# Re-platforming

By [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2) · 2022-10-16

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For the last few years, my home office has involved a Microsoft Surface computer, a docking station, 2 external monitors and a bunch of peripherals.

I’m in the midst of restructuring now to make the home office MacBook Pro-centric.

It would be nice if I could use the exact same hub for the MacBook Pro as I do for the Surface, but I can’t.

Each vendor wants me “locked in” to their platform.

It creates switching costs, literally, in the form of buying a new hub, new adapters, and in time, in the form or trying to engineer a solution.

This is the business model of the 20th century. And it has extended into the digital realm, to include our social media apps and financial apps, just to name a few. Go ahead, try to migrate all of your assets, information, debit cards, and credit information from Bank A to Bank B.

We’ll wait.

The vision of the digital-based business model of the 21st century, relying upon public decentralized ledgers is one where re-platforming is trivial.

Because everything is open and permissionless, switching costs due to lock-in are almost non-existent.

What “locks” you into an app (or a dapp) is the user experience. It’s the community. It’s not the technology.

We should be able to move our assets however we want, whenever we want (within a few legal boundaries, of course, but I don’t think switching from Microsoft to Apple is one of those).

One day, and probably sooner than we think, we will.

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*Originally published on [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2/re-platforming)*