The Intention Economy

22

APIs

Baking an organization’s core competence into API is an economic imperative.

—Craig Burton¹

THE ARGUMENT

Customer intentions need contexts, and ways to interact with vendors in real time. Thus, to operate in the urban environs of the World Live Web, every company needs to manifest what it does in ways that can be engaged and put to use. That’s what APIs will do.

In the early 1980s, when computers on desktops began to replace the “dumb terminals” of corporate computing systems, “local area networks”—better known as LANs—were required. Competition was fierce between different LAN data protocols (Ethernet vs. Token Ring), wiring topologies (bus vs. ring vs. star), cabling (thick and thin twisted pair, coaxial, twin-axial, and other ...