Think about what you can do today that you could not 15 years ago. Hail a ride or start your car from a smartphone. Find a restaurant from your tablet. Monitor your fitness from a device on your wrist. Check availability of a product and order it from the nearest store anytime, anywhere.

Or what businesses are doing that they could not in 2000. Expose petabytes of data from legacy systems. Build new applications without reinventing the wheel. Share information instantly with customers, suppliers and partners. Develop. Monetize. In record time.

There’s something at work behind the scenes that’s powering the new economy, the App Economy. It’s greasing the exchange of information, a modern-day Rosetta Stone.

It’s called the Application Programming Interface. Scroll down to explore the story of APIs and how two companies are using them to power their digital futures.