Articles by Clay Shirky

[Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw>]

Interesting takes on a couple of issues. -- Dan

<http://www.shirky.com/Articles/evolve.html>

   In Praise of Evolvable Systems: Why something as poorly designed as
   the Web became The Next Big Thing, and what that means for the future.
   . . .
   Centrally designed protocols start out strong and improve logarithmically.
   Evolvable protocols start out weak and improve exponentially. [...] Infra-
   structure built on evolvable protocols will always be partially incomplete,
   partially wrong and ultimately better designed than its competition.
___

<http://www.shirky.com/Articles/winner_take_all.html>

   Winner Take Some
   . . .
   Now "equilibrium" is not the kind of word that sells a lot of magazines,
   but I want to argue that "Winner Take All" reporting has damaged not
   just coverage of a schoolyard fight over Web browsers - it has damaged a
   lot of people's assumptions about computers and networks generally [...]