In this article about online Ajax desktops like netvibes and pageflakes, Dion Hinchcliffe says: "As important sources of information only continue to proliferate, it's driving a desire to simplify and centralize their consumption." This is like saying that as cuisine proliferates we'll all choose food courts in shopping malls instead of going out to actual restaurants to eat. It makes rational sense, but since when have people been rational? I actually use netvibes, but it has its limits. For example, viewing your del.icio.us tags via rss in some other program or site has distinct disadvantages relative to actually going to del.icio.us and dealing with your tags and urls there. The same is true of bloglines. Moreover, it is reasonable to expect that this will always be true. Why? Context matters. The importance of context, both for programmers and users cannot be overstated. Context makes the difference between "anytime/anywhere" thinking versus "location-aware" thinking. This kind of language problem has been an issue for some time, ever since the advent of the ATM. But the fact of the matter is that words like "centralized" and "decentralized" presuppose a hierarchical structure.For example, is the ATM a "success story" for centralization or decentralization? What exactly is being centralized or decentralized? Banks use centralized account management, but decentralized points-of-access. This is different than Paul Baran's notion of decentralization (say, packet switching) where the actual intelligence (i.e. work) in the system is pushed to endpoints. These Ajax desktops are exactly the opposite of ATMs and the old mainframe-style architecture: the new way centralizes access but decentralizes intelligence. The presence of open interoperability standards (like RSS, or the del.icio.us or google APIs) makes this possible. But, does it really even do that? After all, the fact that the desktop is on the web makes it available to decentralized access, no? So, in delightful postmodern fashion, we see then inevitable breakdown of old descriptors as we are confronted with the webby non-linear non-hierarchial nature of new structures and processes. Descriptors like "centralized" and "decentralized" are part of the industrial-era lexicon. Lets leave them there. :-)