Shifts and Devices

Or, more generally, into open source Content Management Frameworks (CMFs).

Back in 2004, Mike Gifford from Open Concept Consulting and I co-wrote an essay, Top 10 Open Source Tools for eActivism, that presented a roundup of the then-hot tech tools for online organizing.

Much can change in 1000 days, and the original article is badly in need of a reprise, taking into account the rapid evolution of open source tools and the web itself.

The original article was written on a wiki, with Mike and I chipping in to iteratively write chunks and massage the prose into final form, to the extent that I doubt if either of us could remember who wrote any particular word–a great form of collaboration that I would recommend to any co-writers who are in alignment on the general direction they want to take a text.

When reviewing the article, I was struck by the fact that many of the tools in the various sectors discussed have not so much evolved or been displaced, but that the sectors themselves have become blurry and blended.

Where before, strong single-purpose open source applications addressed well defined problems, now the problems themselves seem far mushier, and the solutions are often not dedicated single-purpose applications, but instead are built with the tools and modules of a CMF.

The sectoral software dinosaurs that evolved to solve specific problems are falling rapidly to weaselly little CMFs – furry little generalists with opposable thumbs that cross sectors without a backwards glance, leaving even the most elegant of the dino-apps gasping in the dust like an analogy gone bad.

By CMFs, I mean those content management systems that are flexible and easily extended with modular add-ins to take on tasks that have traditionally been done by specialized web applications. Drupal, Joomla and Plone all come to mind as examples of easily extensible content management frameworks that can solve the kind of specialized problems that were best handled by dedicated applications in the depths of the past. The first three recommendations in the original 2004 Top Ten Open Source Tools for eActivism article act as examples of the extent and limits of this shift:

• For online magazine publishing and content sharing, ActionApps was the top contender in 2004. Addressing the same design problem in 2007, I’d start with a CMF – with a special focus on selecting a framework with strong RSS content syndication capabilities – and then extend it with appropriate modules to meet the specific needs of the project. Depending on the exact project requirements any of the major CMFs might be the basis of a good solution: For example, a glossy magazine-oriented site might begin with Joomla and extend with the Joomla Magazine component, while a site oriented to content sharing between related sub-sites might choose Drupal and the Organic Groups Sites module.
• In what we described as the the slash/forums space, PostNuke was top of the heap due to widespread use and support. Again, approaching the much more developed ‘social/news-sharing software’ space of 2007, I’d start with a CMF and customize with membership and peer-rating modules to meet the specific needs of the project.
• We positioned Drupal as a top blogging tool – a focus that several readers pointed out ignored the versatility inherent in Drupal. Today, for a pure and simple blogging solution I’d go with WordPress or another dedicated blogging package, but for anything more complex, such as a multi-user blogging community site I’d again take advantage of Drupal’s extensibility, utilizing its well-developed Taxonomy and Organic Groups modules to build the exact features required by the site.

… and so on through the list. Many of the strongly specialized sectoral apps of 2004 are coming under challenge by content management framework solutions in 2007. I’d expect that only very elegant and flexible applications in specialized areas – such as phpBB for discussion forums – will hold their reptilian ground against the swarming attacks of these warm and fuzzy CMFs.

Here is a little precursor of something I expect to see a lot more of in the near future: A highly specialized ‘knowledge worker’ contemplating the impact of peak oil and energy descent on his specialized area of expertise.

The Greening of Entertainment Tech by Mark Fleishman. A couple of excerpts:

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my future. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about what an energy-scarce future might mean for my career as a writer and my chosen subject matter. I write about the audio/video universe: surround sound, big-screen television, and all the other products and issues that attend them. These things are products of an expansive age of cheap energy, an era when bigger is better, whether it’s your 7.1-channel audio system, your 60-inch TV screen, your McMansion, or your SUV.

There is ample evidence suggesting that this happy-go-lucky age is beginning to wind down, largely due to something called peak oil … So a lot of the things we take for granted are about to become prohibitively expensive, if not downright impossible, including industrial farming, large homes with central AC, capacious SUVs, a landscape optimized solely for private vehicles, discount air travel, the Wal-Mart retail environment, and–oh, yes–all that home theater stuff I write about for a living.

Here’s what our [future] home entertainment systems may look like…

Mark goes on to discuss details of the impact of energy scarcity, noting particularly a switch to locally manufactured speakers, simpler configurations – the rebirth of stereo instead of surround sound – and an acceleration of the move to iPod-based low-energy and off-the-grid systems, saying:

There’s nothing smaller or more self-sufficient than a flash-memory player that can operate for long periods off the power grid. You’ll need it for company on the tram, or during all those long walks you’ll be taking to the grocer, the school, and the church.

I’d go further than Mark – or perhaps just look a couple of decades further ahead – and add notes on on wind-up and solar audio devices, repair and resale of salvaged components, recycling for parts, and the rebirth of local acoustic music in the post-peak-oil world.

I think we can all expect to re-examine the trajectory of our lives and careers in the face of global warming and peak oil, and it is good to see the process starting now.