information technology evolving similar to how American cities have evolved?

I love essays like this that stretch my thinking and give me new conceptual models for understanding what I see happening each day. According to Pat Helland's “Metropolis“ article, “we are at approximately the early 1880's in urban development in our parallel IT shop's growth!“ I also like his explanation of why “shared services will not be achieved by trying to put all of your applications on one version of one platform”.  I'm going to use his material for my next series of discussions on “why SOA“.

Source: Steve Kirk