The year, is 2020.
The year is 2020. We’ve managed, through automated testing, Travis CI, Jenkins CI and crontabs; to completely eliminate downtime and maintenance windows while at the same time increasing security and reducing strain on sys admins. There are very few “sys admins” in the traditional sense. We are all sys admins through Vagrant, docker, and virtualization. We increasingly care less about how scripts work and more about the fact that they do, and that machines have given us feedback ensuring their security. They don’t hope our code is insecure, they assume that it is and instead treat every line authored by a human as insecure.
We’ve managed to overcome humanity’s mountains of proprietary vendors, replacing their code and control with our own big ideas, acted upon by which helps build the tools we need for us. We have begun to bridge the digital divide on the internet, not through training, but by refusing to be solely driven by financial gains.
We are open source. And we are a driving force that will bring about the Singularity (if you believe in such a thing). So we did it gang, it took awhile but wow, we do almost nothing and we’ll always be employed because we know how the button or the one-line script works. Congrats! Time to play Legos and chew bubble gum right?
Or is this just some far off, insane utopia that developers talk about over wine in “The valley”.
This vision of the future, 5 years out, isn’t as crazy as it might sound if you see the arch of humanity. In fact, I actually believe we’ll start to get to that point closer to 2018 in my own work and at a scale 1000s of times beyond what was previously thought possible. This is because of the convergence of several technologies as well as the stabilization of many platforms we’ve been building for some time; yes, all that work we’ve been doing, releasing to Github, drupal.org, and beyond… it’s now just infrastructure.
Today’s innovation is tomorrow’s infrastructure and this becomes the assumed playing field by which new ideas stand on. Take Drupal’s old slogan for instance, Community Plumbing. That thing we all paid for significantly at one time, but now just take for granted; that thing is becoming even more powerful then any of us could have imagined.
So, enough platitudes. (ok maybe just one more)
“Roads… Where we’re going we don’t need road.”
This next series of posts that will start to roll out here are things I’d normally save for presentations, war gaming sessions and late night ramblings with trusted colleagues. I’m done talking about the future in whispers; it’s time to share where we’re going by looking at all the roads and how they’ll converge. After all, the future of humanity demands it.
If you haven’t seen the video “Humans need not apply” then I suggest you watch it now and think. What can I do to help further bring about the end of humanity… Ok wait, not that, that’s too dark. Let’s try again…
What can I do and what do I invest in knowledge wise to help be on the side developing the machines instead of the side automated into mass extinction (career wise).
Hm… still pretty dark? No no, that’s pretty spot on. What job are you be working towards today so that 5 years from now you are still relevant? I hope that the videos to be released in the coming days provide a vision of where we’re heading (collectively) as well as some things to start to think about in your own job.
What are you doing right now that can change the world if only you spoke of it in those terms?