The future of the world will be impacted in major ways by big data and artificial intelligence.  That much is undeniable, right?

But how is data accessed and how does AI make connections and recommendations between technologies, data sets, and users?  Through something called an API, or Application Programming Interface.

APIs are already big but they’re sure to get a whole lot bigger. The founding team behind Siri, for example, is making headlines with a new AI assistant called Viv that’s all about weaving together different technologies from different products and services, through their APIs of course.  Uber’s API is huge news.  Amazon Alexa’s voice API is big.  IBM’s Watson is all about building out an ecosystem of empowered applications through its API.  Not just web technologies but buildings, infrastructures, all kinds of things are going to have interfaces to program applications on top of them.

APIs are the technical pathway through which the symphony of combinatorial innovation is being built.

Here’s the fascinating news of the day: the most influential man in the world of APIs, Kin Lane, has just put his website APIEvangelist.com up for sale.  Kin built API Evangelist up to become one of the most important technical blogs in the world, with his bare hands and support from sponsors, and now he’s walking away from it to dedicate the next months of his life to support a member of his family.  It’s a beautiful, inspiring story of a man sacrificing something great he’s built for the love of family, for principals, for empathy, for healing.  It’s incredible.

In the meantime, APIs are poised to be the glue of the big data, artificial intelligence enriched world, and API Evangelist already has that community’s ear with its blog posts, best practice guides, and great social presence.

We all have until Friday to enter bids to buy it.  Bidding starts at $10,000. I hope someone pays a lot of money for it and does great things with it.

Below: From a Little Bird report on the most influential people and organizations in the world of APIs. These are the API experts that other API experts follow most.