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How many people built software before iOS and Android? A few folks scattered across huge companies that either built consumer products or provided services for those companies.

Nonsense. Pre-2008 (iPhone App Store launch) there was loads of software aimed at the residential market. There was also the open source movement, which had created a whole operating system from scratch. Yes, the App Stores have made it much easier to sell software, but to think that all software was made in megacorps is silly. This isn't the 1980s!

That's an interesting take.

I guess the way it looks to me is that the last dramatic production advancement for lay people was the advent of blogging. The two major advancements after that have been social networking and tablets, which both somewhat degrade production signal.

The observation that an optimized consumption experience gives producers a bigger audience is an interesting one. But I think what I'm objecting to is the further distinction between those classes. The PC and blogging revolutions were profound to me in that they closed the gap between the producers and consumers. Tablets, on the other hand, make the distinction more overt. Same with the Kindle.

You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.

While this is true, my point is about who has the means for production. I would rather see that power distributed than concentrated.

Who has the means for production? Everyone has the means for production! It doesn't take some special equipment to write a book and publish it to the Kindle. People's ability to publish long-form writing is at an all-time high thanks to e-readers. The fact that the device used to create the content is different from the one people prefer to use to consume it doesn't really matter if everybody has both — which they do.

But my point is that if tablets, which people refer to as "post-PC" devices, in some significant measure replace PCs, then they only have consumption devices.

How is it consumption when someone e.g., records a song in GarageBand?

One reason for the popularity of these devices is that people are producing more content. Folks aren't watching CNN/BBC on an iPad but self produced Youtube videos and they're reading more than NY times bestsellers on a Kindle.

There is an assumption here that people with a PC will automatically become producers which I think is wrong. For people to become producers they need incentive and opportunity. These devices and the ease of content creation is means the opportunity bar is much lower (e.g. you don't need to get a publisher to agree on a manuscript to publish); and the incentive is higher (you can monetize content you produce whether its apps, books or videos much more easily).

But, if you spend much time on YouTube, it is surprising the range of people who have become content producers. To give just one example, my wife is fascinated by all the people doing makeup tutorials. These are people who might have explained things to a few friends, maybe, and now they have audiences of hundreds or thousands. Most of them are made with webcams on their laptops, and there is no reason they couldn't do the same thing on iPads or iPod Touches.

But post-PC devices are only partially replacing the PC - in those areas where they're better than PCs. We're not losing anything, only gaining something new.

If the urge, desire and instinct to communicate is universal, but only the means of production have been democratized since the advent of blogging, then I wonder: fifty years ago, what were the people who are most likely to be blogging today doing to express themselves?

I suspect that they were much more locally focused. Writing letters to the editor (because people still read the paper), aligning with community social organizations, being more actively involved in their communities.

So now we're able to form narrowcast tribes across geographic (and even temporal) boundaries. Are we better off? En masse, such connections may leave whole societies better off (Arab spring) but I think that perhaps we won't realize the full benefits until the focus returns to the local. And that won't happen until there's a rise in the locality of the internet.

Think reinvention of the local paper; or maybe a craigslist for the issues of the day.

And that can't happen until the technology is in the hands and power of EVERYONE. Think Kindles (or iPads, or whatever) in a rack at your McDonalds, literally replacing the local paper. Perhaps the biggest advancement here is the price point; but we need to cut that iPad cost in half perhaps 5-8 more times for this access to happen.

When that day hits--the day of the ubiquitous $1 Kindle--then I think we can claim democratization, and we will see a return to locality and the strengthening of our communities.

I wonder if production is not more inherent to the human being than you give it credit for being. How, otherwise, did we get from TV-land to the internet? Was it not a case of frustrated need for self-expression and response to new stimuli?

What is missing here is actually a perspective on how consumption is a form of production itself– of perspective. Better access, and new forms and content for consumption, will create (that word!) new forms of consciousness, which are fed back in production.

Consumption today seem to me more of a form of networking of sources and producers, production of perspective. There's so little that we yet know about our still new internet reality. Polishing consumption may very well be necessary in order for us to make sense of our current social/technological stage, to produce new forms of social networking/organization and ultimately new every-other-form of content/artifacts.

To dive in at the deep end: consuming stuff on a tablet, with the accompanying delights and frustrations - is part of the networking of the device itself into the cycle of human content consumption-production. There's no reason to believe that the tablet as an object is finished, and that it won't evolve to fit the 'expressive needs' of people – your own frustration/pessimism are a part of this cycle, both leading people to not use tablets, to look for different desktop paradigms, new forms of interaction with tablets, improving tablet ergonomics and on and on. You're surely not alone.

The cycle won't stop. We must not get down when there's so much great work to be done! Yet, again, also our negative feeling in this regard is ultimately productive, if we let it.

My iPad is my primary device for blogging. Since it is so accessible I end up blogging more now that I have it than I did before.

With respect to app development, which has been incredible in how widespread it's become, it's possible it's just an extension of what the Web started: incredible democratisation of creation.

Great point! Illustrates just how we're still living with the implications of just how the first extremely undemocratic reality of 'code as content' – first encapsulated in program devlopment, then going through a slight democratization route regarding computer usage through the Macintosh, and moving on through the html web – still is playing out.

One can at least see that the path-to-market of content has been democratized with the web over time… and the App stores/'App paradigm' are also helpful in making it possible for more to program.

I think a big part of our dilemmas have had to do with how isolated and abstract programming and development have been compared to mainstream society. A relative 'mainstreaming' of programming is still an incredible thought – yet it is happening right now!

Whatever happens to our present jobs, I can't help but think that the infusion of new programming talent is about to create a new reality – a wave that could lift a great number of us – given appropriate channels for us all to contribute so much more than regular business logic programming - and us people practicing and getting ready to catch it!

(over the top eh? :)