{"id":122,"date":"2021-03-12T18:15:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T18:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/?p=122"},"modified":"2023-11-08T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T18:06:31","slug":"subtracting-to-multiply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/subtracting-to-multiply\/","title":{"rendered":"Subtracting to multiply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent article on Stratechery<\/a> connected a few dots for me on digital transformations and how tech evolves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a fan of Notion. Lately, I\u2019ve been playing with the Bulletproof Workspace<\/a> template. I now better understand why people are building on Notion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interesting thing about Notion and Airtable is they are part of another digital transformation trend (in addition to no-code\/low-code). They use the database to standardize and commoditize, which opens up new opportunities<\/strong> for others (especially for no-coders) to build on top of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standardize on a lowest common denominator<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Twitter\/Facebook did the same thing as Ben described: They standardized news, images, video, links, updates, life events, etc., into a more consumable format: the newsfeed, which unlocked something new and exciting. The feed is now how most of us consume information.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something similar is happening with a subset of business applications. Over the past 20+ years, we\u2019ve seen the era of monolithic applications: this one for a website, that one for an online store, this one for flyers, that one for client proposals, this one for business cards, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But through the same standardization and commodification<\/strong> lens: an image, paragraph, heading, media card, form, etc., are similar in each context (HTML \u2192 $format). The document dimensions, selection of features, \u2018publish\u2019 action, etc., might be different, but the creation experience is consistent. It’s all just an editor moving HTML around.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Gutenberg project of WordPress leverages this concept well: the fundamental element is a block.<\/em> I expect we\u2019ll see more here in the future since the implications for the customer experience (learn once, do anything<\/strong>) and the developer experience (build once, run anywhere<\/strong>) are compelling, e.g., one app marketplace to rule them all.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘good enough’ threshold<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Though, it’s still TBD when this new \u2018thing\u2019 becomes greater than the sum of its parts–when it becomes good enough<\/em> to replace the current model (better doesn’t matter until it’s good enough). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, my iPhone\u2019s camera, phone, calculator, flashlight, etc., are all worse than the standalone version of each, but the iPhone as a whole was good enough to outweigh that years ago. 10X better would be an understatement, but that\u2019s why these digital transformations are so powerful.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent article on Stratechery connected a few dots for me on digital transformations and how tech evolves. I\u2019m a fan of Notion. Lately, I\u2019ve been playing with the Bulletproof Workspace template. I now better understand why people are building on Notion. The interesting thing about Notion and Airtable is they are part of another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmays.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}