On APIs

The web, in it's so-called 2.0 age, has spawned a movement that prescribes the philosophy of freedom of information. In so doing, new web-based applications (digg, twitter, anything from 37signals) have created "API"s, a fairly accurately name. However, in thinking back to the desktop application market and the operating systems that they run upon, we see the use of the term API. The programatic functionality provided by these APIs is wholly different from those on the web. The desktop APIs provide access to actions to be taken on behalf of the application or some other form of functionality. Information is undoubtedly an aspect but, it is not the focus. On the other hand, we see the APIs of the web. These APIs offer, primarily, the methods enabling some external party access to information and the capability to submit/insert/update information within the originating application. With the differences that exist between the two forms of API, why do they share this nomenclature?

I suggest something like "AIT", or Application Information Transport, be used to describe this new form of API.

The Original Wikipedia

For anyone who has ever read the exceptional series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this website will be more familiar to you than anyone else. The concept behind the guide of which the stories surround is a comprehensive collection of all information available in the universe. In the story, one of the primary characters is, unbeknownst to his friend Arthur Dent, an alien writer for the guide.

Here is the online version of the guide, a website initiated by Douglas Adams. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

Now, for anyone familiar with the goals of Wikipedia the story of the guide does not appear to be the same concept, aside from being a massive collection of knowledge. It is in the realization of the H2G2 website that the community effort takes center stage. So, we can see, the core concepts of the Wiki movement may have been started in the 90's by an ingenious author.