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Hey kids, just say NO to programming !

  jgrant        2012-01-16 10:16:19       2,467        0    

Cory Doctorow's latest talk 'The Coming War on General Purpose Computing' really puts things in perspective about life in the 21st century.

This got me thinking more about functional programming languages and how they are related to the intentional limitation/crippling of turing machines by industry and government.
What if Stallman is right about the intentional efforts to limit freedom of information ?
What if it's even worse than we all think it is ?
In relation to functional languages : might industry and academia intentionally not want them to become popular ? At least not yet ?
Might powerful functional languages further complicate the orwellian effort to limit what software can be run on a person's computer or device ?

What if Paul Graham missed something very dark in his essay The Hundred-Year Language ?
Conspicuously missing in his essay is the potential role that government, industry and academia might play in the development, legality and distortion of such a language. After all, the more power that a technology might put in the hands of an individual or group the more correlated is the increase in attempts to limit and control the technology. Even in the short history of the internet examples are everywhere so I won't provide any here. Attempts like these are nothing new, history is littered with the shameful debasement of all human languages by politicians and corporations. I hypothesize that the same is underway with programming languages and has been since they have existed. Why ? Well just look at history again : powerful wordsmiths who were able to communicate and educate large numbers of people(at least for their time) always had the retribution of groups that would rather maintain the status quo to keep their power. If these wordsmiths were lucky then they were only marginilized and/or unethically disgraced. If they were unlucky then they were tortured and/or murdered. This still happens every single day somewhere in the world.

An aside : there is a reason that pure and practical Philosophy is rarely taught in academia. It enables people to think powerfully about anything and everything that exists in the world. This is dangerous for control freaks, even more than the internet can be. Religion is not the first enemy of Science as so many modern atheists would have you believe. Religion is first the enemy of Philosophy. Science is a wonderful and yet very fragile child of Philosophy. Mathematics is also a product of Philosophy. They are but trees that grow in Philosophy's soil. What about Atheism ? it is just a very very small conclusion(with great impact though!) arrived at by a sound philosophical approach. It's an annoying one though because people tend to define themselves in this negative way when dealing with religious people. Although this is probably necessary and unavoidable because the world that we live in now is heavily influenced by religion.

Back to one possible future of powerful programming languages : There could be a time where they are regulated. Only certain groups will be able to use them. Laws will be put in place that limit how and where they can be used and by whom. A contemporary related example : in some countries if you try giving advice on law, medicine or science without the correct 'authorization' there are dire consequences. Rightly so because when I need to have my teeth capped I really need to be sure that the person doing this for me is actually qualified. In reality though, people are still harmed by highly qualified professionals every day. Many lawyers make a very good living because of this. The basic point though is that these have been around for centuries whereas programming languages in their current form have not.
Computer Science, is still a fairly young human endevour and yet the world today cannot exist without computers. Impressive considering this. Computers and the internet have been a major factor in decentralizing power in all it's forms : education, entertainment, government, health, communication etc. and it's done so quickly and on a huge scale that many groups find overwhelming. These groups are climbing the walls to get a larger piece of the power pie that the internet can give them. However, such groups despise the increased freedom and opportunity that the internet has provided for individuals unless there is some benefit to these groups that outweighs the downsides for individuals. Just look at developing states where even the most staunchly religious are having major uprisings mainly because the people have seen what kind of life is possible elsewhere in the world with the help of the internet. This is happening in spite of the fact that, in such states, just having a facebook profile might very likely put your life in real danger.

The uber-powerful 100 year programming language will likely be heavily regulated(if it's as powerful as Paul Graham thinks it could be). The same way that any powerful technology is. That is if we, as a species, even make it through the next 100 years. If everything is eventually regulated in society(thanks in large part to hysterical non-thinkers) and one day I need to have a license to wipe my ass or I have to get a dating license or an internet browsing license then one thing is inevitible. This situation never lasts long as history will attest. These situations cause severe changes in society and government. In East Germany or Communist Russia people started killing themselves. Life was that bad. Hell, those factory workers in China that make our iPads and iPods are a contemporary case of this. Suicide is the only leverage they have, who will work the assembly lines 90-100 hours a week ?
Or in the sad case of ancient Rome it could easily be argued that the overwhelming legal system played a fatal part in the failure of a once great empire. In the 21st century western world we aren't seeing mass suicide(yet ?) but we have seen a massive increase in mental illness in this and the last century which I would argue is directly correlated with the massive continual increase of legislation. There's no excuse for being ignorant of the googolzillion number of laws that exist today and all that (unless ofcourse you are a giant corporation or you work on wall street in derivatives trading). Many would even argue that this overwhelming continued increase in legislation is causative for the increasing widespread mental illness we see in the western world. Which is compounded even further by the massive increase in psychiatry and psycho-active prescriptions that more and more people are relying on to live a modern life.

Before I leave you I'm going to channel some George Carlin. An even more sinister question that we might ask ourselves : Could it be that the internet was never invented primarily for the sake of humanity ? Ofcourse in general it's changed everyone's lives around the world for the better but maybe that's just a nice secondary marketing side-effect and instead it was created primarily for control freaks in industry and government. Maybe the internet was never intended to be free and open(as we like to think it was) but that happened as a concession on the way to the DMCAs and SOPAs which were the ultimate plan all along. This is pure conjecture on my part and I hope that I am completely wrong.

Good night and good luck ...

PROGRAMMING  FACTOR  VIEW  KIDS  NO 

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