The Third Online Era Starts Here

from the what-comes-next? dept

Over at the Guardian they're looking at web services - focusing mainly on how Google and Amazon have deployed them. However, it starts to get into a much more interesting discussion near the end over whether or not the web services world will be a top down set up (from Microsoft and IBM) or a bottom up construction (via random hackers)... or, perhaps, both. I think it's pretty clear that it's going to be some sort of combination. In some cases, it's going to be necessary for a top down approach - but the more interesting (and unexpected) uses are going to come from bottom up experiments (which, will then often be co-opted by bigger companies). I've been hesitant about agreeing with all the web services hype that was out there a few years ago, but now that it's died down, it looks like the useful stuff is starting to show up.

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