The Business of Platforms: Its Anomalous, but It Isn’t: A Tale of Two Platforms in a Cosmological Constant

This conceptual slipperiness is surprising given how often platforms are brought up in contemporary techno-discourse. There are advertising platforms, social media platforms, platforms that help you manage your accounts across other platforms, as well as cloud platforms, product platforms and platforms for dog walking. “Platform businesses” constitute some of the largest, fastest growing businesses in high- and middle-income economies, serving as near monopolies in many cases. There are people who believe that the body might one day become a platform. We are, in short, living in a world of “platformania,” as the authors of the recent book The Business of Platforms have phrased it.

It should give us pause to notice that something this axiomatic to our understanding of modern digital culture is not being fully examined. When it comes to large-scale apparatuses, however, blurriness tends to be a feature, not a bug.

A tale of two poles: duality in the historical usages of the term “platte 4me” and its relation to a railway platform at Grand Central

A tension between the real and ideal, as well as the nature of modern platforms, can be found in the history of the term. One can see a constant back and forth between the two poles when tracing the usage of the term. Take a look at the transitions between platte fourme (as a ground plan, design, or platform) and platform as a body of beliefs. Through its evolution, the term seems to flitter between abstract and concrete. Even if you only look closer, we can see that dualism is found even in straightforward usages. Railroad platform refers to both the surface on which one can drop luggage while waiting for a train and the conceptual interface that allows passengers, train conductors, and timetables to work together. These train platforms are not simply physical waiting areas, but zones integrated into a larger informational network; Platform 5 at Grand Central is both a tangible place made of concrete and steel, and an informational node that must coordinate with a broader system to ensure the proper departure and arrivals of trains.