ByrdCaleb

For the Programmable World to reach its full potential, we need to pass through three stages. The first is simply the act of getting more devices onto the network—more sensors, more processors in everyday objects, more wireless hookups to extract data from the processors that already exist. The second is to make those devices rely on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention. The third and final stage, once connected things become ubiquitous, is to understand them as a system to be programmed, a bona fide platform that can run software in much the same manner that a computer or smartphone can. Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers. It will change the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical. This might sound like a scary encroachment of technology, but the Programmable World could actually let us put more of our gadgets away, automating activities we normally do by hand and putting intelligence from the cloud into everything we touch.

I tell my own kids to invest in learning useful skills, whether the skill is programming, plumbing, writing, or fixing cars. Learning any skill well enough to make a living from it takes a lot of time and commitment. I also teach them that credentials are not the same thing as expertise, and the more competitive the job market gets the more skills and experience will be valued over credentials, especially as we figure out how degraded a lot of credentials really are. I teach my kids that they can learn anything they are interested in, but I can’t make them interested in any specific thing. And I tell them to be skeptical of advice like “Everyone must learn to code.

Not unlike rare-earth-mineral miners in African countries, money is flowing to those who aggregate data, not those who provide the raw materials. Orbitz kills travel agencies, Amazon kills bookstores, Coursera and Wikipedia kill non-elite academics.

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending; a negligent youth is usually attended by an ignorant middle age, and both by an empty old age.