Passing thought while on the beach and reading one of Peter Hamilton’s books. The thing that would really transform the Internet and be its next big shift (Web 3.0 or something like that) would be a universal coding language like IFTTT but entirely icon-based, but producing real, enduring underlying code.
Yes, I can use IFTTT (and similar technologies) to do mundane things like have my Flickr uploads automagically cross load to Instagram, or every email back itself up in Google Drive (seriously, why?), and so on. But I can’t code. No time to learn, and really, I hire programmers. It makes no sense that I try to duplicate a whole other profession in my spare time. There’s too much Netflix to watch.
What we need is an image-based/icon-based programming language that generates proper code for multi-layered applications.
Imagine: If a given stock price exceeds a certain value, I want to sell, and have that money transferred into a new bank account that I only open in that moment, maybe not even at my usual bank. Imagine sliding several icons into a row that allows this to happen because they wrote the code for this, underneath the layer of images that I engage with on a screen. And they do so, with appropriate security and permissions to engage with money.
Imagine: I am embroiled in an HR issue, with emails flying fast and furious. It’s going to go to arbitration or court. I slide a series of icons together that create the code to gather all my emails related to this topic, integrate scans of hand-written notes, organize it all, drill down for non-obvious patterns, and output a brief that summarizes the mess.
Sophisticated code, “written” by average Internet users, in a simple interface. This would level the Internet playing field.
(And yes, I can see so many problems with this… but it’s the idea. You heard it here first.)
Digital Crossroads 