Starting With The End In Mind

Step 1: more programmers. Step 2: more software. What’s Step 3?

I’m on a mission to help more people acquire software development skills. This has become a popular thing lately. It’s important for Kentucky, and important for America. Overnight (ie over the past 50 years), software has proliferated most aspects of your life. You may be in the software business and not even know it. In fact, some consider software to be an epidemic. But what happens once software eats the world? What will our technologically-digested world look like?

One option posited by Rick Webb is that we’ll develop a Star Trek-like post-scarcity economy. While Rick’s essay provides some insight as to a possible transition phase, the thought of a post-scarcity world sounds like utopian nonsense to me. But earlier this week, I saw an example of it, dreamed up by a high school student (in Minecraft). He had created a self-sustaining farm, complete with energy and food sources. The systems he had designed drastically reduced the amount of time needed to harvest food (chickens, cows, crops) and protect his homestead (from Creepers and other monsters that show up in the night). His setup allowed him to spend minimal daylight doing things necessary to survival, leaving more time for exploration and artistic creation. This is when I realized that this post-scarcity world may not be too far off, and the results may not be so bad. It’s possible (and maybe even probable) that in a world of abundance we wouldn’t decay into pleasure-seeking sloths, but rather pursue self-improvement and service of humanity. If today’s high school students can envision and construct (albeit in a virtual world) a vision of the future like this, then in the next few decades (when they’re running the world), perhaps this is what they’ll build.

Webb’s article is only one viewpoint, positing a broad vision of economic reorganization, leaving me without a conclusive viewpoint for how the world will look like after software eats it. I’ll have to keep digging. But I’m no less convinced that it’s going to happen. Software is everywhere, and there’s incredible value in learning how to harness it. Perhaps the unknown future the exciting part. By gaining skills in software development, you’ll get to choose what the future looks like. If you stay on the sidelines, however, then someone else will choose for you. If startup companies and online communities will be defining the world in which you will live, then not learning to code is like not exercising your right to vote.