Through Thick and Thin?

My first experiences with computing were on a VT100 terminal connected via a 300 baud modem to a DEC VAX at the local university. So I’ve probably followed the whole thick client/thin client seesaw for as long as most, fatting it up on a Windows machine with (gasp!) no connectivity in the early 90’s, then migrating more and more of my applications onto the network in the late 90’s and early 00’s (pronounced “naughties”, I believe).

The debate hasn’t gotten any clearer over the past couple of decades. David Berlind makes a compelling case for paying “less or nothing at all for someone else to worry about guaranteed headaches such as software upgrades, data backup and recovery, and system maintenance.” Jonathan Schwartz explains (albeit somewhat self-servingly) why it would be better to store all our data on a Sun grid while running our applications locally. And Joshua Porter provides a great illustration of why some data is better stored locally, even if the apps are remote. So what’s the deal… do I need to go Atkins on my PC or not?

The problem here is that there are two conflicting trends. On the one hand, bandwidth and storage are getting closer and closer to free, which favors remote storage and execution. On the other hand, processing power and, ehm, storage are getting closer and closer to free, so it’s just as cheap to have a supercomputer on your desk as a dumb terminal.

I think that, at the end of the day, the answer doesn’t lie so much in a finding a definitive Right Place for data and code to reside. Instead, it has to do with gaining the flexibility to make sure that stuff can migrate to the most optimal location depending on the precise factors at play, possibly in real time. For code, this means a combination of technologies like AJAX, Firefox extensions and Flash (and their future incarnations). For data, it means richer data schemas to replace the genericity of RSS and OPML so that we know what’s what, chunking data down so it can be easily transferred and replicated, and (most important of all) unique identifiers so we can keep track of what is where.

Oh dear, have I become an RDF convert?

Bookmark to:

1 Comment »

1. About time too

   Comment by Danny — 12/20/2005 @ 10:59 pm

Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>