An insight I got while thinking about the pros and cons of
KakaoTalk's platformization—the kind that lets it generate revenue.
/ I want to call a platform that takes entropy's limit into account an ecosystem.
#1.
The era when the surroundings became bare, barren mountains
because energy was supplied through logging.
Then coal got discovered right on time.
Was that luck really luck?
#2.
KakaoTalk has recently (?) platformized and,
along with revenue, is seeing explosive growth.
(Leaving Line out for now.
Not because they're doing it 'well' but simply because
the range (? capacity) of entropy is just bigger.)
Anyway, can their platformizing path
really promise a positive tomorrow?
#3.
Honestly, the word 'platform' bothers me.
Platform… when I think platform, what comes to mind
is the App Store, platform, or ecosystem.
(I'll also leave Google out. For reasons different from Line—
you can call them a platform, but it's
a stretch to call them an ecosystem.)
So what's the difference between a platform and an ecosystem?
A platform is a rational system that runs on
regulated processes.
An ecosystem, with its many variables and self-generating environment,
is an unstable, irregular, virus-like system.
(There must be a better word than 'system' here—
the limit of my knowledge for now, I'll correct later.)
#4.
/... omitted (might get flak / I always think of the conclusion first / writing first, editing later)
#5.
A system built around a single form housing many services
(KakaoTalk, Google Play) has a quantitative entropy limit.
But a virus-like system that re-connects various forms
and the quantitative platforms each of them runs
ends up with qualitative entropy.
Ordinary entropy has an absolute value (a ceiling),
and once it goes up, you can't reverse or lower it.
#6.
So why do people praise Apple as an ecosystem?
They don't build on a single form
(not perfect, but walking 500 steps is still better than 50),
and they connect multiple forms, giving entropy relativity.
In other words, entropy generated in one form
can be consumed or amplified by another form.
Apple probably wasn't perfectly designed around this either,
but Jobs seems to have tried to solve the entropy problem
of a single platform through multiple forms.
(Not simply the N-screen concept. Closer to an N-platform.)
#7.
To put it in plainer terms:
1) Eat -> store and use the energy from digestion, the energy from movement
-> turn the storage device into office equipment and use it
-> …
Work -> developing tech that converts waste into energy and heat
-> convert typing into energy
-> …
Use the restroom -> collect waste and use it as energy
-> turning the steam from flushing into drinking water
-> …
Sleep -> use the energy for heating
-> use the heat to charge smart devices
-> …
Like that (admittedly forced examples made on the fly—read for context, anyway),
one action doesn't wrap up as just that one action.
One action (platform) starts to have meaning
as affordance (not as 'signifier,' but as 'support')—
influencing another person's action (platform).
I want to call this a sustainable ecosystem.
#8.
Of course it's not a procedural system with a fixed task,
but a viral system, so prediction isn't easy.
Still, it's like the medieval age: recognizing human imperfection
and irrationality, accepting and opening to them,
and through the conceptual awareness of the individual (Augustine) and the universal (Thomas Aquinas),
giving rise to the Renaissance—the same kind of effect could be had.
#9.
This thread
is very similar in logic to why the web should
(ah…local network? distributed processing? those who know will know—
I don't remember accurately, let me refine later)
turn back to protocol-style (? FPT? P2P?) modes.
- that's it for now, heh
by normal insight
