Diversifying your technology portfolio

You probably use a lot of technology.

Computers. Email. Videogames. Search. Blog. Microblog. Social network. Instant messaging. Browser. Cellphone.

The list goes on and on - and in many cases, wide swathes of these products are made by the same company. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Nokia, Sony - you can end up largely dependent on a single company for the bulk of your technology "stack."

And it's commonly marketed that this is in fact a good thing - products from the same company are expected to work better with each other, giving you more convenience and less hassle. This can be true, and in some ways I have followed it myself.

But there's a problem with this approach - you're much more sensitive to any changes. It may seem great to be deeply embedded in a particular ecosystem, but if that one company decides to change something in a manner you dislike it can have broader ramifications for you than for a typical user.

Further, it is actually a fallacy that sticking with one corporate "stack" is the ideal path towards interoperability. Any high quality technology, even if it is proprietary, should adhere to openly established standards that have been widely adopted. Good examples of this are email, XMMP, CD/DVD, RSS, and so forth.

So, I just wanted to take a moment to encourage you to diversify your technology portfolio. That is to say, take stock of what you depend on, and consider alternatives that may make you more robust to shifts in corporate strategy.

As intended by my rhetoric, you can think of this as analogous to a good investment strategy. You don't dump all your money in one company, so why dump all your time? It's an investment too, and I would argue a more important one.

I'll close by saying that this is not intended to be a particular criticism or message, but rather a general realization I reached recently that I decided to share. Of the companies I listed above, some arguably make significantly better products than others in most domains (I'll let you decide which is which there). But even if the product is better, there is something to be said for diversification - which I suppose is why I just said it.

PS - For bonus points, include as much open source software as possible in your personal technology "stack." This has the added advantage of transparency, and it's safe to say there is not and almost certainly will never be a single corporate overlord for all OSS. If something happens that people don't like, development will be forked and the process will continue.

PPS - This approach may lead to more accounts/passwords, which is problematic. OpenID is one potential way to mitigate this problem.