What's Next: Call for Discussion

Sam Ruby responds to my interest in WS-xxx...

[W]hat I most would like to explore is what is next. After Web Services.

I occasionally hear talk of an Internet Operating System. And as a group we obsess on what is the optimal design of an individual neuron.

Something nagging in me tells me that these are the wrong metaphors and that we are [on] the wrong meta-level. There is no brain operating system. The emergent behavior of a brain can't completely be understood by looking at how individual neurons operate.

The future is multi-cellular. The cell walls aren't necessarily distance, but represent trust boundaries. It will never be the case that all data will be directly addressible. We wouldn't want it to be.

I like this. For anyone inspired by this description, I'd like to organanize some conversations around this. There are all kinds of dots that can be connected.

Let me know if you'll be in Portland the second week in July (OSCON, Applied XML DevCon) and I can set up a "What's Next?" discussion if there's interest. Meanwhile I'll be thinking out loud here and I'll be looking for other responses to this query.