Skype Journal

Some kinds of things you want sealed tight, no way to get inside and see how things work.

Software as a whole isn’t like that. The practice of software development depends on learning from the shared code of others. So it’s very useful for systems to expose parts of themselves to third-party programmers. It’s a way to share ideas, how the creators modeled things, to show how it was done so you can improve on it, to use it as a base on which to build. These affordances for programmers, these APIs, they are the shoulders of others, the foundations on which new generations build new structures, and express themselves with new arts, and solve problems not imagined by those who came before.

Where you show the guts and how to change them, a portion of the users become better informed. And a portion of them move on to become real engineers and artists.

This has always been true. For centuries. You could look at how a Jacquard loom worked or a Whitney gin and fix them. Or build your own.

Where games open up the ability to create levels or worlds or avatars or abilities or whatever, masses jump in to experiment and customize and create and share. Exposing your system’s guts unleashes innovation.

But we’re in a market economy. And keeping how you do what you do a secret is thought smart business. So we see Apple ban anything which would let an iPhone or iPad or iPod user write programs on the device they own. You have to buy a Mac and buy permission before you can code on your Apple mobile device.

So a generation will never get the chance to get under the surface. A generation will never get to play with how things work, to stretch themselves, to peel back the layers and layers of abstraction and functionality until their first Hello World! A generation is being denied the literacy to think critically about the software they use. A generation is denied the tools to express themselves through software, hobbling speech and the communities that emerge from that speech. A generation taught to be passive and helpless and rely on Apple Inc’s beneficence and their parents’ pocket change.

This is not a problem with Apple alone, not even of software alone. The same problem applies to household chemistry, pharmaceuticals, medical technology, and automobiles. We need generations empowered to hack their genes, to repair the flocking behavior of the bots inside their cars, to calibrate their neuroceuticals before an exam. Life skills, right?

That’s why society benefits when Apple, or Skype for that matter, chooses to expose more of how they do things to the world. And that’s why you should buy your kids and your schools and your day care centers the digital book readers and tablets and phones and desktops that are not child proofed. Buy the more open platform. Build on the more open platform. Invest in the more open platform.

The class of 2100 will thank you.

photo credit: Emma T photography: Fixing the Fiat 500. "Boys learn to be mechanics at an early age in Cuba. This nine-year-old was learning how to fix an engine under the watchful eye of his father."