No one ever got fired for… Copia

So no one gets fired for Google-like systems architecture. No. Outside the crescendoing Web 2.0 bubble, no one gets hired in the first place if there’s the slightest sniff they’d contemplate such a thing. Shame. Web 2.0 is not a bubble (square-one-dot-com) because it’s based on near-trivial technology. It’s a bubble because there are very few opportunities for arbitrage in a marketplace whose point is to provide customers unprecedented transparency and choice. The very place where such an approach can more consistently provide value is within the enterprise whose information systems have so long been bantustans of baroque and isolated systems. The enterprise is where there is a real chance of information systems revolution from Google-like technology. And it’s the one place where no one is looking to build and deploy technology the way Google does.

Yet Another Fantastic Post from Uche. I could not agree more with ALL of this.

Two things to point out:

Point One: In a recent eWeek article, Ward Cunningham states:

When Cunningham said working at Microsoft was “hard,” he said he meant geographically it was difficult because he lived in Portland, Ore., and had to travel a lot to work.

“Also they had a lot of expectations of me, as in let’s do the community thing,” Cunningham said. “The community thing is based on trust, but Microsoft was coming out of a period where people did not trust them,” he said. “But I’m happy to be working on something else, too. And in the end my interest is in developers being able to create and to try to add to that creation.”

However, part of the attraction to work at Microsoft for Cunningham was “to get to know and understand Microsoft, and I have nothing but respect for them.”

Indeed, Cunningham said of Microsoft: “They practice software development in its highest form.”

And though Microsoft is slow to adopt the community model of development, they are headed for it, Cunningham said.

“They have to inch toward this community style development, otherwise it would be irresponsible to their stock holders,” Cunningham said. “What they do and say is in the best interest of their stockholders. … Microsoft has to be more cautious. And IBM has to be more cautious. Even as a developer in the Eclipse foundation there’s a certain amount of busy work that a developer has to do, like keeping an intellectual property log and stuff like that. But this is what you have to do.”

I like that. Why? Because it showcases the fact that Microsoft understands at least two things:

- You can’t break your own knee caps.
- You can change the way you do business.

Hopefully that will just make sense, so I won’t ellaborate.

Point Two : In a recent private email thread, Uche and I came to realize that we had both come to the same conclusion about how to develop a decentralized Atom data feed synchronization engine.

Step One: Make it SIMPLE!
Steo Two: Let BitTorrent deal with the complexities.
Step Three: Keep it SIMPLE!

How does this relate to the “Complex Systems vs. System Complexities” title.

Complex Systems: Systems so complex, it takes a room full of PhD’s just to make sense of even the tiniest portion.

System Complexities: Not everything contained within a simple system can be simple. But by minimizing the complexities, pushing them into just one or two off-the-shelf solutions (like BitTorrent) life suddenly becomes livable again. Instead of spending our time dealing with brittle and/or breakable systems, we instead get to go home at the end of the day and enjoy our lives instead of worrying about what we’re going to do if the duct-tape and bailing-wire patch we just built is going to see you through the night.

As Kurt (Cagle) recently pointed out, you can only abstract the complexities away to a certain point. At some point things ARE complex, and there is no simple way around it. But by keeping these complexities contained in a side-effect free manor, instead of patching Yet Another Leak, we’re instead patching the tires of our son’s and daughter’s bicycle, living our lives instead of having them lived for us.

In other words:

When we enjoy life simply, life is simply enjoyable.

(there’s that damn recursion again! ;)