Tool users versus consumers
This is interesting. It’s about how the digital revolution has lead to people who know how to use computer applications, but don’t know how to program them. They know how to use the tools they’re given, but they don’t know how to create new tools themselves. I’d had similar thoughts, but hadn’t ever put it into words.
The digital should have made all of this more probable and more possible, not less.
College kids learn how to use word processors, spreadsheets, and basic graphics programs - but they can’t write a graphics program themself. They’re limited by what they learn - and by which tools they learn to use. (Microsoft’s counting on this…which is why they donate so much software to schools. They’re playing the long game.) I know HTML and CSS, and a teeny tiny bit of JavaScript. I could, if I wanted, sit down and learn SQL programming and even Perl. But I don’t know how to write a program more complex than the simplest GOTO Basic routines that I wrote more than 25 years ago, when I was first learning to use the (then fairly new) Apple IIe that my farsighted dad bought for our home. I can make Photoshop sing and dance, but I don’t know how to write a program to manipulate or edit graphics.
Then again, is it just another step in the journey? The author writes out an interesting analogy about how each revolution raised the social bar, but most people never used the full potential of the latest tool:
- the invention of the 22-character alphabet lead to a society that could write down its knowledge…but only a few ever learned how to read
- the printing press lead to widespread availability of printed material…but only a few (those who could afford the apparatus) mass-produced and distributed written material
- broadcast radio/film/television lead to a more widespread availability of information…but only a small segment of society were producers of the content
Those are some interesting points. The author goes on to state that the real power of the digital renaissance is not in using the tools (blogging, YouTube, et cetera) but in creating the tools (programming). Well…isn’t that how it’s always been, really? A few create the tools, many more make use of the tools, most are consumers of the works produced by those tools. I think this is a result of a few things: the tool creation/tool use mindset and teaching, and peoples’ inclinations. When people don’t know how to create a tool, they won’t - or they’ll juryrig the existing tools to do what they want it to. (I’ve had a few go-rounds of this with my CMS.) Most people may not care about being able to create tools. As long as some do, society will continue to advance. Let’s take a look at me as an example. I learned HTML when the spec was first released in 1991. I learned CSS in 1997, but had to wait until 1999 for serious implementation because so few browsers could render the code. But even those are just markup languages, not true programming languages. As neat as it may be, I don’t care to learn how to program. I’m quite content to use the tools around me. I think that many people feel the same way: they could learn to change their own brakes, but they’d rather just pay someone else to do it. They could learn to spin their own cloth and sew their own clothing, but they’d rather (for the most part) buy something premade. The entire fast-food industry, and to an extent the food distribution industry (grocery stores), is built on the premise that while people could raise their own livestock and grow their own food, for the most part, people would rather buy the ground flour and processed sugar and harvested vegetables and assemble the ingredients - or even buy a loaf of bread or a box of cookies or a bag of salad fixings or a cut of meat (or a burger, or an entree at a restaurant.) I don’t know if human inclination can be overcome so that most of society knows how to create digital-media tools. I think it would be cool if more people had the opportunity to learn, and were given the awareness that those opportunities were there - but, again, look at me. I know where to go to learn PHP programming, and SQL, and JavaScript. I just choose not to do so. I don’t care that much, in my day-to-day life, to learn how to use those particular tools to create other tools. But I’m quite happy that others do. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to run this blog on my own hosted web space, with the script of my choosing/installing/configuring.
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