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layout: default
section: Timeline
title: Resources Timeline
summary: 59 digital resources made available via APIs, from Salesforce contacts in 2000 to MCP tools and context in 2024.
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nav: Timeline
sub: Resources
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          <p>I wanted to take my API timeline, or at least the last 25 years of it, and look at it differently — generalizing the digital resources that companies were making available rather than just the moments in time. This timeline currently tracks 59 resources, beginning with the contacts and relationships Salesforce put online in 2000 and running through payments, messages, images, compute, storage, and models, up to the tools and context being made available via MCP servers in 2024. Considered together, they show how the accumulation of digital resources keeps making new things possible.</p>

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          <p>These are the digital resources that make up our personal and professional lives, and we are at a stage of evolution where most companies are reinventing the wheel, with very few reusing, resharing, and standardizing around common patterns. I'd like to tell more stories about how we can embrace the commoditization of these digital resources, allowing them to be standardized and made consistent no matter which company is publishing the API. For the fuller story of how we got here, see my <a href="https://apievangelist.com/timeline/api/">API timeline</a>, and for where regulation may take us, my <a href="https://apievangelist.com/timeline/industry/">industry timeline</a>.</p>
  
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