Thursday 8 November 2012

Computers and empowerment

Computers are supposed to be empowering to people. You are supposed to be able to take your general-purpose computing machine and make it do things, through software, that the creators never dreamed of. Otherwise we'd all be happy with the pre-installed software on an iPad and never look elsewhere. Curated app stores and closed platforms get in the way of that idea, because it puts barriers between users writing code and running it. Once you decide that the app you want doesn't exist yet, suddenly you're climbing a much higher wall than you ever intended, and trying to get your app approved by someone else just to let you run it on your own computer. That's not empowering people.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Well, it's not empowering users.
PPS - It is empowering app store owners.

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