...what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user.An exerpt of a text by Olia Lialina. Linked as part of an ongoing discussion by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing about the “The coming war on general computation”. Bruce Sterling on Beyond the Beyond sees "Turing-Completeness" in a bit more cynical light.
People are musing about ubiquitous computing a lot these days.
3 comments:
I just returned from a week long vacation and will weigh in on this tomorrow. :-)
I haven't owned an iOS or Android device, so I've been shielded from the "app" explosion of recent years, which I think the author is mostly concerned with. I can say that programming has factored more-and-more into my home and work projects. At work, things that may have been drudgery or frustratingly error-prone are now interesting automation problems. At home, I program because it's fun.
I don't know if I want to be too down on people who want to just treat the computers in their lives like appliances. What I am concerned about is that there is less smooth transition from being a computer user to building things with computers.
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