Today's computers are cars rather than bicycles for the mind https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19software-slides.pdf

I really like the comparative method as a way of growing one's understanding of a complex system: instead of seeing it only from the inside view, as an expert in that particular system (eg. US politics, human biology), take an outside view by comparing it to other similar things (eg. world politics & history, other species). What I find disappointing about Kell's slides is that he applies the comparative method only half-heartedly. He claims there is a systemic problem in software-development stemming from the same roots (following Illich) as problems in medicine, transportation, and education... and then ignores this comparison when he proposes solutions! In particular, he doesn't ask whether there's any evidence his proposed solution ─ changing computer science education to create a different programming culture ─ would or wouldn't also work in those other fields. Could changing medical education have made medicine more convivial? Could changing education somehow have avoided the rise of car-centric urban design? It seems unlikely, but I'd be interested to hear a counter-argument. Personally, I suspect the root problems involved are economic. This does not make me optimistic about finding a solution any time soon, and it makes me pessimistic about the value of communities like this one, which focus primarily on technical solutions.

I saw a similar dissonance between a well-framed problem statement and the solution to it. The problem: "one class monopolizes, creating distances for all but providing the means to shrink them only for a few". But the solution is (paraphrasing) to support all cars that have come before. I would like to think I spend time thinking about social implications. One concrete bit of evidence: I think about what operations to make more difficult than they are today, sculpting a new social contract out of a harder medium. I think I've been following Illich's dictum to "avoid speeds much above a bicycle". But I think interoperating with C merely continues to enable the "monopoly of the recent".

One aspect that I find missing in Illich's analysis (and therefore Kell's) is historical evolution. The first cars were nerd gimmicks. When the technology became more reliable, they became an expensive and efficient means of transportation for a privileged few. And then, as society became more prosperous, everybody wanted to become part of that group, until in the end everybody succeeded and cars became more of a problem than a solution. There are parallels to how computing technology evolved. In both cases, I'd say the core issue is that nobody foresaw the systemic impact of the new technology as it changed from a curiosity to something inevitable in daily life. There is, of course, an aspect of control by a few over the many, but I haven't seen Illich (or anyone else) explore how this is enabled by specific feature of technology, and by specific social contexts.

@Konrad Hinsen That's an interesting point. How (or if you're not sure how, why) do you think understanding the historical evolution of computing technology & its impact might help tackle the problems Kell is interested in?

@rntz Given that we can't realistically do experiments ("let's find some civilization that doesn't have computing yet and introduce it in a particular way..."), history is all we have as a basis for shaping the future. If you look at the visions people had in the past for computing, the problems that Kell describes are not part of them. Nor did many technopessimists predict them. So how did they arise? Which specific aspects of technology or its cultural contexts lead to developments that nobody seems to have wanted or feared? For transportation, Illich claims that speed is the essential problem. What is its equivalent in computing, if anything?