B2B software is obsessed with becoming the "system of record".

For any given task, users can't have more than one system of record, it constantly collapses to a stable state of a single system of record.

The entity that is the system of record is the center of that universe; the point around which everything else orbits.

It is a discontinuously more sticky position to be in than alternatives.

An extraordinarily juicy prize that the best B2B companies have earned.

If you're the system of record, you've won.

If you aren't a system of record, you have only a tenuous grasp and are likely to lose it at any time.

A binary outcome of winners and losers.

Systems of record are a kind of gravity well.

Gravity wells are hyper centralization dynamics.

Systems of record are a phenomena we take for granted, a fundamental truth that must be so.

But their extreme importance is actually (at least partially) a consequence of our current laws of physics.

It's only in the same-origin model that you get such extreme centralization dynamics.

In alternate laws of physics, the concentration of power would be significantly less, making that prize less important… and the failure to achieve it less important.