The democratization of computing is going to eat the world
The computing revolution is following the footsteps of a familiar social structure — democracy. It follows similar principles — open for participation and empowering the individual. It also has similar challenges, most importantly, trust in its core institutions. In this article, I delve into the popular trends in the world of computing and how one needs to think about them.
Since time immemorial, technology has been shaped to serve human needs. As our social interactions evolve, our expectations from technology also change and this leads to innovation and discovery. For most of the medieval times, across the world, human society was highly stratified and controlled by a small section of society. Technology also evolved in a limited way to serve only the needs of that section so that they could perpetuate their control over the masses. However, over the last couple of centuries, we’ve embraced newer social and political structures that are much more open and inclusive. Technology evolution has flourished under this new system and it continues to evolve to meet our needs.
Take the case of the internet. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that the technology was inspired by and also follows the newer social structures of the times — democracy and the various “freedoms” (speech, movement, identity, etc.). In fact, even the current challenges of the internet are similar to the ones we have in democracy — trust in its institutions.
In this article, I make the argument that newer forms of technology emerging right now in the computing domain will follow a similar evolution path. We are already witnessing this, so most of these points will not be a surprise to anyone. However, this thought process forms a decent framework when looking at what is the potential of future tech innovations.
1. No-code experience for everyone
Democracy literally means “rule by the people” in Greek. Everyone should be able to participate in it, irrespective of their skill level in order for its success. This ideal is translating to the world of software. Today, it is becoming a must for software products to be made more inclusive. Everyone should be able to use it irrespective of their skill levels.
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, software was designed to be feature-rich with complex functionality, designed for the expert. In fact, if you look around, you’ll find an entire cottage industry still dedicated to teaching people Microsoft Excel. However, the future is no-code and, going one step further, it will be about beautifully-designed software products with an almost zero learning curve. Even the enterprise software world that has been notorious for poorly designed products will see a renaissance in this upcoming wave. A major reason behind the rise of popular cloud service providers like AWS and Azure is to make the task of provisioning computing resources as low-code (and no-code) as possible.
If you’re building a product today which involves someone taking a day-long course to learn how to use it for the first time, you will need a really really good reason for this.
2. Self-service on the rise
No democracy should tolerate power only in the hands of a few privileged members of society. Democracy gives a sense of empowerment and freedom to the individual. Technology is being shaped in the same manner today — empowering the individual. This technology evolution is causing a silent revolution in enterprises today.
Rewind back two decades, and you would find a sharp divide between the IT (information technology) division and other functions of a business. Call up customer support of a business and chances are that you would probably need to wait a day before your ticket gets resolved after the issue is fixed by IT. Even now, quite a few individuals working in business units feel stifled by the software they use, managed by IT, and this directly affects their productivity. The rise of enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies tries to break this dependency by providing software to make individuals in different business functions of an enterprise more self-sufficient. Also, if you think self-service is only a trend in the enterprise software world, you have probably not visited an Amazon Go store yet.
If you’re building a product today which enables the user to be less dependent on someone else to achieve their primary objective, you are on the right track.
3. Trust is the foundation
Democracy can’t work unless individuals trust its institutions (judiciary, legislature, government) and believe that it will work in their best interests. This will hold true for technology as well and we can already see its effects around us in both consumer and enterprise products.
Self-service and no-code alone will no longer make a product successful. Trust is essential and can’t be an afterthought. It comes in many forms for software products — a highly secure experience, ensuring privacy for everyone and safe interaction among different stakeholders. However, building trusted products remains harder than ever. Yet few companies have made enabling trust, core to their business model and tech stack, like Airbnb.
If you’re building a product today and trying to move fast and break things, without focusing on trust, you need to think twice before following your role-model’s every spoken word.
4. And it will eventually democratize every other industry…
As computing seeps into every aspect of life, it will democratize the core functions of every industry, especially those which are consumer-facing. Computing technology has changed the core expectations consumers have from their interactions with businesses. If you work in an industry that has a high service component or end-consumer involvement (financial services, education, health care or retail), chances are that this has already touched you in some way.
Take the case of the financial services industry here in the US and then compare it to India. After coming to the US for my graduate studies, I realized how truly inefficient the financial system really is. Even though the modern financial economy had moved beyond the traditional nine to five, it still takes more than one business day to transfer money across bank accounts in the US via the automated clearinghouse (ACH) system. Developing countries like India had already shifted to modern payment systems like the unified payment interface (UPI) which brings the transaction costs between two parties to real-time and at nearly zero cost. In a country with more than a billion people, such technology is truly bringing democratic ideals to everyone’s doorstep.
Are you excited about the future of technology? Do you disagree with what you read here? Reply to this post and start a conversation!
Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.
