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I would modify your point #1 (decentralization must never be promoted to be a feature) to state: Openness, be it via a public API or freedom to take data out, s
by er4hn 6y ago
I would modify your point #1 (decentralization must never be promoted to be a feature) to state: Openness, be it via a public API or freedom to take data out, should not be a central feature. Looking at the history of successful applications (Spotify, Facebook, Twitter) they have all offered a simple and well crafted experience, with open APIs at the start. I realize that they still have some form of APIs but they have been severely curtailed from their early days in all of my examples.
The openness of the APIs offers those interested the ability to create their own features on top of a base (Facebook games back in the day, Spotify's song previews on NYTimes "Best Music of 2020", etc) while still maintaining a central point that normal users can come to for the default experience. By letting power users build on top of it more users can be drawn in by the interested developers experimenting with new features and experiences.
In a way, these hip, modern, and flashy companies remind me of the ancient and dual unix philosophies of: "Do one thing, but do it well" and, for the power users, "give them just enough rope to hang themselves".
- kodah 6y ago> The openness of the APIs offers those interested the ability to create their own features on top of a base The tough thing is that those companies often close or undocument those public APIs because serving you ads is always more profitable than not. Open APIs also encourage aggregating and refinement behavior, which if done outside the parent company would be a detriment to their profits as well. You're, in essence, asking one of two things: - Figure out how to monetize APIs - Change the incentives of the web to be less corporate The latter would require that the web be significantly cheaper to run. The former would create quite an equal access and innovation problem.