[neild]

My first computer booted into a BASIC interpreter. That was pretty awesome, and gave me an early window into programming. On the other hand, it didn't have a lot of things. It didn't have a text editor. It didn't have anything other than a BASIC interpreter. I knew that the games I played on that machine weren't written in BASIC, but I didn't know where to go to learn how they were made.

My current computer, made by Apple, comes with interpreters for several languages, all more powerful than BASIC. It comes with text editors. And, best of all, it comes connected to an Internet from which I can not only download interpreters and compilers for all sorts of languages, but find extensive documentation on how to use them.

A child today has access to so much more in the way of programming tools than I did. We live in a glorious golden age of hobbyist programming.

[joebadmo]

I think the author's point is that the post-PC era implies that the golden age you're describing is dying, replaced with a clean future, wherein people don't have computers with text editors and that can run interpreters and compilers etc.

The children of the post-PC future will only have access to iPads. Or Kindle Fires, as pure a consumption device as I can imagine.

[neild]

The children of the post-PC future will only have access to iPads. Or Kindle Fires, as pure a consumption device as I can imagine.

Why would you think that would happen?

And while I'm at it, why is "consumption device" an insult? Books are consumption devices. Nobody sneers at a child with a book.

[joebadmo]

Sorry, that part was hyperbolic. But it's true that what the author is describing is the end of precisely the golden age you desribe. To whatever degree consumption devices replace production devices, there will be less exposure to them.

It's not an insult. But consumption devices are lamentable as far as they replace production devices. I love books, and I don't sneer at children who read them. But I would like all children to have access and exposure to writing tools so they realize that they too make books.

[freshhawk]

Books are a horrible example of a consumption device, the printing press profoundly opened up the ability to write and distribute books and ideas.

Sure, the modern pace of life makes writing and printing a book seem difficult but at the time modern books were a fantastic democritization of the ability to produce literature and distribute ideas compared to the status quo of being illiterate and going to church to be read to by those with access to the books.

[glhaynes]

Nobody's gonna buy devices that let them create in those ways anymore? Surely there will be demand for things to be created in the forms that those devices aren't good at creating for.

[joebadmo]

You're right, that was probably too hyperbolic.

But I think the author's point is that part of his penchant for making is due to exposure as a child. In a post-PC era, even if professionals still have PCs, many fewer people will than do today, because they won't need them. That means fewer people, fewer children will be exposed to them as the author was. I think it's a valid concern.

[glhaynes]

That I agree with.

I suppose I (personally) think it's generally inevitable (and even mostly good!) that machines continue to evolve the way they are doing now - "good" primarily because the newer types of systems provide so much more creative power to non-engineering types, which make up the majority of people.

But, as someone who is deeply interested in computers today primarily because of the power that was available to me as a young child on an early PC, I think that one of the most noble goods that can be done for the future is to provide tools to allow future generations to have access to similar capabilities for exploration and design like we had. The most obvious way to do so seems to me to be "open Web" tools. Web stuff that lets kids play the way we did in BASIC (hopefully even better!) seems like a really good thing to me.

[chernevik]

Today you can build a brand-spanking new computer for $800, less if you skip the fancy graphics card and speakers. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2011/03/ars-system-gui...

There may be fewer of these sitting around living rooms. But a greater proportion will be available to dual-boot as Dad won't be so worried about losing his TurboTax data.

The devices supplementing or supplanting them will give kids access to the entire library of human writing prior to 1900, plus an extraordinary ability to review art and musical history. They'll be one copyright violation away from K&R. They will essentially be dropped into the Library of Congress, with the Louvre and the Hermitage bolted on at one annex. In the basement will be the nightclubs of Harlem and the salons of Vienna. This is before anyone uses these things for anything _new_. And these contraptions are somehow _limiting_?

Nor will they remain closed. Proprietary tablet systems will suffer the same relentless competition that has grown $600 of desktop from pipe-dream to humdrum commodity. People and companies will code these things precisely to match the capabilities, and revenues, now locked away.

I get the philosophic distaste for closed systems. But haven't the past ten years demonstrated that, in a free market, they can't stay closed? Or that the revenues available to proprietary innovators can motivate accelerations in innovation? Worries about "closed" were one thing in 1995 when people thought they were doomed to Windows. Maybe it's time to adjust the anxieties for what we've seen of the long-term competitiveness of "open".

[fpgeek]

Plenty of people reference things like Apple's dominance of the tablet market and Apple's profitability compared to other device manufacturers and claim that "this time it's different". That may be famously wrong with respect to the stock market, but we have relatively few examples of the evolution and adoption of computing platforms so I'd say it is a much harder call here.