Imagine a world with multiple internets.
Wouldn’t it be great?
Think about it! If we had built 2 different internets that worked completely independent of each other, how amazing would our lives be?
The two internets would have different hardware protocols — both of them definitely can’t run off of ethernet. We’d probably need a different set of routers for each; otherwise, it wouldn’t be fun. They would have different means of communication. Let’s say one used HTML and the other used XML. This is important because programmers should be able to choose 1 protocol that would tie their engineering skills to that version of the internet. I can go on and on with the list, but doesn’t that just sound amazing?
I’m sure you’re thinking that this would definitely NOT be amazing. That would be the most absurd, ridiculous creation in existence. Lucky for us, we only have 1 large World Wide Web that we can communicate with in a uniform manner, and we can also write applications for just 1 protocol rather than having to support 2 or more. Our ability to focus on one thing has probably saved us a lot of wasted efforts, and allowed us to improve at a much faster rate.
So why am I talking about this? It’s because this simple piece of common sense is something that engineers, businesses, and thought leaders are ignoring in other matters. Why the hell do we have 3 major operating systems for laptops? Why do we have 3 major operating systems for phones? If I’m creating a mobile application for my company, I’m spending less time on innovation and a lot more time on being compatible with 3 different ecosystems of mobile applications.
Why do we have multiple browsers? Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc all accomplish the same thing, so why do we have so many. Now, if there’s a change to ECMAscript, dozens of browsers have to change. As a developer, I have to make sure my web application works on all browsers, but I dread opening up each browser trying to make sure my page renders properly.
By suggesting that we should get rid of competing systems, there are issues that I’m ignoring of course. Competition pushes innovation. Companies own code and patents on hardware, making it impossible for others to improve on it.
How can we solve this in an “ideal” scenario? I don’t know. However, I would rather try to form a way to solve these problems rather than to live in an ecosystem where productivity is drowned by bad decisions.
I also realize that I’m being very naive, but I want to hear opinions.
