Chinese Housewives

Thursday, March 1, 2001 by Dave Winer.

We're all platform vendors 

An interesting thought came to me, maybe you'll find it interesting too.

In 1994, I wrote a piece called Platform is Chinese Household. The philosophy expressed in that piece, respect for developers, now requires an update.

If the next version of the Internet is to work, there are going to be lots more platform vendors. This is a key point. Every Web service is a platform, and each of us has choice: to be a competitor, developer or user of that platform; or to ignore it altogether. That's the nature of the Internet. Now, it's the nature of human beings to reinvent the wheel, but let's hope we can overcome some of that.

There is progress and harmony, happiness and forward motion when we build on each others' accomplishments. In other words, to have happy house, respect must go both ways. Husband must buy flowers for wives, and wives must not try to change husband. Then the arguments and struggles can end and we will raise beautiful happy children and tackle larger problems.

Now of course someone is going to say "What a dreamer, get real." Well, I'd like to give peace a chance, and see what we can accomplish when we stop wasting so much time stopping things, and invest more energy in working together, creating new stuff, and dealing with some of the big problems on our plate.

Have a great day!

Dave

PS: Amy Tan, the author who inspired this thread, has a new novel. It's in my queue, so expect more Chinese household stories.

PPS: I realized we do workflow at UserLand. And I keep looking for ways to make it easier and more formal. So my piece on Sunday was off the wall. Using networks to coordinate work is a good idea.

PPPS: Rumors are running around the Net that the next version of MSIE will be standalone, not baked into the operating system. This is welcome news. It's too bad they didn't do it this way from the beginning. That would have been a welcome bouquet for Windows developers.

PPPPS: On the to-do list, after we learn to work with each other, what to do about global warming?