7 ms·

Why I’m scared of the post-PC era.

90 points by hunterowens 15y ago

brackin 15y ago
Lots of innovation has come from post-PC devices, including all of the development for these app stores and jail breaking. Playing with my iPhone 4S, especially Siri. I know this is the future. Laptops will still be around for a long time, Microsoft's vision is confusing admittedly but I think not everyone needs a full computer. Those that do can have both or continue to use their computers. I think having a lower barrier to entry is always good and think we have to let the way we build things evolve otherwise it goes against this whole ideology.
- manojlds 15y ago
  He is talking about creating your own Siri and not "playing with Siri"
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - brackin 15y ago
    I understand, i'm talking about the way we interact with the device. Like when we saw the iPhone and really started to think about touch being a viable method of interaction between the user and device. You can't code with Siri, what i'm saying is letting Siri and touch innovate for consumers won't stop innovation in products for power users.
HappySushiCo 15y ago
The writer makes the wrong assumption that the current mobile devices (e.g. iPad) will never have the creation tools that the previous generations of computer have had. IMHO, it's only a matter of time. And in the same vein it's never been more accessible to build something better than what's out there and get it out to the public.
- timwiseman 15y ago
  I think that may be a fairly safe assumption. The very form factor of the Ipad and tables in their current incarnation makes them poorly suited for most types of content creation. However, among content producers tablets supplement rather than replace other form factors of computers for the time being. Also, docking stations are likely to improve and become more common. A future tablet which would be more powerful than current generations with a solid docking station that would support a full keyboard, mouse and second monitor is a standard computer with the ability to undock it temporarily when not doing real content creation...
  - forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
    "The very form factor of the Ipad and tables in their current incarnation makes them poorly suited for most types of content creation." Excuse me? The Ipad and the tablets are excellent for content creations. I created a program to analize the spectrum of voice in opengl, and multitouch is way more natural to manipulating thousands of things at the same time(realtime zoom, panning and selection). It feels like a highway for your mind not to be constrained by language(that is so slow). If you program using blocks it is way faster and easier than using keyboard. Do you really think that keyboard are so good for content creation, if you think so you need to look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sholes_typewriter.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sholes_typewriter.jpg ...look at the keys and then look at a computer keyboard. teletypes used typewriter machines because people got used to it, and then people made programming for teletypes as it was the only possible input on these days. It does not mean that it it the best input for a computer, far from it, you just have to redesign everything(as iphone did with the iphone) in the programming world too. Of course, this takes work and good programmers are lazy.
fleitz 15y ago
I'm not. Just port a basic interpreter to iPad, or write Logo for iPad. No one begets the fact that computers come preassembled now and no one needs to learn how to solder to have a computer. Imagine a basic interpreter that DOESN'T lose everything you typed in when you turn off your computer. The opportunities iPad enables far outweighs the cost of having to learn to program to use your computer. iPad will get more people using computers in more ways which while reducing the percentage of computer users who can program will vastly increase the overall number of programmers.
- marbu 15y ago
  I agree that the device offers many opportunities. Nevertheless it's not just about porting some interpreter, you also have to deal with apple policy which is not that friendly to such ideas. See for example how Scratch was rejected last year: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/.
  - william42 15y ago
    Apple doesn't control the Internet, and while HTML5 has its own limitations, you could still probably port Logo to it, especially since Logo isn't all that complicated.
- reemrevnivek 15y ago
  Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Apple's TOS have some significant restrictions on running interpreters. Some have been allowed, though. For more information, see Section 3.3.2 of the iOS App Store Review Guidelines, and the following posts on lua-list: http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Ok-Apple-has-released-its-grip-td5514402.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Ok-Apple-has-released-... http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-on-iOS-again-was-programming-Lua-with-Coders-for-iPad-td6571144.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-on-iOS-again-was-p... http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/iLuaBox-Now-Available-Run-Lua-on-Your-iPad-td5666322.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/iLuaBox-Now-Available-... Also, s/begets/regrets/
rbranson 15y ago
The "post-PC era" is a myth. The only thing that's stayed constant about computing is it's growing ubiquity.
- mcantelon 15y ago
  Exactly... PCs and mobile devices have existed in parallel for some time. "Post-PC" is a propaganda term.
  - vacri 15y ago
    I think it's more meant to be "bulk of computers people use in general won't be traditional desktops/laptops" and less "desktops/laptops are going to be eradicated"
kylemccann 15y ago
I think I will be like those old men who still rave about their vinyl records and would part with them. As long as Pc devices as we know them such as desktops and laptops are produced and supported by websites and apps I will use them. I believe there will always be a use for a more physical computing experience..
steve8918 15y ago
Meh. Unfounded fears. There will always be computers/desktops/laptops. Just because tablets and smartphones are ubiquitous doesn't mean that they won't exist. People will always want huge monitors, and there will always be programmers. Granted, in 20 years it might not be someone sitting in front of 3 LCD screens, but it will be something.
- groovy2shoes 15y ago
  Sure, but desktops and laptops are starting to become more and more like tablets and smartphones. Look at the changes that started in Lion, especially the Sandboxes. Look at what is in store for us with Windows 8. It seems to me that if things keep heading in the same direction, laptops will end up just as locked-down as tablets. If you think that the market will never let it happen, realize that at least 80% of consumers only really use their computers for the web and/or for games. What do you use your smartphone for?
zachrose 15y ago
Paraphrasing Kevin Kelly, there are more stone hammers being made today than at any time in human history.
nbashaw 15y ago
True, our kids won't grow up hacking the same systems we did, just like we didn't grow up hacking the same systems as our parents. But there is something basic to the human spirit that guarantees as long as this branch of the gene pool is still around, we'll still tinker and build and create. It's just that the blocks are constantly changing. Which keeps things interesting, and is a good thing.
- mturmon 15y ago
  Yes. The fact that all these useful sensors (touch, display, camera, location, attitude, wifi/3g) are integrated in one small, portable, and not-that-expensive device opens interesting new possibilities. Think of the hobbyists who send their phone into space on a balloon.
- lucasjake 15y ago
  Exactly. The end of the PC era doesn't give rise to the 'iPad era,' it gives rise to Ubiquitous computing, and Apple knows this. The trajectory goes: mainframe: one computer, many people personal computer: one computer, one person ubiquitous computing: many computers to many people If anything, people are going to be programming the shit out of everything in the future, not pulling back.
  - 5hoom 15y ago
    Agreed 100%. Someone, somewhere will have to program all these wonderful gadgets. While it is conceivable that all development will occur only inside big mega-corps, I somehow doubt it. People have a voracious appetite for new content. Smart money is on the tools to create new stuff becoming more widespread, not less.
- bigiain 15y ago
  Yep, the more things change, the more they stay the same... When I was a kid, you could but germanium diodes and ferrite core coils, and make yourself a crystal radio - it was _magic!_ But... There was no way I could have gotten hold of something like an Arduino - probably not for _any_ sort of money, never mind the sort of budget kids birthday or Xmas presents run to... The same with a lot of other stuff, I had to wait till my first paper round job to be able to save up enough money to buy the ~$200 (in 1982 dollars) radio control gear before I could build an rc plane. These days that's $24 or so delivered from China... I remember playing with my fatyer's grandfathers predecessor to Meccano, stone building blocks with pressed steel girders. I suspect children today probably look on historical toys like lego with similar charm/disdain...
antimora 15y ago
Innovation will always happen. However as time progresses, the context of new ideas and innovations will change. New things will be invented in terms of existing ideas or viewpoints, as Alan Kay likes to refer [1]. [1] - http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/ http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/ Legos, I should remind, are existing technology, which didn't exist in 2 centuries ago. And I am sure stones and sticks were precursors to the invention of Legos, and now Legos will be replaced with computers as a tinker device.
Vivtek 15y ago
Your iPad has a browser. That browser runs HTML5 and JavaScript. That's the quick way to get to something programmable. If you want to get down and dirty, drop thirty bucks on an Arduino. Personally, I think the post-PC era is going to be even more awesome.
- wanorris 15y ago
  Totally agree on the browser. But as an aside, can you program an Arduino if all you have is an iPad? Or would you have to go buy a general-purpose PC for somewhat more than $30?
  - wiredfool 15y ago
    There's now a blessed serial cable with a dock connector, and some form of an arduino programming environment on the iPad. The only drawback is that the cable is more expensive than the arduino.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    I could program an Arduino with a pair of tweezers, son. ... Seriously, I have no idea. I suppose Apple's too cool for USB ports, but maybe Wifi? That ups the cost of your Arduino setup, it's true, but still - there has to be something you can do to communicate between your iPad and your Arduino that doesn't involve a general-purpose machine in between.
akat 15y ago
The "post-PC era" is greatly exaggerated. It may eventually happen but only for those kinds of consumers who would have never bothered with LEGO anyways. For hackers, the PC (or Mac) isn't going anywhere. In other words, if everyone uses the iPad, who creates iPads and all the apps?
eren-tantekin 15y ago
What he described is not really the post-pc era, but the Apple era.
xarien 15y ago
Let me preface this by stating that much I'm about to post, I've learned from my 18 month old boy. Aside from the sentimentality of a parent watching his kid develop physical and mental abilities, it's a very interesting phenomenon watching the way the development occurs. Kids basically learn one of two ways: imitation and exploration. Imitation being quite simple, so I'll move right on the exploration. Now, there's recently been a lot of discussion whether kids in America are being hampered by overprotective parents. I believe that notion is quite correct. My son has legos, but he also has access to my touchpad and android phone. To him, they're not so different. Legos teach him that he can piece them together to make new things or break them apart for the components (creativity). The electronics teach him that there is a logical action and reaction (logic). It's absolutely amazing the first time I saw his eyes light up because he figured out how to wake the device from sleep or how to unlock it. It's a physical indication that a neural connection has been made in his head. To me, that indicates these types of tools will indeed facilitate a much earlier exposure to logic we have not seen in previous generations. So to come full circle, I don't think the death of legos (I don't really foresee it happening) will hamper our kids because there will be other mediums. As long as we don't hamper exploration, kids will develop both creativity and logic.
- gbog 15y ago
  This. When my kid will be big enough I'll buy him toys he can break, like Legos, later I'll buy him gadgets he can break, like PCs, open garden tablets. If it results in him having to fiddle the os in order to bypass the antiporn barrier I'll setup, it will be all for the best.
sunahsuh 15y ago
My family didn't own a computer until after I had read my first programming book (I was in 2nd grade, the computer in my classroom fascinated me, and the public library had a book about BASIC.) Curiosity always finds a way.
comex 15y ago
There are multiple BASIC and Scheme interpreters in the App Store, as well as apps for writing HTML documents. If you want to write proper apps, an iOS developer certificate costs money, but so did Visual Basic back in the day, and on Android or a jailbroken iPhone it's free. Post-PC devices are inherently bad for programming because they don't have proper keyboards, but by the same token you'll likely have access to a keyboarded computer to do homework on, at least until someone invents a new input method that's better for both. (Nuance dictation for code, anyone?)
- randomdata 15y ago
  Post-PC devices are inherently bad for programming because they don't have proper keyboards I went on a road trip this summer and continued to do some programming while on it. I found the iPad to be more comfortable than my laptop when sitting in the passenger seat. A keyboard is pretty hard to beat when you've got a desk in front of you, but when you are left in weird positions, the iPad actually isn't that bad for editing code.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
abuzzooz 15y ago
Not sure if the Lego example is a good one. Lego has been available for over 60 years, and still going strong. According to his website, the OP is 18 years old. If his fears had any basis, then Lego would have disappeared way before he was born. Another important point is that our experiences shape us in specific ways. Our kids' experiences will shape them differently. Having iPads does not make them any less inventive or curious. It's just that we can not imagine, today, what they will think of in the future.
netmute 15y ago
You may be 18, but you sound like an ignorant old man. "Back in my day, we wrote our own BASIC programs! That's how we got good!" There will be new and unexpected ways to create and tinker with technology. Don't give in to the "old man thinking", change is good.
- orangecat 15y ago
  change is good Improved technology is good. Companies attempting to dictate how you're allowed to use that technology is bad.
  - ugh 15y ago
    But they don’t. They clearly don’t. Apple has no monopoly.
icandoitbetter 15y ago
There's a surprising amount of belief in historical determinism in the discussion here, which is utterly unjustified. It is easy to believe that the future will fix itself on its own. But such beliefs are mostly the result of not being able to imagine alternative histories in which things don't get to be so rosy. The truth is that so many things in the history of computing were improbable, and made possible by a select few very strong-willed individuals. Personal computing was improbable. The dominance of open source was improbable. etc. It's up to us to ensure that the post-PC era won't be the era of walled gardens, which is definitely where it's headed. And that would be perfectly fine, if our walled gardens weren't so darn suboptimal. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335
- gbog 15y ago
  Your last sentence is obscure to me, or revert what you say before.
jeiting 15y ago
I grew up on Windows PCs, the barrier to entry for tinkering with apps on Windows was way higher than building things with iOS SDK or HTML. I am not worried at all about the children of tomorrow.
raganwald 15y ago
The author does sound like a retro-grouch. As I often say to hipsters on fixies, “For you it’s retro, for me it’s nostalgia.” That being said, the post-PC era does not mean that nobody has a PC, it means that people don’t have to buy PCs to do non-PC things. Imagine if you needed a PC to watch television. It’s the same thing with email, FB, and web browsing. Why do I want to know how to format a hard drive to read Hacker News? Steve Jobs described PCs as being like pickup trucks, and he described post-PC devices as being like all the other vehicles people use, from bicycles to SUVs. None of those made the pickup truck go away, and for that matter there is a sizeable market of people who take pride in driving a pickup truck even though they never haul anything bigger or dirtier than a chest of drawers in it. PCs will be the same way. Available and cheap if you need one, and also available for those just like the status symbol of being a touch guy who fdisks and bash scripts and thinks curl beats Firefox.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  the post-PC era does not mean that nobody has a PC, it means that people don’t have to buy PCs to do non-PC things. Fewer people needing to buy PCs to do non-PC things means fewer people buying PCs. Fewer people buying PCs means fewer people exposed to the PC things early on. Fewer people who are familiar with the things that you use to make things. Seems reasonably lamentable to me.
  - wanorris 15y ago
    Well, suppose all you have is an iPad, and you want to write some code. Sad panda, yes? Well, not necessarily. Let's say you go plop down 50 bucks or whatever on a keyboard -- or maybe you don't because you have a bigger tolerance for trying to type code on an onscreen keyboard than I personally do. Next, you have to locate yourself a web browser. And there's one right there on your iPad already, so you're done. Next you have to find somewhere on the internet where you can do coding. Here's the first one I found from a quick Google search: http://www.coderun.com/ http://www.coderun.com/ . It's a browser-based IDE for php or asp.net that allows you build, test, and deploy a website right from the comfort of your own browser. I'm sure there are other options out there, but I didn't look very hard. So it doesn't seem like you're going to have to work very hard to find a way to learn to write code as long as the web browser doesn't go anywhere. Even on an iPad.
zdw 15y ago
We already have this era right now. It's called the "Our computer classes are typing and learning to use MS Office" era. Nobody really learned how to do anything complex on the computer. CLI's are scary. Programming is hard. As a result, most computer users, many of whom are very intelligent people who would easily be capable of basic programming and understanding unix pipes and similar are never are exposed to it, and thus it's a foreign language. Don't blame the iPad. Blame GUI software and the illusion of ease hiding complexity for where we're at.
stesch 15y ago
We need Minecraft for iPad. :-)
buff-a 15y ago
"Why I'm scared...." Don't be scared. Have fun! Make BASIC for the iPad or something silly like that.
- glassx 15y ago
  Exactly! And you don't even have to bother making something - there's already a couple Basic interpreters... and Scheme... and Lua.
nhughes 15y ago
Better tools can increase an individual's potential.
neild 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.
freejack 15y ago
The First Law of Being a Kid states; "If you can't break it, try harder. If that doesn't work, whack the shit out of it." You are 100% correct in your observation that tinkering leads to innovation. I think that just means that we're going to see different kinds of tinkering in the future. When I was growing up, that meant overclocking chips because you didn't like the speed of your machine. Today that means jailbreaking an iPhone because you don't like Apple's rules. I would have much rather been breaking iPhones than XTs when I was growing up :)
ary 15y ago
In the presence of each and every person living in an industrialized society are multiple devices running embedded software that is difficult to modify. Those devices are programmed using more flexible systems which to this very second are programmable any way you like. Where is the outrage over the hacker unfriendliness of my refrigerator? The iPad, iPhone, Android, and comparable devices are a hybrid of PC-like and embedded systems. The tradeoffs were made for reasons outside of anyone's programming/hacking needs. Should you want jailbreak a locked down device much of the work has already been done for you. A hacker's "freedom" to poke around in the system has been traded for the freedom of an average person to use the damn thing without worry. This argument about post-PC devices and whether or not they're good for hackers is tired. Be thankful that powerful, accessible devices are being put in the hands of millions of enthusiastic people that you have a chance to influence and affect through software and services. Finally, let's address the specter of censorship. This is brilliantly simple (in the United States at least). Address the entity censoring you. If it's a private entity then accept that they have no legal, ethical, or moral obligation to give you any access to their customers (much less complete access). Roll up your sleeves and compete. Should you be dealing with government censorship then pursue justice in whatever way your heart guides you. But please stop whining.
- ericbrunstad 15y ago
  I don't think your comment to "roll up your sleeves and compete" makes sense. It may well be that it is in the interest of the majority of people to not allow people to modify the software on their devices and therefore companies might not decide to let people do so. However, it may still be valuable to let people install their own OS's on their computers, etc. The point would be that we need to correct the market to support hacker's needs since each hacker might not individually have enough market influence to do so.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Personally I'd like it if I could hack my fridge. And my thermostat. And my dishwasher. But those actually aren't as important as a computer because I don't use them to make things. I don't dismiss the power of giving access to information consumption devices to the masses. But I would prefer if we could put the means of production into their hands as well. So I agree to some degree with the author. As for censorship, everything you say is true. It doesn't make fears of censorship unfounded. The iPad has close to 100% marketshare for tablets. And Apple actively censors its sole means of app distribution. That's a lot of power for a private company to hold. Not illegal or immoral, but scary. I think a future in which everyone chooses to live in Disneyland is kind of scary, even if I can continue to choose not to live there. And the way to fight it is to convince people that there are alternative visions of the future. And that's how I read this post. But please stop whining. <- This sounds more like whining to me than the post did.
ora600 15y ago
Obviously the author doesn't have kids. I don't think anything can prevent them from breaking and changing things. Maybe they won't do it with iPad (although I doubt it), but they'll still do it. Part of being a human child and all.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
This guy needs a better metaphor. Imagine a world where Legos didn't exist? But Legos do exist. It has probably never been easier to be a Lego hobbyist. What this guy should do is come up with an actual example of a hobby that has died out because the parts are no longer available. Used Model-T Fords. Urban horse infrastructure. Manual typewriters. Dial telephones. What one realizes is that actual extinct things are only extinct because the demand is gone. They are still making vacuum tubes somewhere, for god's sake - audiophiles can have passionate debates about how much better the tubes were back in 1967, but apart from such quibbling 2011 is still a pretty good time to build a tube amplifier. There are lots of plans on the Internet! So I wouldn't count the PC out yet. Aren't they just about to release a tiny PC for $25? It has never been cheaper or easier to be a PC electronics hobbyist.
- aswanson 15y ago
  Could not agree more. I can only imagine how much closer my thirteen year old self would have come to building my iron man armor had I'd been armed with a broadband connection and a digikey.com account back in the 80s.
- gergles 15y ago
  The point is that the "post-PC era" will make it so that being someone who thinks that you can modify or change the computing experience is relegated to "oddball hobby" status, like it would be if someone today wanted to start playing with vacuum tubes. The current PC ecosystem lets you explore and create and play and learn on the same tools that you use to consume. You can build a lego kit with the instructions, or you can use the pieces and make something that's uniquely you. You can run the apps on Windows that you download, or you can write your own without asking for anybody's permission. In the magical "post-PC" world, where everyone is inexplicably using an iPad, you can run what Apple says, period, and if you want to develop something they don't approve of, welp, too bad. This loss of flexibility, exploration, and sense of wonder is bad for future computing developments and bad for future computer users.
  - rdouble 15y ago
    The point is that the "post-PC era" will make it so that being someone who thinks that you can modify or change the computing experience is relegated to "oddball hobby" status It was like that during the pre post-PC era, anyway.
parrots 15y ago
People are afraid of technology because of the crap tech from the past 20 years. What do you think happens when those people stop being afraid? Suddenly software development feels accessible to a bunch more people. I'd argue that people won't stop wanting to tinker, that in fact more people will start to because they no longer think it's impossible.
- dlitz 15y ago
  My high school (1997-2001) reinforced this. They suspended kids from school for tinkering. And by tinkering, I mean "bringing up a DOS prompt instead of using the pre-canned IBM ICLAS menu system".
dr_ 15y ago
Why scared? There is nothing to stop someone from hacking a device - but then do we want all devices to be hacked? If Siri is somehow integrated into my car in the future, do I want my kid hacking into it and messing around with it, potentially resulting in who knows what. The ability to play around and change things is always gonna be there and in fact with locked devices in some ways it's even better - you'll have to be more enthusiastic and perhaps more talented to hack it, and that breeds and entirely new generation of hackers. And remember - even Apple ended up hiring the person who created his own version of an iPhone notification system on his jailbroken phone.
kristopolous 15y ago
In 1951 you could have whined, "With the rise of pro-grammable computers, the Engineer can simply turn his brain off and let the computer do all the work. The era of craftsmanship has come to a close. No, no need to think dear friend, we have ourselves a Computer. Aughh!" Then, in 1961 you could have sighed, "The knowledge of how to maintain a computer will be gone forever with this increase in reliability. How will someone ever know truly how computers work unless they have to fix them piece by piece." Then, in 1971 you could have pined, "With the rise of these time-share based operating environments, the future programmer has all the hard things taken care of for them. All that you need now is a data-bank administrator and record input clerk. There is no future in computing!" Then, in 1981 you could have lamented, "Baugh! The rise of these pre-built micros means that the future generations won't know how to work a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope. They will never use a soldering gun or know the joy of assembling a memory board because they will just drop it in the slot. Ug!" Then, in 1991 you could have scoffed, "well with all these new fancy compilers, nobody will appreciate the joys of directly manipulating registers and stacks. Instead, they will spend their career in higher order abstractions without ever truly knowing the soul of the machine." Then, in 2001 you could have cried, "This era of the world wide web is hastening the decline of single system software and entertainment consumption is simply supplanting productivity for the largest use case of computing. Programming has become nothing more then playing Oz in the Emerald City; pulling pre-built levers as the scarecrows and tin-men of the world marvel on the sidelines"
- vacri 15y ago
  And if you did, you'd be missing the point. The explosion of computing in the general public over the past 20 years has seen the explosion of innovation - "the internet", as an industry, is really only 15 years old. Not even that. And yet it's innovated and transformed forever our modern societies. That innovation has been driven by the masses being able to create things on their computers. Something that potentially restricts the ability to innovate across the masses shouldn't just be handwaved away like yet another whine.
  - ugh 15y ago
    How does it restrict?
chaostheory 15y ago
Not everyone will get an iPad. Most people will eventually go Android, and that's easy to root and replace with whatever you want. Even if you get an iPad, you can always jailbreak it. Curious kids will always find a way to break into something.
dendory 15y ago
Is it bad that people no longer learn how an MBR works, or how useful command lines are, or what real memory versus protected memory is, because we have GUI operating systems? Is there less people going to hack their own chips, connecting wires together and learning how to write micro code, because we have devices that don't require it? Technology always works like that. Today's kids start with an iPad and iPhone. A few years ago kids started with a GUI OS like Windows of MacOS. A few years prior they started with DOS. Before that they started with a Commodore or Amiga. It's just evolution, and every time you add another layer of abstraction.
postscapes1 15y ago
This guy is missing out on the possibilities of the Third Wave of computing and the Makers Revolution. Here are a couple of projects making this accessible to everyone. http://readiymate.com/ http://readiymate.com/ http://teagueduino.org/ http://teagueduino.org/ Arduino Tinker.it: http://store.arduino.cc/ww/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=16 http://store.arduino.cc/ww/index.php?main_page=index&cPa...
programminggeek 15y ago
What is ironic is that this post-PC era is driven largely by open source software Unix,gcc toolchain,webkit,etc.(iOS), Linux,Java,Webkit(Android), with "the cloud" built on top of Linux, Javascript, Ruby, PHP, Python, Java, Apache, Nginx, git, svn, etc.... So many devices might be "closed systems" but they are almost all built on the shoulders of open standards, open tools, and as a creator you have so many more opportunities to do interesting things in both the hardware and software space for next to no investment that it's incredible. Post-PC might change how end-users consume our software, but it's not going to make the tools to create it less available. Stop whining about the theoretical future and build something.
joebadmo 15y ago
A recent discussion on this topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955472 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955472
angrycoder 15y ago
This doesn't make any sense to me. The presence of post-pc devices doesn't void the existence of the PC. Today you can go on ebay and for a hundred bucks get a several year old laptop and install a totally free operating system. You'll have access to dozens of free programming languages, complete with free compilers/interpreters, tools, and documentation. You can go on the internet and find tutorials, books, ask questions, and have conversations with actual programmers. Things have never been better for those with curiosity, kids or otherwise.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
What the writer is trying to get at is the idea that people will just accept that computers work by magic. That's by far the dominant way most people view automobiles today, for example. And while this is distressing in some ways, I don't see it as necessarily a show stopper. People who are curious will find a way to peak under the veneer of magic and fiddle with the internals. Maybe kids will tend not to learn programming via command line apps written in basic, Java, python, or C, but that won't stop them from learning Javascript. And it won't stop them from learning C eventually either.
dextorious 15y ago
The opening line of the article: > "Imagine if legos didn’t exist. I don’t think I would be where I am today". Working at legoland?
jhermsmeyer 15y ago
Those that are driven to make things will be inspired by what the post-pc landscape has to offer, not dissuaded. I don't want to completely discount this short post, but the FUD here seems misplaced. Many more people are being attracted to post-pc devices vs. pcs. The fraction that go on to become engineers will make for a larger pool of hackers, not a smaller one. Things don't have to be hard to inspire one to hack. They just need to be sufficiently interesting.
geraldalewis 15y ago
> do kids stop learning that things can break, and be changed Maybe kids lose the expectation that software should break.
bonch 15y ago
You're scared of the post-PC era because you don't want to lose a nerd playground created by nerds for nerds. Most people don't want a nerd playground.
orenmazor 15y ago
This happened in cars ages ago. I'm the only one of my friends who knows how to debug a carburetor. hell, I'm the only one who cares. and thats fine. not everybody cares. some people just want to drive.
- gbog 15y ago
  The guy who wrote Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance seem to think it is Not Fine.
  - orenmazor 15y ago
    progress requires some kind of encapsulation. I dont need to make fire to boil eggs… or even understand how the power gets to my house.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
Well, the ipad is not definitive. It is just a PC with multitouch support, this does not mean that all the tools that create things are going to die, just because today they are designed for the mouse. When Apple started with the desktop paradigm, there were not tools for it. The had to convince people to use mouse and clicks first, they even had to remove the cursor keys so developers were forced to adapt their software. Ipad has made a fantastic job convincing people that yes, people love the multitouch interface so if you want to make money you need to adapt your software. Adobe and others are listening to the signal. And if everything fails, we will always have Linux.
tuhin 15y ago
So essentially the promise and dream of the post-PC era comes at the cost of killing the current golden age of Computers? I would say we are being hyperbolic here. For what it is worth I, (and I know of so many other people) have an iPad but end up spending my entire time (around 10-12 hours everyday) in front of a Mac. This is not going to change anytime in the near future because quite frankly the iPad is just not capable of doing all that I want to do on a "computer". So yes. there is a post-PC era, but think of it as a new species that co-exists than an evolution that simply eliminates the last one.
Hitchhiker 15y ago
http://futureoftheinternet.org http://futureoftheinternet.org offers an expansive look at the problems hinted in the parent link. http://futureoftheinternet.org/glossary http://futureoftheinternet.org/glossary gives the key concepts around which great fights will ensue.

90 points by hunterowens 15y ago

Lots of innovation has come from post-PC devices, including all of the development for these app stores and jail breaking. Playing with my iPhone 4S, especially Siri. I know this is the future. Laptops will still be around for a long time, Microsoft's vision is confusing admittedly but I think not everyone needs a full computer. Those that do can have both or continue to use their computers. I think having a lower barrier to entry is always good and think we have to let the way we build things evolve otherwise it goes against this whole ideology.

manojlds 15y ago
He is talking about creating your own Siri and not "playing with Siri"
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- brackin 15y ago
  I understand, i'm talking about the way we interact with the device. Like when we saw the iPhone and really started to think about touch being a viable method of interaction between the user and device. You can't code with Siri, what i'm saying is letting Siri and touch innovate for consumers won't stop innovation in products for power users.

HappySushiCo 15y ago

The writer makes the wrong assumption that the current mobile devices (e.g. iPad) will never have the creation tools that the previous generations of computer have had. IMHO, it's only a matter of time. And in the same vein it's never been more accessible to build something better than what's out there and get it out to the public.

timwiseman 15y ago
I think that may be a fairly safe assumption. The very form factor of the Ipad and tables in their current incarnation makes them poorly suited for most types of content creation. However, among content producers tablets supplement rather than replace other form factors of computers for the time being. Also, docking stations are likely to improve and become more common. A future tablet which would be more powerful than current generations with a solid docking station that would support a full keyboard, mouse and second monitor is a standard computer with the ability to undock it temporarily when not doing real content creation...
- forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
  "The very form factor of the Ipad and tables in their current incarnation makes them poorly suited for most types of content creation." Excuse me? The Ipad and the tablets are excellent for content creations. I created a program to analize the spectrum of voice in opengl, and multitouch is way more natural to manipulating thousands of things at the same time(realtime zoom, panning and selection). It feels like a highway for your mind not to be constrained by language(that is so slow). If you program using blocks it is way faster and easier than using keyboard. Do you really think that keyboard are so good for content creation, if you think so you need to look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sholes_typewriter.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sholes_typewriter.jpg ...look at the keys and then look at a computer keyboard. teletypes used typewriter machines because people got used to it, and then people made programming for teletypes as it was the only possible input on these days. It does not mean that it it the best input for a computer, far from it, you just have to redesign everything(as iphone did with the iphone) in the programming world too. Of course, this takes work and good programmers are lazy.

fleitz 15y ago

I'm not. Just port a basic interpreter to iPad, or write Logo for iPad. No one begets the fact that computers come preassembled now and no one needs to learn how to solder to have a computer. Imagine a basic interpreter that DOESN'T lose everything you typed in when you turn off your computer. The opportunities iPad enables far outweighs the cost of having to learn to program to use your computer. iPad will get more people using computers in more ways which while reducing the percentage of computer users who can program will vastly increase the overall number of programmers.

marbu 15y ago
I agree that the device offers many opportunities. Nevertheless it's not just about porting some interpreter, you also have to deal with apple policy which is not that friendly to such ideas. See for example how Scratch was rejected last year: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/.
- william42 15y ago
  Apple doesn't control the Internet, and while HTML5 has its own limitations, you could still probably port Logo to it, especially since Logo isn't all that complicated.
reemrevnivek 15y ago
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Apple's TOS have some significant restrictions on running interpreters. Some have been allowed, though. For more information, see Section 3.3.2 of the iOS App Store Review Guidelines, and the following posts on lua-list: http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Ok-Apple-has-released-its-grip-td5514402.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Ok-Apple-has-released-... http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-on-iOS-again-was-programming-Lua-with-Coders-for-iPad-td6571144.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-on-iOS-again-was-p... http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/iLuaBox-Now-Available-Run-Lua-on-Your-iPad-td5666322.html http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/iLuaBox-Now-Available-... Also, s/begets/regrets/

rbranson 15y ago

The "post-PC era" is a myth. The only thing that's stayed constant about computing is it's growing ubiquity.

mcantelon 15y ago
Exactly... PCs and mobile devices have existed in parallel for some time. "Post-PC" is a propaganda term.
- vacri 15y ago
  I think it's more meant to be "bulk of computers people use in general won't be traditional desktops/laptops" and less "desktops/laptops are going to be eradicated"

kylemccann 15y ago

I think I will be like those old men who still rave about their vinyl records and would part with them. As long as Pc devices as we know them such as desktops and laptops are produced and supported by websites and apps I will use them. I believe there will always be a use for a more physical computing experience..

steve8918 15y ago

Meh. Unfounded fears. There will always be computers/desktops/laptops. Just because tablets and smartphones are ubiquitous doesn't mean that they won't exist. People will always want huge monitors, and there will always be programmers. Granted, in 20 years it might not be someone sitting in front of 3 LCD screens, but it will be something.

groovy2shoes 15y ago
Sure, but desktops and laptops are starting to become more and more like tablets and smartphones. Look at the changes that started in Lion, especially the Sandboxes. Look at what is in store for us with Windows 8. It seems to me that if things keep heading in the same direction, laptops will end up just as locked-down as tablets. If you think that the market will never let it happen, realize that at least 80% of consumers only really use their computers for the web and/or for games. What do you use your smartphone for?

zachrose 15y ago

Paraphrasing Kevin Kelly, there are more stone hammers being made today than at any time in human history.

nbashaw 15y ago

True, our kids won't grow up hacking the same systems we did, just like we didn't grow up hacking the same systems as our parents. But there is something basic to the human spirit that guarantees as long as this branch of the gene pool is still around, we'll still tinker and build and create. It's just that the blocks are constantly changing. Which keeps things interesting, and is a good thing.

mturmon 15y ago
Yes. The fact that all these useful sensors (touch, display, camera, location, attitude, wifi/3g) are integrated in one small, portable, and not-that-expensive device opens interesting new possibilities. Think of the hobbyists who send their phone into space on a balloon.
lucasjake 15y ago
Exactly. The end of the PC era doesn't give rise to the 'iPad era,' it gives rise to Ubiquitous computing, and Apple knows this. The trajectory goes: mainframe: one computer, many people personal computer: one computer, one person ubiquitous computing: many computers to many people If anything, people are going to be programming the shit out of everything in the future, not pulling back.
- 5hoom 15y ago
  Agreed 100%. Someone, somewhere will have to program all these wonderful gadgets. While it is conceivable that all development will occur only inside big mega-corps, I somehow doubt it. People have a voracious appetite for new content. Smart money is on the tools to create new stuff becoming more widespread, not less.
bigiain 15y ago
Yep, the more things change, the more they stay the same... When I was a kid, you could but germanium diodes and ferrite core coils, and make yourself a crystal radio - it was _magic!_ But... There was no way I could have gotten hold of something like an Arduino - probably not for _any_ sort of money, never mind the sort of budget kids birthday or Xmas presents run to... The same with a lot of other stuff, I had to wait till my first paper round job to be able to save up enough money to buy the ~$200 (in 1982 dollars) radio control gear before I could build an rc plane. These days that's $24 or so delivered from China... I remember playing with my fatyer's grandfathers predecessor to Meccano, stone building blocks with pressed steel girders. I suspect children today probably look on historical toys like lego with similar charm/disdain...

antimora 15y ago

Innovation will always happen. However as time progresses, the context of new ideas and innovations will change. New things will be invented in terms of existing ideas or viewpoints, as Alan Kay likes to refer [1]. [1] - http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/ http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/ Legos, I should remind, are existing technology, which didn't exist in 2 centuries ago. And I am sure stones and sticks were precursors to the invention of Legos, and now Legos will be replaced with computers as a tinker device.

Vivtek 15y ago

Your iPad has a browser. That browser runs HTML5 and JavaScript. That's the quick way to get to something programmable. If you want to get down and dirty, drop thirty bucks on an Arduino. Personally, I think the post-PC era is going to be even more awesome.

wanorris 15y ago
Totally agree on the browser. But as an aside, can you program an Arduino if all you have is an iPad? Or would you have to go buy a general-purpose PC for somewhat more than $30?
- wiredfool 15y ago
  There's now a blessed serial cable with a dock connector, and some form of an arduino programming environment on the iPad. The only drawback is that the cable is more expensive than the arduino.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  I could program an Arduino with a pair of tweezers, son. ... Seriously, I have no idea. I suppose Apple's too cool for USB ports, but maybe Wifi? That ups the cost of your Arduino setup, it's true, but still - there has to be something you can do to communicate between your iPad and your Arduino that doesn't involve a general-purpose machine in between.

akat 15y ago

The "post-PC era" is greatly exaggerated. It may eventually happen but only for those kinds of consumers who would have never bothered with LEGO anyways. For hackers, the PC (or Mac) isn't going anywhere. In other words, if everyone uses the iPad, who creates iPads and all the apps?

eren-tantekin 15y ago

What he described is not really the post-pc era, but the Apple era.

xarien 15y ago

Let me preface this by stating that much I'm about to post, I've learned from my 18 month old boy. Aside from the sentimentality of a parent watching his kid develop physical and mental abilities, it's a very interesting phenomenon watching the way the development occurs. Kids basically learn one of two ways: imitation and exploration. Imitation being quite simple, so I'll move right on the exploration. Now, there's recently been a lot of discussion whether kids in America are being hampered by overprotective parents. I believe that notion is quite correct. My son has legos, but he also has access to my touchpad and android phone. To him, they're not so different. Legos teach him that he can piece them together to make new things or break them apart for the components (creativity). The electronics teach him that there is a logical action and reaction (logic). It's absolutely amazing the first time I saw his eyes light up because he figured out how to wake the device from sleep or how to unlock it. It's a physical indication that a neural connection has been made in his head. To me, that indicates these types of tools will indeed facilitate a much earlier exposure to logic we have not seen in previous generations. So to come full circle, I don't think the death of legos (I don't really foresee it happening) will hamper our kids because there will be other mediums. As long as we don't hamper exploration, kids will develop both creativity and logic.

gbog 15y ago
This. When my kid will be big enough I'll buy him toys he can break, like Legos, later I'll buy him gadgets he can break, like PCs, open garden tablets. If it results in him having to fiddle the os in order to bypass the antiporn barrier I'll setup, it will be all for the best.

sunahsuh 15y ago

My family didn't own a computer until after I had read my first programming book (I was in 2nd grade, the computer in my classroom fascinated me, and the public library had a book about BASIC.) Curiosity always finds a way.

comex 15y ago

There are multiple BASIC and Scheme interpreters in the App Store, as well as apps for writing HTML documents. If you want to write proper apps, an iOS developer certificate costs money, but so did Visual Basic back in the day, and on Android or a jailbroken iPhone it's free. Post-PC devices are inherently bad for programming because they don't have proper keyboards, but by the same token you'll likely have access to a keyboarded computer to do homework on, at least until someone invents a new input method that's better for both. (Nuance dictation for code, anyone?)

randomdata 15y ago
Post-PC devices are inherently bad for programming because they don't have proper keyboards I went on a road trip this summer and continued to do some programming while on it. I found the iPad to be more comfortable than my laptop when sitting in the passenger seat. A keyboard is pretty hard to beat when you've got a desk in front of you, but when you are left in weird positions, the iPad actually isn't that bad for editing code.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

abuzzooz 15y ago

Not sure if the Lego example is a good one. Lego has been available for over 60 years, and still going strong. According to his website, the OP is 18 years old. If his fears had any basis, then Lego would have disappeared way before he was born. Another important point is that our experiences shape us in specific ways. Our kids' experiences will shape them differently. Having iPads does not make them any less inventive or curious. It's just that we can not imagine, today, what they will think of in the future.

netmute 15y ago

You may be 18, but you sound like an ignorant old man. "Back in my day, we wrote our own BASIC programs! That's how we got good!" There will be new and unexpected ways to create and tinker with technology. Don't give in to the "old man thinking", change is good.

orangecat 15y ago
change is good Improved technology is good. Companies attempting to dictate how you're allowed to use that technology is bad.
- ugh 15y ago
  But they don’t. They clearly don’t. Apple has no monopoly.

icandoitbetter 15y ago

There's a surprising amount of belief in historical determinism in the discussion here, which is utterly unjustified. It is easy to believe that the future will fix itself on its own. But such beliefs are mostly the result of not being able to imagine alternative histories in which things don't get to be so rosy. The truth is that so many things in the history of computing were improbable, and made possible by a select few very strong-willed individuals. Personal computing was improbable. The dominance of open source was improbable. etc. It's up to us to ensure that the post-PC era won't be the era of walled gardens, which is definitely where it's headed. And that would be perfectly fine, if our walled gardens weren't so darn suboptimal. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335

gbog 15y ago
Your last sentence is obscure to me, or revert what you say before.

jeiting 15y ago

I grew up on Windows PCs, the barrier to entry for tinkering with apps on Windows was way higher than building things with iOS SDK or HTML. I am not worried at all about the children of tomorrow.

raganwald 15y ago

The author does sound like a retro-grouch. As I often say to hipsters on fixies, “For you it’s retro, for me it’s nostalgia.” That being said, the post-PC era does not mean that nobody has a PC, it means that people don’t have to buy PCs to do non-PC things. Imagine if you needed a PC to watch television. It’s the same thing with email, FB, and web browsing. Why do I want to know how to format a hard drive to read Hacker News? Steve Jobs described PCs as being like pickup trucks, and he described post-PC devices as being like all the other vehicles people use, from bicycles to SUVs. None of those made the pickup truck go away, and for that matter there is a sizeable market of people who take pride in driving a pickup truck even though they never haul anything bigger or dirtier than a chest of drawers in it. PCs will be the same way. Available and cheap if you need one, and also available for those just like the status symbol of being a touch guy who fdisks and bash scripts and thinks curl beats Firefox.

joebadmo 15y ago
the post-PC era does not mean that nobody has a PC, it means that people don’t have to buy PCs to do non-PC things. Fewer people needing to buy PCs to do non-PC things means fewer people buying PCs. Fewer people buying PCs means fewer people exposed to the PC things early on. Fewer people who are familiar with the things that you use to make things. Seems reasonably lamentable to me.
- wanorris 15y ago
  Well, suppose all you have is an iPad, and you want to write some code. Sad panda, yes? Well, not necessarily. Let's say you go plop down 50 bucks or whatever on a keyboard -- or maybe you don't because you have a bigger tolerance for trying to type code on an onscreen keyboard than I personally do. Next, you have to locate yourself a web browser. And there's one right there on your iPad already, so you're done. Next you have to find somewhere on the internet where you can do coding. Here's the first one I found from a quick Google search: http://www.coderun.com/ http://www.coderun.com/ . It's a browser-based IDE for php or asp.net that allows you build, test, and deploy a website right from the comfort of your own browser. I'm sure there are other options out there, but I didn't look very hard. So it doesn't seem like you're going to have to work very hard to find a way to learn to write code as long as the web browser doesn't go anywhere. Even on an iPad.

zdw 15y ago

We already have this era right now. It's called the "Our computer classes are typing and learning to use MS Office" era. Nobody really learned how to do anything complex on the computer. CLI's are scary. Programming is hard. As a result, most computer users, many of whom are very intelligent people who would easily be capable of basic programming and understanding unix pipes and similar are never are exposed to it, and thus it's a foreign language. Don't blame the iPad. Blame GUI software and the illusion of ease hiding complexity for where we're at.

stesch 15y ago

We need Minecraft for iPad. :-)

buff-a 15y ago

"Why I'm scared...." Don't be scared. Have fun! Make BASIC for the iPad or something silly like that.

glassx 15y ago
Exactly! And you don't even have to bother making something - there's already a couple Basic interpreters... and Scheme... and Lua.

nhughes 15y ago

Better tools can increase an individual's potential.

neild 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
- glhaynes 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.

freejack 15y ago

The First Law of Being a Kid states; "If you can't break it, try harder. If that doesn't work, whack the shit out of it." You are 100% correct in your observation that tinkering leads to innovation. I think that just means that we're going to see different kinds of tinkering in the future. When I was growing up, that meant overclocking chips because you didn't like the speed of your machine. Today that means jailbreaking an iPhone because you don't like Apple's rules. I would have much rather been breaking iPhones than XTs when I was growing up :)

ary 15y ago

In the presence of each and every person living in an industrialized society are multiple devices running embedded software that is difficult to modify. Those devices are programmed using more flexible systems which to this very second are programmable any way you like. Where is the outrage over the hacker unfriendliness of my refrigerator? The iPad, iPhone, Android, and comparable devices are a hybrid of PC-like and embedded systems. The tradeoffs were made for reasons outside of anyone's programming/hacking needs. Should you want jailbreak a locked down device much of the work has already been done for you. A hacker's "freedom" to poke around in the system has been traded for the freedom of an average person to use the damn thing without worry. This argument about post-PC devices and whether or not they're good for hackers is tired. Be thankful that powerful, accessible devices are being put in the hands of millions of enthusiastic people that you have a chance to influence and affect through software and services. Finally, let's address the specter of censorship. This is brilliantly simple (in the United States at least). Address the entity censoring you. If it's a private entity then accept that they have no legal, ethical, or moral obligation to give you any access to their customers (much less complete access). Roll up your sleeves and compete. Should you be dealing with government censorship then pursue justice in whatever way your heart guides you. But please stop whining.

ericbrunstad 15y ago
I don't think your comment to "roll up your sleeves and compete" makes sense. It may well be that it is in the interest of the majority of people to not allow people to modify the software on their devices and therefore companies might not decide to let people do so. However, it may still be valuable to let people install their own OS's on their computers, etc. The point would be that we need to correct the market to support hacker's needs since each hacker might not individually have enough market influence to do so.
joebadmo 15y ago
Personally I'd like it if I could hack my fridge. And my thermostat. And my dishwasher. But those actually aren't as important as a computer because I don't use them to make things. I don't dismiss the power of giving access to information consumption devices to the masses. But I would prefer if we could put the means of production into their hands as well. So I agree to some degree with the author. As for censorship, everything you say is true. It doesn't make fears of censorship unfounded. The iPad has close to 100% marketshare for tablets. And Apple actively censors its sole means of app distribution. That's a lot of power for a private company to hold. Not illegal or immoral, but scary. I think a future in which everyone chooses to live in Disneyland is kind of scary, even if I can continue to choose not to live there. And the way to fight it is to convince people that there are alternative visions of the future. And that's how I read this post. But please stop whining. <- This sounds more like whining to me than the post did.

ora600 15y ago

Obviously the author doesn't have kids. I don't think anything can prevent them from breaking and changing things. Maybe they won't do it with iPad (although I doubt it), but they'll still do it. Part of being a human child and all.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

This guy needs a better metaphor. Imagine a world where Legos didn't exist? But Legos do exist. It has probably never been easier to be a Lego hobbyist. What this guy should do is come up with an actual example of a hobby that has died out because the parts are no longer available. Used Model-T Fords. Urban horse infrastructure. Manual typewriters. Dial telephones. What one realizes is that actual extinct things are only extinct because the demand is gone. They are still making vacuum tubes somewhere, for god's sake - audiophiles can have passionate debates about how much better the tubes were back in 1967, but apart from such quibbling 2011 is still a pretty good time to build a tube amplifier. There are lots of plans on the Internet! So I wouldn't count the PC out yet. Aren't they just about to release a tiny PC for $25? It has never been cheaper or easier to be a PC electronics hobbyist.

aswanson 15y ago
Could not agree more. I can only imagine how much closer my thirteen year old self would have come to building my iron man armor had I'd been armed with a broadband connection and a digikey.com account back in the 80s.
gergles 15y ago
The point is that the "post-PC era" will make it so that being someone who thinks that you can modify or change the computing experience is relegated to "oddball hobby" status, like it would be if someone today wanted to start playing with vacuum tubes. The current PC ecosystem lets you explore and create and play and learn on the same tools that you use to consume. You can build a lego kit with the instructions, or you can use the pieces and make something that's uniquely you. You can run the apps on Windows that you download, or you can write your own without asking for anybody's permission. In the magical "post-PC" world, where everyone is inexplicably using an iPad, you can run what Apple says, period, and if you want to develop something they don't approve of, welp, too bad. This loss of flexibility, exploration, and sense of wonder is bad for future computing developments and bad for future computer users.
- rdouble 15y ago
  The point is that the "post-PC era" will make it so that being someone who thinks that you can modify or change the computing experience is relegated to "oddball hobby" status It was like that during the pre post-PC era, anyway.

parrots 15y ago

People are afraid of technology because of the crap tech from the past 20 years. What do you think happens when those people stop being afraid? Suddenly software development feels accessible to a bunch more people. I'd argue that people won't stop wanting to tinker, that in fact more people will start to because they no longer think it's impossible.

dlitz 15y ago
My high school (1997-2001) reinforced this. They suspended kids from school for tinkering. And by tinkering, I mean "bringing up a DOS prompt instead of using the pre-canned IBM ICLAS menu system".

dr_ 15y ago

Why scared? There is nothing to stop someone from hacking a device - but then do we want all devices to be hacked? If Siri is somehow integrated into my car in the future, do I want my kid hacking into it and messing around with it, potentially resulting in who knows what. The ability to play around and change things is always gonna be there and in fact with locked devices in some ways it's even better - you'll have to be more enthusiastic and perhaps more talented to hack it, and that breeds and entirely new generation of hackers. And remember - even Apple ended up hiring the person who created his own version of an iPhone notification system on his jailbroken phone.

kristopolous 15y ago

In 1951 you could have whined, "With the rise of pro-grammable computers, the Engineer can simply turn his brain off and let the computer do all the work. The era of craftsmanship has come to a close. No, no need to think dear friend, we have ourselves a Computer. Aughh!" Then, in 1961 you could have sighed, "The knowledge of how to maintain a computer will be gone forever with this increase in reliability. How will someone ever know truly how computers work unless they have to fix them piece by piece." Then, in 1971 you could have pined, "With the rise of these time-share based operating environments, the future programmer has all the hard things taken care of for them. All that you need now is a data-bank administrator and record input clerk. There is no future in computing!" Then, in 1981 you could have lamented, "Baugh! The rise of these pre-built micros means that the future generations won't know how to work a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope. They will never use a soldering gun or know the joy of assembling a memory board because they will just drop it in the slot. Ug!" Then, in 1991 you could have scoffed, "well with all these new fancy compilers, nobody will appreciate the joys of directly manipulating registers and stacks. Instead, they will spend their career in higher order abstractions without ever truly knowing the soul of the machine." Then, in 2001 you could have cried, "This era of the world wide web is hastening the decline of single system software and entertainment consumption is simply supplanting productivity for the largest use case of computing. Programming has become nothing more then playing Oz in the Emerald City; pulling pre-built levers as the scarecrows and tin-men of the world marvel on the sidelines"

vacri 15y ago
And if you did, you'd be missing the point. The explosion of computing in the general public over the past 20 years has seen the explosion of innovation - "the internet", as an industry, is really only 15 years old. Not even that. And yet it's innovated and transformed forever our modern societies. That innovation has been driven by the masses being able to create things on their computers. Something that potentially restricts the ability to innovate across the masses shouldn't just be handwaved away like yet another whine.
- ugh 15y ago
  How does it restrict?

chaostheory 15y ago

Not everyone will get an iPad. Most people will eventually go Android, and that's easy to root and replace with whatever you want. Even if you get an iPad, you can always jailbreak it. Curious kids will always find a way to break into something.

dendory 15y ago

Is it bad that people no longer learn how an MBR works, or how useful command lines are, or what real memory versus protected memory is, because we have GUI operating systems? Is there less people going to hack their own chips, connecting wires together and learning how to write micro code, because we have devices that don't require it? Technology always works like that. Today's kids start with an iPad and iPhone. A few years ago kids started with a GUI OS like Windows of MacOS. A few years prior they started with DOS. Before that they started with a Commodore or Amiga. It's just evolution, and every time you add another layer of abstraction.

postscapes1 15y ago

This guy is missing out on the possibilities of the Third Wave of computing and the Makers Revolution. Here are a couple of projects making this accessible to everyone. http://readiymate.com/ http://readiymate.com/ http://teagueduino.org/ http://teagueduino.org/ Arduino Tinker.it: http://store.arduino.cc/ww/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=16 http://store.arduino.cc/ww/index.php?main_page=index&cPa...

programminggeek 15y ago

What is ironic is that this post-PC era is driven largely by open source software Unix,gcc toolchain,webkit,etc.(iOS), Linux,Java,Webkit(Android), with "the cloud" built on top of Linux, Javascript, Ruby, PHP, Python, Java, Apache, Nginx, git, svn, etc.... So many devices might be "closed systems" but they are almost all built on the shoulders of open standards, open tools, and as a creator you have so many more opportunities to do interesting things in both the hardware and software space for next to no investment that it's incredible. Post-PC might change how end-users consume our software, but it's not going to make the tools to create it less available. Stop whining about the theoretical future and build something.

joebadmo 15y ago

A recent discussion on this topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955472 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955472

angrycoder 15y ago

This doesn't make any sense to me. The presence of post-pc devices doesn't void the existence of the PC. Today you can go on ebay and for a hundred bucks get a several year old laptop and install a totally free operating system. You'll have access to dozens of free programming languages, complete with free compilers/interpreters, tools, and documentation. You can go on the internet and find tutorials, books, ask questions, and have conversations with actual programmers. Things have never been better for those with curiosity, kids or otherwise.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

What the writer is trying to get at is the idea that people will just accept that computers work by magic. That's by far the dominant way most people view automobiles today, for example. And while this is distressing in some ways, I don't see it as necessarily a show stopper. People who are curious will find a way to peak under the veneer of magic and fiddle with the internals. Maybe kids will tend not to learn programming via command line apps written in basic, Java, python, or C, but that won't stop them from learning Javascript. And it won't stop them from learning C eventually either.

dextorious 15y ago

The opening line of the article: > "Imagine if legos didn’t exist. I don’t think I would be where I am today". Working at legoland?

jhermsmeyer 15y ago

Those that are driven to make things will be inspired by what the post-pc landscape has to offer, not dissuaded. I don't want to completely discount this short post, but the FUD here seems misplaced. Many more people are being attracted to post-pc devices vs. pcs. The fraction that go on to become engineers will make for a larger pool of hackers, not a smaller one. Things don't have to be hard to inspire one to hack. They just need to be sufficiently interesting.

geraldalewis 15y ago

> do kids stop learning that things can break, and be changed Maybe kids lose the expectation that software should break.

bonch 15y ago

You're scared of the post-PC era because you don't want to lose a nerd playground created by nerds for nerds. Most people don't want a nerd playground.

orenmazor 15y ago

This happened in cars ages ago. I'm the only one of my friends who knows how to debug a carburetor. hell, I'm the only one who cares. and thats fine. not everybody cares. some people just want to drive.

gbog 15y ago
The guy who wrote Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance seem to think it is Not Fine.
- orenmazor 15y ago
  progress requires some kind of encapsulation. I dont need to make fire to boil eggs… or even understand how the power gets to my house.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

Well, the ipad is not definitive. It is just a PC with multitouch support, this does not mean that all the tools that create things are going to die, just because today they are designed for the mouse. When Apple started with the desktop paradigm, there were not tools for it. The had to convince people to use mouse and clicks first, they even had to remove the cursor keys so developers were forced to adapt their software. Ipad has made a fantastic job convincing people that yes, people love the multitouch interface so if you want to make money you need to adapt your software. Adobe and others are listening to the signal. And if everything fails, we will always have Linux.

tuhin 15y ago

So essentially the promise and dream of the post-PC era comes at the cost of killing the current golden age of Computers? I would say we are being hyperbolic here. For what it is worth I, (and I know of so many other people) have an iPad but end up spending my entire time (around 10-12 hours everyday) in front of a Mac. This is not going to change anytime in the near future because quite frankly the iPad is just not capable of doing all that I want to do on a "computer". So yes. there is a post-PC era, but think of it as a new species that co-exists than an evolution that simply eliminates the last one.

Hitchhiker 15y ago

http://futureoftheinternet.org http://futureoftheinternet.org offers an expansive look at the problems hinted in the parent link. http://futureoftheinternet.org/glossary http://futureoftheinternet.org/glossary gives the key concepts around which great fights will ensue.