Long-form essays on why products and technologies come into existence, how they evolve, and the philosophy hidden inside every decision that shaped them.https://shrikantk.com/© 2017–2026 Shrikant Kumar. All rights reserved.https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-library-in-the-air/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-library-in-the-air/Streaming began as a way to hear a radio broadcast through a modem and became the way most of the world gets its music, films and television, all of it available for a monthly fee and owned by no one who listens. Its history is a chain of decisions about copies, catalogues and who gets paid, from Napster's index and Apple's 99-cent song to Netflix's envelopes, Spotify's free tier, the studios' retreat into their own services and the arrival of machine-made music.Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:00:00 GMTMind & ToolsEthicsInformationCommunicationThe Webhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/a-factory-for-other-peoples-ideas/https://shrikantk.com/blog/a-factory-for-other-peoples-ideas/In 1987 a new company in Taiwan offered to manufacture chips designed by anyone, and promised never to design chips of its own. Nobody thought there was a market. The pure-play foundry separated the drawing of a chip from the making of it, let thousands of companies exist without factories, and turned one island’s fabs into the narrowest point in the world economy.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 10:00:00 GMTHardwareHistory of ComputingSystems DesignEthicshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-blue-dot/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-blue-dot/A navigation system built to guide nuclear submarines and bombs was opened to everyone after an airliner strayed into Soviet airspace, then made free and exact by a presidential order. Paired with digital maps, it put a small blue dot at the centre of every phone, changed how people find their way and remember places, and left a record of where everyone has been.Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMTMind & ToolsEthicsInformationHistory of ComputingDatahttps://shrikantk.com/blog/paying-a-stranger/https://shrikantk.com/blog/paying-a-stranger/A payment is a promise that a stranger will honour, made at a distance, between people who will probably never meet. The history of payments, from clay tablets and charge cards to PayPal, M-Pesa, Stripe and India’s UPI, is the history of the institutions that made that promise believable, of who was charged for making it, and of what it cost in privacy, debt and the power to undo a mistake.Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:00:00 GMTCommunicationSystems DesignEthicsOpen StandardsHistory of Computinghttps://shrikantk.com/blog/a-computer-of-ones-own/https://shrikantk.com/blog/a-computer-of-ones-own/An operating system’s main product is an illusion. It lets hundreds of programs, and often many people, each behave as if they had the whole machine to themselves. Every era has redrawn that illusion, and redrawn the line between who must be protected from whom.Sun, 25 Jan 2026 10:00:00 GMTSystems DesignHistory of ComputingOpen StandardsHardwarehttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-auction-behind-the-answer/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-auction-behind-the-answer/Web search began as a librarian’s problem, how to find the right document in a pile too large to read, and became the most profitable business in the history of media. Its founders warned that advertising would bias search engines; the company they built found a way to sell attention without selling the rankings, and then became the gate through which most of the web is reached. Its history is the history of how relevance was defined, measured, gamed, auctioned and finally handed to a machine that answers instead of pointing.Sun, 09 Nov 2025 10:00:00 GMTInformationThe WebEpistemologyEthicsHistory of Computinghttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-walled-garden/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-walled-garden/App stores turned the phone into a safe, simple place to install software, and made two companies the gatekeepers between millions of developers and billions of customers. Their history is the story of how platforms decide who may build on them, what they may charge, and how far a private company’s rules can govern an economy before courts and lawmakers step in.Sun, 24 Aug 2025 10:00:00 GMTInterface DesignEthicsSystems DesignProgrammingHistory of Computinghttps://shrikantk.com/blog/software-you-never-own/https://shrikantk.com/blog/software-you-never-own/For most of its history software was sold like a book, a copy you bought once. Over two decades it became a service you rent by the month, run on someone else’s computers and changed without your asking. The shift remade how companies buy, build and are valued, moved the cost of software from a purchase to a relationship, and raised an old question in a new form, about what it means to own the tools you work with.Sun, 08 Jun 2025 10:00:00 GMTProductivity ToolsSystems DesignHistory of ComputingEthicsThe Webhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-company-inside-the-machine/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-company-inside-the-machine/Enterprise resource planning systems promised to run a whole company from one database, with the best way of doing each task built into the software. They became the operating core of most large organisations, and in the process changed the organisations themselves, which learned to work the way the software expected. Their history is a history of integration, of failed projects that cost hundreds of millions, and of what happens when an institution trusts its system more than its people.Sun, 23 Mar 2025 10:00:00 GMTSystems DesignDataEthicsHistory of ComputingProductivity Toolshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-bazaar-without-walls/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-bazaar-without-walls/Online marketplaces let strangers buy and sell across continents by replacing the bazaar’s handshake with ratings, escrow and the rules of a platform. eBay, Amazon, Taobao, Flipkart and Airbnb each solved the old problem of trusting someone you cannot see, and each became something no bazaar ever was, a private government over millions of merchants that also competes with them.Sun, 05 Jan 2025 10:00:00 GMTThe WebEthicsCommunicationSystems DesignHistory of Computinghttps://shrikantk.com/blog/what-you-might-also-like/https://shrikantk.com/blog/what-you-might-also-like/Recommendation systems began as a way to help people find what they would like in a catalogue too large to browse. They became the main way billions of people meet films, music, videos and ideas, and then a feed that chooses everything, with no friends or search required. Their history is the history of how taste was turned into data, how the objective a machine is told to pursue shapes what people see, and how the question of who chooses moved from the person to the system.Sun, 20 Oct 2024 10:00:00 GMTMind & ToolsInformationEthicsDataEpistemologyhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-gift-that-runs-the-world/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-gift-that-runs-the-world/Most of the software the world runs on was given away. It was written by volunteers, students and, increasingly, employees of companies that compete with each other, under licences that let anyone use, study, change and share it. Open source began as a moral argument about freedom, became a method for building software, then a business strategy, and is now critical infrastructure maintained, in places, by a handful of unpaid people. Its history raises old questions about gifts, commons and why people work for nothing.Sun, 04 Aug 2024 10:00:00 GMTProgrammingOpen StandardsEthicsHistory of ComputingSystems Designhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-machine-for-asking-what-if/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-machine-for-asking-what-if/The spreadsheet began as a student’s wish to stop recalculating a blackboard by hand and became the place where most of the world’s business decisions are modelled. It made every manager a programmer, every plan a set of adjustable assumptions, and every number look more certain than it is. Its history is the history of how organisations learned to think in scenarios, and of the errors that hide in a grid of cells.Sun, 19 May 2024 10:00:00 GMTProductivity ToolsDataEpistemologyHistory of ComputingProgramminghttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-machine-that-answers/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-machine-that-answers/For seventy years, artificial intelligence meant teaching machines rules. The systems that finally learned to talk did it by predicting the next word across most of the written internet. The result answers almost any question fluently, is right often enough to be useful and wrong often enough to be dangerous, and asks every organisation the same old question in a new form, which is when to trust a source you cannot check.Sun, 03 Mar 2024 10:00:00 GMTMind & ToolsEpistemologyEthicsHistory of ComputingInformationhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/machines-inside-machines/https://shrikantk.com/blog/machines-inside-machines/Virtualization is the art of making one computer convincingly behave like many, and many like one. It began in the 1960s as a way to share an expensive mainframe, nearly disappeared when computers became personal, and returned to become the hidden foundation of the cloud, containers and AI. Its history is a long argument about illusion, honesty and trust.Sun, 17 Dec 2023 10:00:00 GMTSystems DesignHistory of ComputingHardwareEpistemologyhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/ink-that-never-dries/https://shrikantk.com/blog/ink-that-never-dries/The word processor began as a machine for avoiding retyping and became the place where most of the world’s writing happens. Each generation removed one more part of the labour between an idea and a finished page. Now the software offers to write the first draft, and that changes what the tool believes writing is.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 10:00:00 GMTWritingProductivity ToolsInterface DesignMind & Toolshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/every-programming-language-is-a-theory-of-the-programmer/https://shrikantk.com/blog/every-programming-language-is-a-theory-of-the-programmer/A computer understands exactly one language, yet people have invented thousands. Each one is a bet about who will be writing the program, what they should be spared, and which mistakes they must never be allowed to make.Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:00:00 GMTProgrammingHistory of ComputingMind & ToolsEpistemologyhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-number-that-became-a-person/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-number-that-became-a-person/A telephone once rang in a place, a hallway or an office. The mobile phone made a number belong to a person, then turned that person’s phone into their computer, their camera, their wallet and their map. Each step was a decision, and each decision made the device more personal than the last.Sun, 30 Apr 2023 10:00:00 GMTHardwareInterface DesignCommunicationEthicshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/where-should-the-program-run/https://shrikantk.com/blog/where-should-the-program-run/The web was built for documents, and frameworks have spent thirty years making it behave like software. Every generation has moved the work between the server and the browser, and every move was a correction for the costs of the last one.Sun, 12 Feb 2023 10:00:00 GMTProgrammingThe WebSystems DesignOpen Standardshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/who-has-to-know-where-the-data-lives/https://shrikantk.com/blog/who-has-to-know-where-the-data-lives/The history of the database is one long argument about a single question. Should the person asking for data have to know how the machine stores it? Every generation has answered differently, and the answer keeps coming back.Sun, 27 Nov 2022 10:00:00 GMTDataHistory of ComputingSystems DesignEpistemologyhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/who-pays-for-a-message/https://shrikantk.com/blog/who-pays-for-a-message/Every communication technology since the telegraph has made sending cheaper. Each time, the cost did not disappear. It moved, from the person sending to the person receiving, and the history of collaboration software is the history of trying to put it somewhere fair.Sun, 11 Sep 2022 10:00:00 GMTCommunicationHistory of ComputingInformationEthicshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/the-universal-machine-and-the-end-of-the-free-lunch/https://shrikantk.com/blog/the-universal-machine-and-the-end-of-the-free-lunch/For half a century computing bet on one idea, a single general-purpose machine that could do anything, and physics paid for the bet by making it faster every year. When the payments stopped, computing went back to building machines for particular jobs, and gathered them into buildings that now draw as much electricity as nations.Sun, 26 Jun 2022 10:00:00 GMTHardwareSystems DesignHistory of ComputingEthicshttps://shrikantk.com/blog/an-address-anyone-can-write-to/https://shrikantk.com/blog/an-address-anyone-can-write-to/Email is a sixty-year-old idea that nobody owns and everybody has tried to own. It began as a note left in a shared computer, became an open protocol that trusted every stranger, and survived free webmail, spam, the BlackBerry, Gmail, a long line of reinvented inboxes and now artificial intelligence. Its history is a long negotiation over who may reach whom, and at what price.Sun, 23 Jan 2022 10:00:00 GMTCommunicationOpen StandardsHistory of ComputingEthicsSystems Designhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/everyone-you-know-and-everyone-you-dont/https://shrikantk.com/blog/everyone-you-know-and-everyone-you-dont/Social media began as a way to see your friends and became a way to be seen by strangers. Across thirty years, from SixDegrees and Friendster to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, each platform made a different bet about what people want from each other, and each bet reshaped friendship, fame, news and advertising. This is the history of those bets, the platforms that grew and vanished, the strategy that made Meta, and the psychology and philosophy underneath them.Sun, 07 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMTCommunicationEthicsMind & ToolsHistory of ComputingInterface Designhttps://shrikantk.com/blog/notes-that-talk-back/https://shrikantk.com/blog/notes-that-talk-back/For centuries people have built systems to hold what they read and think. Each generation of note-taking tool carries a different belief about what a note is for, and the newest tools force the oldest question back into the open.Sun, 10 Apr 2022 10:00:00 GMTProductivity ToolsMind & ToolsInformationEpistemology