Does Anybody Remember Sharing?

Have you noticed all the folks bragging about the cool new tools they’ve hacked up using AI? In the last month or so, I’ve read newsletters from half a dozen or so people detailing vibe-coded apps that help them do research, organize their life, or even build entire websites. And it’s not just media types who are building things. As I wrote about earlier, my son built a custom CRM system for his company over one weekend. That kind of capability is impressive. It feels like something new and big is underway.

Which got me thinking. If we’re all hacking up these cool tools, how come we can’t share them with each other? Why are we all consigned to re-invent the wheel each time we want to build, say, a “Searchblog Query Engine“?

Back at the dawn of digital technologies, when the PC was young and the Web a dream in the distant future, a vibrant sharing culture emerged around the Macintosh. I was part of the early Mac scene in the mid to late 1980s, and I vividly recall the excitement of getting new software utilities from friends and colleagues in the industry. These were neat hacks built by passionate tinkerers and validated by peer review and word of mouth.

Most utilities came via “sneaker net” — IE, they arrived via a beat up 3.5-inch floppy disk carried from one user to another. They often came with a business model known as “shareware” or…