Thursday, April 01, 2004

Situated Software by Clay Shirkey Thanks to Stephen Downes for locating this interesting article by Clay Shirkey about situated software. I very much like the notion that easier programming tools have enabled the development of special purpose software that does not require a long shelf life or a wide audience to justify its development. This approach is similar to the course development approach where a course is viable if there is an audience for the course, even a small audience (as long as the development is not too costly or too time-consuming). In an age when TV channels can be proliferated to provide for very specialized viewing audiences, we should be able to achieve even more targeted audiences for software. JH ____ Situated Software. Situated software, according to this article, "is designed for use by a specific social group, rather than for a generic set of 'users'." It can be contrasted with "web software", which is intended to serve very large user groups. The advantage of situated software is that it is easier to create more and more varied applications. "We've been killing conversations about software with 'That won't scale' for so long we've forgotten that scaling problems aren't inherently fatal. The N-squared problem is only a problem if N is large." Good discussion, with some ointeresting examples, including the fun "Teachers on the Run" program. By Clay Shirky, Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet, March 30, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 2:39:42 PM    COMMENT []