Today is - again - my birthday. Time for reflection.
One year ago, I wrote that it is time for a change in the world of Information Technology. Boy, it still sure is. The bubble has burst, the market has collapsed, the hype has quieted down. But where are the developments which actually make computers more useful in everyday life?
This is a month when war was waged and won, at the cost of numerous personal tragedies. A month in which countless historical treasures may have been lost for good. These past decades may end up having the dubious honor of being the most useless and turbulent in the history of mankind. The time when a momentous opportunity for widespread prosperity and security was squandered.
So now we not only have less tangible history of our past than before, but also an explosion of digitally recorded data - the bulk of which is likely to be totally useless for future generations, and the rest buried to the point of being lost as well.
Information Technology = office suites + cell phones + smart bombs. How sad.
My conviction to make this a better place remains. Starkits and Tclkit are my limited contributions to that end. It feels very satisfying to be able to conclude that these are now "done". Available to whoever wishes to use this approach. I hope it leads to more software which is trivially easy to distribute, try out, rely on, and manage long term. May it lead to software which makes sense and is also useful to not-so-rich countries, so they can close the IT gap and benefit as much from its potential.
It's time for me to move on and take the next step.
� April 2003