Democratizing Information Access+Literacy: What happens when everyone's an architect?

This is a recent post on BigThink about trying to make programming languages part of people's everyday vocabulary: http://ht.ly/29p2f


Something to consider when it comes to the democratization of information access and information manipulation is: If everyone knew how to program would it be easier or harder to maintain the standards (html, CSS, OS software and computer hardware itself), or would all standards just melt away? I think the question of whether you want a democratization of programming/techno knowledge is what will separate the technocrats who believe only an esoteric barrier between the masses and the technocratic elite can protect the stability we need to have communciation and cross-compatibility; from those who hope for a more egalitarian system that does not obscure knowledge on purpose.

One thing that might happen with routinized computer knowledge is that our collective ability to create and maintain standards would become tied to our politico-socio-psycho-economic ability to cooperate with each other. 


Whereas now I think the esoteric nature information architecture/design/planning is allowing us to exceed our actual social potential for cooperation, with the democratization of knowledge we might see a temporary setback and some struggles until we somehow learn to let everyone hold their own reigns and still come together to create something greater such as the internet and collective info archives that require standard setting practices.


I would choose to take this harder path because the potential fruits are much greater; it all comes down to do you believe a truly free and open, decentralized society can function? would you bet on it? would you risk WWIII for the sake of it? We have yet to see major warfare based solely on information.. a sign that we haven't really grappled with what information means to us yet.

Building a Community Skills Lab @ Heart of Biddeford

This corner will soon become...

This!>

The goal is to provide a space where local business owners and residents can learn about urban planning / community development / business development, thereby enabling them to better understand the language of planners and administrators and be able to have productive and empowered dialogues with them about the community. Planners and outsiders can in turn learn more about the community here. There will be a computer workstation in addition to a small library of books, so that people can come in and listen to open source lectures or watch DVD materials, as well as promote their projects with online social media.

The Social Capital wall will be a low-tech, local Facebook; a directory of people and organizations, their skills, and how to contact them. Everything will be updated according to the wall, so there can be an online directory and a yearly guidebook distributed to local businesses when we accumulate enough profiles. In order to encourage people to post profiles, we can make it a condition of being able to borrow a book from the library. That way we make sure to get the books back :)

http://www.heartofbiddeford.org