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Comment by danford | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately too many people just give you a blank stare when you mention that 100 years from now we'll be printing up everything we can't augment. We'll also have brain-machine-interfaces that allow one to 'memorize' copyright media. How does the government/society plan to control our memories in the future? Just go with whatever laws the corporations come up with? Are we going to continue to deprive children of software knowledge so that they're dependent on downloading worthless digital copies of closed source code with who knows what coded into it? Thing is once everyone can code, free and open-source digital goods will undoubtedly prevail.

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> How does the government/society plan to control our memories in the future?

That's easy. DRM for machine-to-brain interfaces. Who's going to stop that from happening? Mozilla?

The scary part will begin when they'll be able to delete our memories remotely, because we "stole" their media, or perhaps the content owner simply withdrew the license from the distributor, and now you're not allowed to "own" it anymore and keep it inside your brain.

Or think about what happened inside the DoD when the Snowden leaks or the Wikileaks ones came out, and banned all employees from reading the articles about it. If you think that in the future we won't need "computers" anymore, because our brains will act as the computers of today, I could see the government setting up "infrastructure" to ban such leaks from getting accessed by people, or also deleting them remotely.

Or, we could rise up and demand total control of our own minds. Freedom of thought, things like that. We need to educate the general public before they surrender their mind to proprietary software, though.

And if people have no choice, there is still jail-breaking. And if jail-breaking is forbidden, I'll do it anyway. And possibly start a career as a runner. That would probably get me killed, but if I don't, I may not be able to look at my reflection in a mirror.

Everyone can code is a pipe dream. It requires high skill and specialization.

It's like saying all of us can at some point make cars, houses, electricity and so on.

I disagree. Others have said (much more eloquently than I) that software is the new literacy. In a hundred years, I believe someone who can't at least read code will be at a disadvantage similar to someone who can't read English today.

I try not to make prediction that long in the future, because intelligence explosion is likely to happen sooner than that. http://intelligenceexplosion.com/

Once it does, we will likely fall into one of three outcomes: Heaven, Hell, or Annihilation —most likely Annihilation if we're not careful. Any finer point will be moot.

(EDIT: Before you down-vote the singularity crap, please follow the link. The arguments are long, but serious. Machines will take over the world at some point. We just need to ensure they're gentle about it.)

Programming is craftsmanship, not really literacy. The difference is that most people don't like crafting, but they do like communicating. Most people are consumers.

Literacy is not the same thing as the ability and interest necessary to write a novel.

But it is the ability to read and (for the most part) understand that novel, which is important. There are definitely more books (and things in general) being written in the age of literacy than there was before.

But everyone has to write reports.

This is only true at our current level of intelligence. And we're not finished climbing this ladder. If we get to build serious brain-computer interfaces, those will help with many tasks, including computing.

Working memory for instance is closely associated to fluid intelligence, which is kinda required to program seriously. What if we stick a chip in your brain that doubles it?

Finally, programming is not a specialized skill like making cars. It can help you do anything, provided you understand whatever you are doing. This is as general as it gets. Anyone who can learn programming should learn it, eventually.

I disagree. I believe everyone could learn to code if we taught it from around the age of six or seven. We can read and do basic math can't we?

sure, everyone can be taught. I just don't see it happening anytime soon. If we are talking if 100 years from now, anything is possible and it is a different debate altogether. But in next 20 years thus is not happening.

With same logic , Everyone can be taught to be a rocket scientist too.

> We'll also have brain-machine-interfaces that allow one to 'memorize' copyright media. How does the government/society plan to control our memories in the future?

We can memorize copyrighted media now, without needing brain-machine-interfaces. I have hundreds (probably thousands) of copyrighted works memorized. My memory is not perfect, but it retains enough of these works that if I were to recall them and write down my recollections and distribute that, I would be infringing their copyrights.

I don't foresee copyright law needing to be or actually being changed in response to the development of more efficient ways to get copyrighted media into our brains, such as brain-machine-interfaces.

You cannot distribute it with 100% accuracy right now. Given the BMI assumption proves true, you will be.

Thus, you can spread copyrighted material. Big difference.

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