On this episode of the Philomath Series on Musings, Charles gives his thoughts and takeaways on Aggregators aren't open-ended, an article by Gordon Branderdiscussing how aggregators (i.e., platform owners) in the platform ecosystem stifle innovation on top of their platforms by limiting requisite variety in their ecosystems, and that instead we need to have an open-ended ecosystem (i.e., open-source) for innovation to flourish and build new transformative tools for thought. Additionally, Charles looks at the relationship between tools for thought and local-first software.
Impressive quote:
"My sense is that, more than other networked software, tools for thought want to be owned. I don't want to store my second brain on someone else's computer. What if we instead had a small tool that was personal, multiplayer, distributed, evolvable? Maybe this is just a niche category, or maybe it could be the basis for a new open-ended ecosystem?"
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