The 'new paradigm'

Tim O'Reilly:

"I have a simple test that I use in my talks to see whether my audience of computer industry professionals is thinking with the old paradigm or the new. "How many of you use Linux?" I ask. Depending on the venue, 20 to 80 percent might raise their hands. "How many of you use Google?" Every hand in the room goes up. And the light begins to dawn. Every one of them uses Google's massive complex of 100,000 Linux servers, but they were blinded to the answer by a mindset in which "the software you use" is defined as the software running on the computer in front of you. Most of the "killer apps" of the Internet-applications used by hundreds of millions of people-run on Linux or FreeBSD. But the operating system as properly defined is to these applications only a component of a larger system. Their true platform is the Internet".

Can you see what the relevance of this little tidbit is to the post below?