Operating Systems on the Web

by Sean McGrath

December 17, 2007 —

Most of us are busy. We are famous for talking about how busy we are and about
all the stuff we have to do along with our 'day jobs'. Yes. We are busy, busy,
busy.

Computers are part of what keeps all of us busy people busy - whether we realize
it or not. When we are in a rush (as we always are) we want to get computers
to do things for us now. Right now. In fact, yesterday would be better.

Computers are paradoxes of potentiality that respond to our pleadings with
sublime indifference. Computers are fast, stupid and general purpose. With every
passing year they get faster for sure. The stupidity stays pretty constant it
seems. But the "general purpose" bit...Well now. I think that is different
and becoming more different with the passage of twenty-first century time.

Let's use the web as a well-worn canvas to paint an idea on. You have an idea
for something to put on the web. It is the Eighties, maybe the early Nineties.
What do you do? You take this extremely general purpose idea called a web page
and this extremely general purpose functionality idea called a cgi-interface[1]
and off you go. You build your application from a very general-purpose starting
point.

You have another idea for something to put on the web. It is the late Eighties,
maybe mid/late Nineties. What do you do? You most probably grab an "application
framework" of some description: an "application server" or a
.NET or a Django or a Ruby on Rails. These are also general purpose application
creation toolkits but give you more out-of-the-box than cgi-scripting would.
You forsake some degree of generality - and take on more moving parts - in return
for a starting point that is closer to something you can actually use, especially
if your problem has a big database in the middle of it. Why solve the general
problem from scratch when you can start with an off-the-shelf database-oriented
application?

You have another idea for something to put on the web. It is the late Oozies.
What do you do? You probably look long and hard at things like ning, facebook,
beebo. Here is another way to get your application out there quickly. Forsake
some generality in return for getting a result quickly. Why solve the general
problem from scratch when you can start with an off-the-shelf social-oriented
application?

I see two ways of looking at this. Either the problem-specific application
containers that are popping up on the Web are mere "applications"
or maybe, just maybe, they are the beginnings of a whole new type of general
purpose "application server". I don't think it is stretching language
at all to call these things emerging operating systems.

In a world where life is too short for us always to be building things from
scratch, there will always be a healthy market for tools that make it faster
to roll out applications quickly. It is in the nature of such tools that the
really good ones end up being - in their own way - general purpose.

Once that happens, they become indistinguishable from operating systems. Hmmm.
The Web as a sort of device driver for an operating system called Facebook++
or Meebo++ or ...Ning++ or...Nah. That couldn't possibly be a valid mental picture.
Even in semi-jest.

Could it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface

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