What I mean by that is that with each iteration of a new programming language – the language itself, while it does become slightly more complicated, tends to move closer to a human language.

So, for example, binary leads to assembly leads to fortran leads to lisp etc, etc.

The “social media” language (# signs that represent tags in twitter, the @ sign, etc) are closer to human language than “00011100″.

Maybe I’m fooling myself but I like to think that the future of computers – their place in our social world – is an invisible one, where there are no learning boundaries for people. There are no walls to keep people out.

I think, while we certainly are making up the language as we go, that the language is moving closer and closer to being our spoken language; and therefore an open door to anyone that may want to contribute.

In the short term you’re absolutely correct: an understanding of the social network language makes us stronger and more capable of living in this new world; but in the long term, I hate the idea of boundaries.

I would hope that we will advance to a point beyond specific “computer languages,” where the tools that we have surrounded ourselves with understand what we want and help us to achieve our goals and most importantly understand our language.

I like what Dr Mani shared about the predictions: “the ‘Web’ seem an outdated idea, like ‘multimedia.’” That really struck something with me, although it does make me slightly worried about the role of professional designers in the future :\

That’s the rough premise.

I’m sure that they were saying the same thing when the Dewey Decimal System was introduced and people started using it.

This is why I am excited about OpenSocial whereas many are skeptical of Google’s intentions. I think it’s a good thing to have an open standard platform for development on the web. It will only help innovation and development time.

Pai

It’s only when we give up “knowing” where we are going or need to go that we open ourselves up to truth, surely? And your positivistic programming metaphor doesn’t seem to me to foster this kind of Zen Mind state.

All that said, the social web *is* at a stage right now where we do need “programming” skills just to use the damn thing, motivations not-withstanding. So from that point of view, absolutely I agree with the utility of your metaphor.

Let’s just not forget the larger goal—of facilitating the evolution of the web such that it comes to be transparent to our time and space-shifted *human* communication. : )

The point is that we have tools we can use in varied ways. YouTube is an expression system. What if you used YouTube to embed a series of 6 disparate videos to tell a story *you* want to tell. That’s a program.

@Whitney- with learning everything, we must learn in the best possible human means and methods, just as we learn other skills. Thank *.deity you’re in the game. You get the methods of education *and* the subject matter. :)

People talk about the “computer” but the truth is, one’s body is already an organic machine that works with nodes, messages, etc; And so does every social organism on the planet.

It’s a beautiful thing.