Programming

 The future, the present, and even back in the recent past, the more you know about programming the more successful and in control of your environment you will be.    Life is transitioning towards gadgetry, and to borrow something form Neal Stephenson—to gargoyles.  Stephenson describes those that “wear” their gadgets as gargoyles.  Granted in Snow Crash this is a mildly derogatory term.  However, how much of a perceptual and philosophical change is it from those of us already attached deeply to our so called smart phones.  I would be one of those.
 
Before I wind up digressing away from a point that I have barely expressed, let me return to my initial thought trend.  (and as another digression—the wonderful thing about blogs is they can exist in full stream of consciousness).  Technology is enhancing, encumbering, and evolving our lives in terrible and wonderful ways.  As  such we have an increasingly important decision to make.  Do we let ourselves become subservient to the technology or do we attempt to control it.  This I do not mean on the global end of the world-terminator skynet apocalypse, but rather as masters of our own personal domain. 
 
Love it or hate it, technology is becoming (or has become) a pillar of our life.  We must understand how to use it, and in that lies an understanding and skills in programming.  Admittedly this has been a high barrier to get over.  Assembly language is terse, dense, and complex.  Even computer programmers in great numbers do not necessarily understand this language.  The high level ones, c c++, java, and so forth, can also be cumbersome.  Becoming proficient in any of those languages can be time consuming.
 
However this is changing.  Google app inventor aims at moving programming to the masses.  I have delved slightly into this and have found it intuitive and relatively easy.  It is not perfect, but it is a huge step forward in allowing the layman to interact on a deeper level with our technological toys and tools.
 
I expect we will find more and more such tools appear to help us become masters of our own personal domains with respect to technology.