# 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? - [[Computers are like paper]] - [[Medium for thinking]] - 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? - [[Software has a grain to it|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)