For a long time now I’ve been interested in “eventing” systems. This system needs to tell another (or many) what’s going on (“Hey, I’m done processing that data”). It’s a a way of decoupling the systems so that one system isn’t “waiting” for another system.

Now think about twitter in its best case (from this perspective). A bunch of people listen to me. I send a message. And those folks can act on the message or not.

What if that sort of eventing were built into everything? What if we agreed about expected actions triggered by an event? (You event “go” and I event “where” every time I care to.)

Other folks are working on and thinking about this. I don’t always agree with the model because I think the basic interaction is far simpler. If I need a delivery service I don’t send out a bid, because it probably doesn’t matter enough to save a few cents on a single transaction. Most likely, simplicity (excellent delivery record, easy to drop off, and then reasonable cost are more likely, until I’m shipping many items.) But that’s a nit. And a lot of this can happens today, all that’s not the way the systems are thought about. And that changes everything.