Open Questions I'm Pondering

These are some open questions that I'm thinking on.

  • What does a result look like in future of computing research?
    • Are findings in computing more akin to discoveries or inventions?
  • Will there be more programming languages in the future or less?
  • Over time, will applications tend towards "super apps" that do everything or small, single-purpose tools?
  • Is the computer itself a medium or a meta-medium? Are there other meta-mediums?
  • Do Mediums have fundamental capabilities that compose to make the thing into the medium that it is? Can these fundamental capabilities be identified?
  • Can Medium for thinking be transformed into one another? Can we define generic transformations at the level of capabilities such that we can define the transitive relationships between mediums?
  • Does software have a grain to it? From whence does the grain originate?
  • What is the relationship between mediums, information theory, and cognition? Are some mediums "better" encodings in some sense?
  • To what degree, if at all, do individual differences in cognition affect the preferred medium for that individual?
  • How do you measure the effectiveness of a medium or tool? Is it possible to compare effectiveness across tools?
  • If the medium is an abstraction (a Platonic ideal) and a tool is an instantiation (a thing) that reifies the medium, does this mean that certain tools are better or worse reifications? How can we express that "betterness"?
  • Are mediums invented or discovered? To what degree do human capabilities (human factors) constrain the latent space of tool development? (cockpits are not arbitrarily shaped and laid out, for example)
Open Questions I'm Pondering
Interactive graph
On this page
Open Questions I'm Pondering