

The next, next big thing - Garbage
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/next-big-thing-web-mobile-data-ubiquitious-computing.html

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rflrob
I'm willing to believe hardware will be a big thing again soon: the transition
of 3d printers and scanners from industry to hobbiest suggests there's room
for even broader consumerization. Cory Doctorow's _Makers_ is a compelling
vision of that future.

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jorangreef
It doesn't need to be a question of thick xor thin client. We've tried the
thick client (and we're trying it again with the rise of AWS). We've tried the
thin client (and we're trying it again with the rise of Chromium). It's almost
like our technological adventures are a virtual Edison: "I didn't fail, I
found ten thousand things that wouldn't work". I think the next, next big
thing will not do away with the web, or the thick client, or the thin client,
or big data, but represent a fusion of our understanding of all of these
things.

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vog
I fully agree, and I'd like to add that this kind of fusion is already
happening all over the place, blurring the line between what we used to call
"thin" and "thick" clients.

For instance, a browser running huge amounts of JavaScript (e.g. ExtJS and
stuff) can't really be called "thin" client anymore. On the other hand, a
slick native app that does little more than presenting nicely some weather
data can't really be called a "thick" client. Also, a huge "native" Java
application that depends on the web and has auto-upgrade mechanisms is in many
aspects very similar to huge JavaScript applications that are cached by the
Browser.

Any application that needs to share data with other instances will need some
server and some client part. The only question is where to put which part of
the application.

Is the client merely a displaying tool like VNC? Or does the client actually
run application code, and the server is just some kind of database? Which
parts of the data is processed server-side and which client side? Or, is the
server part decentralized and the clients communicate via P2P?

Maybe the application is even a combination of all those strategies, using in
each corner of the application the most appropriate strategy.

Given all those possibilities and the wide range of succesful strategies that
can be observed in the wild, drawing a sharp line between "thin" or "thick"
client is already impossible today.

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nazgulnarsil
the next next big thing will be computation being so ubiquitous and
interconnected that no one except developers even thinks about where the juice
for any given activity is coming from.

