What is an API?

I have been doing little editing/clean-up bits for the upcoming “Stewarding Technology for Communities” book and one of the things we want to get right are the technical terms – and we want them to be understandable to people who may not be techies. One that I was chasing down yesterday was API, or Application Programming Interface. I wasn’t clear if APIs opened up access to functionality, the actual code, or both. I decided to ask my Twitter friends. Here is what I learned – I thought I would share it with you.

reply to NancyWhite

  • davecormier @nancywhite it’s like exposing the underside of a lego block. if you make your block to fit the holes, you can connect to it 04:27 PM January 02, 2008
  • D’Arcy Norman dnorman @nancywhite: APIs expose functionality so you can write your own code to incorporate it. 01:17 PM January 02, 2008
  • Chris Lott fncll @NancyWhite also depends on what is meant by “access” to code– a proprietary system w/API can provide access to code 11:13 AM January 02, 2008
  • Chris Lott fncll @nancywhite APIs provide access to existing functions, code and data, any or all of which can be used to further functionality. 11:12 AM January 02, 2008
  • Scott Leslie sleslie @nancyWhite forget what I just said. I thought you were asking a different question. Just waking up. 11:42 AM January 02, 2008
  • Scott Leslie sleslie @NancyWhite both, it depends. Some API’s focused around giving you functionality, other’s around data (though w/ data, there are other ways) 11:41 AM January 02, 2008
  • Jan Karlsbjerg JanKarlsbjerg @NancyWhite API’s make FUNCTIONALITY accessible to other programs/programmers. 11:38 AM January 02, 2008
  • Lion Kimbro LionKimbro @NancyWhite: APIs make functionality accessible. Even if code is available, I wouldn’t necessarily call it “accessible.” 12:21 PM January 02, 2008

I’m not a whale

phytoplanktonI pretty much ignored work, blogs, and Twitter over the holidays to be more present with my family and to give my brain a break from thinking about work all the time. (By-product of a work-a-holic practice.) I did go through my Twitter contacts and accept all the requests to follow. Then I made my feed public. It was the “Return of the Plankton.” The convergence of those two things put me over the edge. The flow from Twitter was more than I could digest. I lost the feeling of intimacy of connecting with friends and friendly strangers.

Then I read Jim Benson’s recent post on Twitter, Seeds of a Meme. And I started nodding.

Twitter has been called a conversation ecosystem. It is actually part of a larger conversation ecosystem that includes .. well .. everything. Blogging, Facebook, email, chats at a coffee shop, daydreams.I see Twitter as a plankton layer-level of the ecosystem. Every animal on earth does not need to eat plankton, but without plankton we’d all be in a world of hurt. “Everyone twittering” seems like an absolute nightmare.

Everyone will not be twittering.  Everyone will not be blogging.

But conversations will start in one medium and move to another and then another.  From Twitter to blogs to mainstream media to public discourse.  Twitter and its successors will seed the conversations of the future.

White filter feeding anemone

Spot on, Jim.

From a practice perspective, I have to trim back down the number of people who follow me. I’m not sure I care if my feed is public or not, but it does act as a filter on requests to follow and discovery of new people. It’s not that I’m against discovery, I just can’t handle the volume.

I am not a whale, a filter feeding white anemone, damselfish, nor a basking shark. I do not eat plankton as my primary diet. My form does not have enough of those feathery things, with large surface areas to filter in all the phytoplankton. For my phytoplankton (Twitter) is seasoning to the rest.