate" model at Ning's blog. It's getting even easier to make your own thing and send it back into the wild. These get picked up (or not) mutated, etc. A real increase in evolutionary rate of new software.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the biological/evolutionary connection - something that I too find fascinating.
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