Upon 2020

Category: Big Picture

  • The Open Stack or Mere Plumbing?

    So what exactly are we all building here? OpenID? OpenID plus OAuth plus Yadis/XRD(S) plus Portable Contacts plus OpenSocial plus activity streams? That’s a handful, so some have been calling it the “Open Stack“. Is that what we are building? But what about RSS (and syndication in general), iCal feeds, widgets, mash-ups and so forth?…

  • Economics of Free

    Brilliant pieces of work don’t come around every day. Mike Masnick’s piece modestly ;-) called The Grant Unified Theory On the Economics of Free is one of these pieces. If you have ever wondered how to make money when so much is given away for free these days, this piece is for you. It’s a…

  • Announcing Health20.org

    We all know that the US healthcare system — just like the healthcare systems of many other countries — has become unsustainable. We also know from experience that changes in the healthcare industry come slowly; probably quite a bit more slowly than the double-digit growth rate of health expenses that is reaching 20% of GDP.…

  • I Can’t Believe “Metcalfe’s Law is Wrong” is Still News

    IEEE Spectrum has an article titled "Metcalfe’s Law is Wrong" that was published in the July 2006 issue arguing that the basic math behind "Metcalfe’s law" is wrong. Of course it is, how could it not if you think about it? The infuriating thing is that this still seems to be news! I blogged about…

  • What I want to discuss at IIW

    Somebody asked me yesterday what I want to discuss at IIW. The trouble is, there are too many things I really think we — the community — need to wrap our heads around and sort out. Here’s a list that’s by no means complete: Open-Source InfoCard (first public discussion later today at IIW of a…