Why mat|r?

I sketched out the original concept for mat|r in the summer of 2015. After decades of work on the bleeding edges of the man/machine interface I saw a convergence of trends that would require new tools for designing, building and managing the digital experience of the next internet:

 

Big Data and Machine Intelligence

By 2015 we already had machines that collected the data generated online. We had machines that curated the data and we were beginning to see machines that could mine actionable intelligence and insight from the data. As I write this in 2018 we can see a tsunami of machine generated insights and intelligence on the horizon that will overwhelm the abilities of human mediators to act on them.

 

We need applications that can be updated and transformed directly from machine intelligence, as well as a faster and more efficient way to create them.

 

A Ubiquitous Digital Experience

The proliferation of powerful mobile computing devices, the Internet of Things and the exponential growth of network bandwidth and connectivity is changing the way users experience the connected world. The page-centric, OS/device dependent paradigm of the first phases of the internet is outmoded and inadequate.

 

We need a language and development tools designed to model dynamic evolving experiences.

 

Inefficient Use of Development Resources

The 20-30 million working developers worldwide are one of the most critical resources of the 21st century economy. But this resource is not being used efficiently due to a tremendous amount of duplicated efforts, redundant work and siloed expertise.

 

We need to leverage social collaboration tools and open source technology to eliminate friction and waste from the development ecosystem.

 

The mat|r project

In November of 2015 myself and a small group of developers in Argentina launched what we then called Project Sofia (σοφία – wisdom in Greek) with the intention of building a solution that could solve the aforementioned challenges. As I write this in February of 2018, we have behind us 2 years of development that has resulted in mat|r. An open source, collaborative application development ecosystem for the 21st century.

 

Mat|r includes a high level, extensible, efficient language optimized for modeling digital experiences, the ability for apps to update themselves from an appmodel, easy methods for incorporating multiple data connections, and a collaborative hub where developers can share code in a frictionless plug and play environment.

 

We believe we have laid the foundation for a new kind of development ecosystem. Now, if we can create a community of like minded developers, mat|r will be able to fulfill its full potential. After two years of blood, sweat and tears things are about to get really interesting.

We invite you to have a look at mat|r. If you would like to learn more about, beta test or participate in the mat|r project please sign up here.