{"id":1750,"slug":"rule-three-drivers-decade-2004-2014-not-ai","title":"R1 — Anchor the falling-cost case on the decade 2004–2014 (infrastructure + parts + data); AI-assisted coding is NOT the spine","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["open-data","editorial-discipline","cloud-infrastructure-economics","commodity-web-parts"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** When writing or speaking about why \"real\" web functionality is now within SMB reach, anchor the argument on the **three structural drivers that got cheap on the dated 2004–2014 timeline** — infrastructure, the off-the-shelf parts, and data. Never anchor on AI-assisted coding.\n\n**Why:** The structural drivers are dated, sourced, and verifiable ([[timeline-three-drivers-converge-2004-2014]]). They predate AI-assisted coding by a decade. The case is more credible *because* it stands without AI — adding AI as the headline weakens it by making it sound like the latest hype cycle.\n\n**How to apply:**\n- Article ledes name the three drivers and their dated timeline; AI lands later, in a smaller paragraph, as recent acceleration at the margin.\n- Client conversations introduce the cost-floor story via S3/EC2/Stripe/Auth0/data.gov dates, not via \"AI changed everything.\"\n- See companion rule [[rule-keep-ai-coding-at-the-margin-not-as-spine]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"s3-launch-march-2006-15-cents-per-gb","title":"Amazon S3 launched March 14, 2006 at $0.15/GB — object storage as a metered utility","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"ec2-launch-august-2006-ten-cents-per-hour","title":"Amazon EC2 launched as limited public beta August 25, 2006 — single m1.small instance at $0.10/hour","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"stripe-launch-2011-tokenized-cards","title":"Stripe launched 2011 — card data never touches merchant server (Stripe.js → token), removing the heaviest PCI burden","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"datagov-launched-may-2009-47-datasets","title":"data.gov launched May 21, 2009 with 47 datasets — now 370,000+ (with >2,000 removed Jan 2025)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"timeline-three-drivers-converge-2004-2014","title":"Timeline 2004–2014: the decade when each of the three historically-expensive parts independently got cheap","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"magnitude-summary-storage-compute-bandwidth-structural","title":"Magnitude summary: storage ~85% / 7×; compute ~20×; bandwidth ~240×; plus the capex→opex structural shift","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-keep-ai-coding-at-the-margin-not-as-spine","title":"R2 — Keep AI-assisted coding at the margin; it lowers assembly labor recently but is not a structural driver","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-rent-commodity-parts-build-only-differentiated-logic","title":"R3 — Rent the commodity parts (Stripe / Auth0 / Algolia / RDS / Lambda); build only what is genuinely differentiated logic","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-falling-cost-floor-real-web-functionality-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the falling cost floor of \"real\" web functionality for SMBs (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-flag-vendor-incentive-on-cost-claims","title":"R6 — Flag the vendor incentive on every cost claim — AWS price-cut count, SaaS build-vs-buy ranges, agency portal estimates","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.696Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.696Z"}