From wikipedia we learn that
Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
and
In physical terms, life is an organism that feeds on negative entropy.
So “living” is distinguished from “non-living” by growth through changes originating internally. This dense explanation of life shows that living consists of “staying alive” and “evolving”. The second sentence from wikipedia tell us that the “method” of staying alive is about transforming a lot separate food things into the growth of the organism and extension if it’s life.
I think the current Web 2.0 applications (or services, or whatever) are primarily about “staying alive”. Google searches (and some other things) extremely well. A web page and a search request are it’s food. The search results are it’s excrements. While staying alive it does not evolve very well. The search organism itself is not changed. Google might filter (image search,) they might repurpose (Google trends) and they might clone (Google news.) The Google search organism has not been evolving. The same can be reasoned for Amazon and eBay.
What would a true living Google search organism look like? What would be the manifestation of it’s evolutionary process? The key to evolution is adaption to the environment the organism is in. And the adaption is geared towards it’s survival, or chance of survival. And these changes are at the core (gene in biology, pagerank with Google) of the organism, exhibiting outside changes in form or function.
Will Web 3.0 be Living Software?
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Jurg, pff… many messages in your short post:
- Web 2.0 is no longer in use which I find tempting
- You have stereo-type anti Microsoft sentiment which I cannot judge
- You have questions about the ‘theme’ of the new web
- You wonder what living software is like =)
I find the Web 2.0 statement challanging and you extrapolation form live to living facinating. Could you give us a thought (or fantasy which explains your concept of living software?
firs, on my ‘anti microsoft’ sentiment. (why do you call it stereotypical?)
what i was referring to, in the case of microsoft, is the ability to drastically transform their operating system and office products. (almost half of their earnings (http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY07/earn_rel_q3_07.mspx) come from their client offerings.) is tightly integrating office and os still the way to go in a converging world? i think that open standards and interoperability is more than just ‘word of mouth’, microsoft server products still work best on smartphones with the microsoft powered mobiles. because microsoft is a monolithic organization with both client and server they have to keep this strategy of lockin, shareholders would never allow them another strategy.
because of this i wonder if microsoft has the right mindset and right incentives to create a “live software” (or “living software”) service suite. they do not benefit very much on the short term if symbian interoperates better with sharepoint. google on the other hand does not (yet) own a client device (this might change, google is interested in leasing the rights to an airwave spectrum: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/23/Google-looking-to-get-a-leg-up_1.html.) so google will drive it’s services towards an omnipresent availabitliy, where microsoft will be forced to drive to be best used on microsoft products.
in short, as long microsoft is claiming the full stack (from servers to client devices) it will not benefit a strategy of interoperability in the short term. two changes might transform this strategy. a breakup (forced or voluntary) or patenting. or if the patenting business of microsoft will become a considerable part of the operating income.
i also think that microsofts activity in gaming can be considered web2.0 (or modern.) also msn is delivering on this promise. in the case of msn they tolerate smaller clients that reverse engineer the msn protocol, for example. but are they ready for opening up msn by offering an api on several development platforms?
living software
perhaps (this is dreaming) living software can take several forms
- it can be a system that is ‘adaptive’ by distributed (and uncontrolled) adaptation through explicit human intervention (a development community has access to the pagerank algorithm and implementation)
- it can also be a distributed system where the interdependancy is so high (monetary) that there is no way to change without tight communication (distributed selling like amazon associates)
- it might also become an adapting system because it is designed that way (artificial intelligence)
i consider techniques as filtering on user generated content not evolution but ’staying alive’. this is a definite web 2.0 (live software) feature. living software is about evolution. the second we see. in that respect i think that google is central to a living software environment, but it is not living itself. but, perhaps it is not even possible in an adaptive organism like this for google itself to be living. perhaps we should google search as an organ in an organism.
i have no examples of the first and the last ‘types’ of living software.
I think this post explains you much about your stereotype:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/1017969479.php
So what are you saying “Microsoft is not Web2.0 (modern)” ?
And why is their software not LIVE as you describe in your posts… is open-source live or are there other methods of creating live-software?
Apple is as closed as Microsoft… do you question if they can address this trend of Live-software as well?
ok, let me clarify this a bit.
if we take live software as web 2.0 than i can say that live software is about user generated content, collaborative filtering, ajax, etc. (i am following tim o’reilly here, a bit.) but it is also about open apis, extensibility, interoperability, mashups, etc. this last, i argued, is difficult for microsoft to realize, because they will always let internet explorer prevail over firefox and outlook over eudora. calendaring is perfect with exchange server, but it only works with outlook. (viable business strategy, and very very successful.)
so live software is an ‘open’ system (not open source) that can be extended, used, queried, etc. this open system is about user generated (youtube) or augmented (amazon) content. where the user feedback (explicit and/or implicit) is used to filter and offer meaningful content.
in this regard itunes sucks. itunes is brilliant in its execution of a music store. they have the negotiating power to create a compelling offering of songs and artists. it has succeeded in becoming the example of a closed but successful service around commercial digital content. but it is not web 2.0. it is not open, it is as closed as possible (with viable reasons, again) and it will not open very soon because it is successful and it is difficult to work with rights owners in this market. the collaborative filtering they use to help me buy my music sucks (i am used to the standards of amazon.) but they do offer the quickest and most seamless way to get music i want into my itunes application and onto my ipod. i have not yet seen any significant move towards really helping me explore my own musical interest, with the help of others, perhaps my friends. (i only find something when i already know what i want.)
to me open source has nothing to do with live software (or web 2.0.) open apis, also, have nothing to with open source. amazon is one of the leading examples of a successful open platform. entire shops can be built based on the amazon platform. but amazon is far from open source. and if it was it would be totally inconsequential to their open api.
open source is not live. live is about content. living is not about open source. but if living requires distributed development open source has proven to be a successful method of creating valuable systems.
If ‘live’ is about content (which I doubt by the way, in the Web 2.0 sense of the word), then what is ‘living’ about? Somehow I get the feeling that living software is only going to be living to those who are able to ‘change’ its code, so it can grow or evolve. That would leave out a lot of people. How do you see their role? Is software living because it changes itself or is software living because of the interactions people have with it (and thus feedback, and further evolving as a result)?
o’reilly says ‘live software’ is ‘web 2.0′. in his view it is about user generated content, things like collaborative filtering included. (in my view communication on these media can be seen content as well.)
your first example, open source as method for adaption, leaves out a lot of people. but isn’t it the same as talkers vs. listeners in average communities? if you look at initiatives from yahoo (pipes), for example, visually creating mashups it might expand the group of people a bit.
but, if the adaption is part of the system (think of the promises of artificial intelligence, for example) than it is different. anyone can trigger a change, but the change is also somewhat more predictable.
i think a system is ‘living’ if it changes to adapt to a changing environment. the method of change is irrelevant for it to be called living. it is interesting to see which of the methods might create something that is ‘living’.
First of all, I like the discussion of what would LIVE software be and than one step further LIVING software. Great approach.
But I’m afraid you have either a different take-away from the article of O’reilly you link or got your sources mixed-up =) I think it is the same effect when you run of a mountain… your legs go faster than your brain can handle… your enthousiasm probably made your fingers type faster than the brain could deal with hahahha… to my opinion you went a little short in this one.
O’Reilly doen’t say we should stop using Web 2.0 and call it Live… I can only find the fact that he states that LIVE is a key aspect of Web 2.0… where LIVE is:
“Web 2.0 software is live because they learn from and interact directly with their users (and more specifically, provide services to individual users that benefit from the aggregate interaction of the system with all of its users.)”
I can totally identify with that statement and that is exactly what I assumed he meant with live-software… it is not about the content, but about contact or interaction! In that case I would say the Living is the fact the soft starts ‘changing’ without direct impulses from a user or users.
So eeh… Web 2.0 is of the past… he just flirts with the fact that Live might maybe more nail the essence of it.
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/what_would_goog.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/11/live_software.html
yes, the ‘take away’ was a bit imaginative!
it would have been easier to start with this ‘definition’ instead of finding examples to explain the thinking about what it was.
but your idea of living software is not mine. i think living software is about change of the system itself. not about the ‘trigger’ that changes it. it can be users, directly or indirectly. it can also be an earthquake or the way a competitor is changing. it is about adaption to a changing environment. living is about evolving, live is about ’staying alive’.
Interesting… you discuss Live software and living software… but in your post you link to the wiki of liFe en living… so are you discussion liVe or liFe, because according to Websters Dictionary Live & Living are the same ;-)