About

logobig

I am a practitioner 1 and coder seeking dialogue with the Solid community after reading the book This Is For Everyone in which Sir Tim Berners-Lee explains how it is important for everyone that the web serves everyone. I generally agree with the views he expresses and with those I have seen in the Solid community. From a slightly different perspective, I have similar views in relation to software tools.

Jensen Huang predicts that "AI is going to eat software" in reference to Marc Andreessen's prediction in 2011 that software is eating the world. Behind these entertaining sound-bites, however, the effect on the world is more serious : software is a medium throught which humans are given agengy, so when AI swallows software humans will lose. I propose the term "natural computing" as both the literal opposite and the logical accompaniment to "artificial intelligence" : the ability to instruct computers could be made much more accessible to all, to the point where it becomes a basic literacy.

  1. The word "practitioner" can mean different things in different contexts. It is employed here in the sense of the merriam-webster definition : "one who practices or is regularly engaged in a skillful activity", and in particular here one who is engaged in the practical application of something developed by software specialists. It it employed in place of the word "user" to reduce the risk of implying passivity or inferiority. ↩