Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
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Share Dialog
Share Dialog
This is the third post in my “clouds over” series, which points out areas of the current IT landscape that will be affected by the inexorable move to cloud computing (the first post was on hosting, the second on DB software). Today’s edition covers simple paid apps and services, such as hosted blogging platforms. Exhibit A is of course 37Signals’ Campfire, for which google engineers built a free version with very similar functionality which they had called HuddleChat. Google took it down because some folks complained about it being a “knock-off” of Campfire. Leaving aside that group chat application functionality and layout are not exactly super proprietary, the bigger point here is that it will ultimately be difficult to charge for many simple applications and services. A major reason for paying will disappear with the move to cloud computing – that it currently takes some doing to operate even a simple service on a reliable and performant basis. What HuddleChat showed is that with cloud computing that reason will disappear. All services that are essentially single user services will be susceptible to this threat and that includes a lot! With cloud computing having a data asset will be one of the few things that might make people pay for a service.
This is the third post in my “clouds over” series, which points out areas of the current IT landscape that will be affected by the inexorable move to cloud computing (the first post was on hosting, the second on DB software). Today’s edition covers simple paid apps and services, such as hosted blogging platforms. Exhibit A is of course 37Signals’ Campfire, for which google engineers built a free version with very similar functionality which they had called HuddleChat. Google took it down because some folks complained about it being a “knock-off” of Campfire. Leaving aside that group chat application functionality and layout are not exactly super proprietary, the bigger point here is that it will ultimately be difficult to charge for many simple applications and services. A major reason for paying will disappear with the move to cloud computing – that it currently takes some doing to operate even a simple service on a reliable and performant basis. What HuddleChat showed is that with cloud computing that reason will disappear. All services that are essentially single user services will be susceptible to this threat and that includes a lot! With cloud computing having a data asset will be one of the few things that might make people pay for a service.
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