A Map for the Programmable World
A Map for the Programmable World
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The map created for our Technology Horizons Fall conference in 2009, When Everything is Programmable is now available to you!
Millennia ago, young couples in Egypt prayed to fertility gods with the hope of receiving the gift of a child. Much later, Native Americans performed ceremonial dances to pray for rain and a bountiful harvest. In the middle of the 19th century, the Central European monk Gregor Mendel selectively crossbred pea plants to control the characteristics of their offspring. While the approaches differ, the aim of these endeavors is the same: to set in place levers of control in order to achieve desirable outcomes, or in today’s vernacular, to program.
In each case, humans develop formal rules and then run processes intended to deliver specific results. At every stage, we use the latest tools and knowledge of the times in efforts to achieve control of bodies, minds, and surroundings. Now on the horizon are new kinds of tools for programming our world. These tools leverage ubiquitous data and use computational power to discern patterns in data, create computational power to discern patterns in data, create computational representations of various systems, and tweak them to achieve desirable outcomes.
This map is designed to help you navigate an emerging computational world. To engage with the new tools for programming while, at the same time, to understand the limitations and potential pitfalls of new tools and approaches. Moving from self to society to environment, the map takes you through 13 forecasts of living in a programmable world, and the tools that will make it happen.