Tara Hunt in R.I.P. Browsers may be interpreted as suggesting that the computing environment of tomorrow is the desktop of today. She presents her assertions in the context of technical issues she regularly experiences. Pains caused by poor experiences in browsers and web applications. Real problems. Pains that Richard MacManus, myself, and all other webheads also regularly experience.

Tara’s assertions are not visionary, but already much discussed, researched, designed (one approach) and being developed. It is the next stage of the hosted vs desktop computing equation — though Tara presents it with the usual Citizen Agency dramatic flare. The web browser will die likely before the desktop computer, but they both will die when your computer is only a connection to “the Web”. Or maybe that means that your computer will become only a browser…

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I wish we could reduce the amount of noise in [online conversations] and I wish we could let people build a bike shed every so often, and I don’t really care what colour they paint it.

Poul-Henning Kamp, 02 Oct 1999, FreeBSD Mail Archives

Parkinsonexplains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensiveand so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try,they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all thedetails before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple ofinteresting, and very much to the point, examples relating to LosAlamos in his books.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those overa weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matterhow well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal,somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, thathe is paying attention, that he is *here*.

Poul-Henning Kamp, 02 Oct 1999, FreeBSD Mail Archives

I highly recommend reading the whole email.

Yesterday, Myk Melez sent this to the Bugzilla developer mailing list with the message, “I happened upon a message today about OSS project dynamics that seems like it would be insightful and useful reading for the Bugzilla development community.”

I love it when I see people working on atomic plants or bike sheds. We can all be careful to focus, think, design and do, when it is so much easier to be lazy or distracted and think and talk and talk.

technorati tags:open source, particate, collaborate, fool’s wisdom, community, communicate, design, do, actualize, execute, hubris, lifehack

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With each blog comment I make I use two web services coComment and co.mments.com. I also use co.mments.com when I find a blog post that I am interested in following any comments that are made in the future, even if I do not comment myself. Today coComment added features that do what co.mments.com does, but my experience is that it does not do it as well..

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