heh, well, by "important" i meant like freedom, justice, and the continued existence of humanity. but like i was saying up-thread, i think software quality is important, and in that sense, ubiquitous and accessible type safety definitely seems like a Good Thing. i guess they might even help keep us out of trouble in those "important" areas.
I see (at least) two technological trends that may strongly influence "important" problems and that may be interesting to compare:
"3d-printification" or democratisation of manufacturing capabilities. When advanced manufacturing become cheap, generic and small scale you need less capital to create and design important hardware.
"UX-ification" of advanced programming practices or democratisation of software creation capabilities. When advanced software design, composition and implementation becomes cheap, generic and scalable you need less capital to create/design/implement software and to be in control of the software you want/need.
When those things come together the importance of capital will greatly diminish for some vital parts of life. It will not solve all problems but some. And maybe create other problems. But it should at the very least greatly impact "important" problems.
The "UX-ification" of software creation is the part where software engineers can be part of.
Disclaimer: Perhaps I have a naive assumption underlying all this - the idea that increased flexibility eventually "will lead" to apparent simplicity. But isn't living organisms kind of a proof of this? The amount of complexity that an animal needs to understand to continue living and reproduce is dwarfed by the complexity of the animal itself. Well, also cars and computers.
The problem is that, while improved development technology does raise the floor, it also raises the ceiling, so equality don’t improve.
Some of us could host 2005 YouTube out of pocket, but it’s 2020, and people with fast connections expect 1080p video now, so it remains impossible for individuals to compete with corporations.
Yeah, that's a good point. I kind of expect that the ceiling should pop off at some point though. But I can't make a good argument for that.
Like, will it always make sense to add things to YouTube or will a more decentralised approach make more sense? Will single responsibility principle make sense at that scale? Can infrastructure costs be shifted around in flexible ways? Etc.
But yeah it's telling that Facebook was initially looking for a much more decentralised approach but gave up on it when adapting to reality and economics.
EDIT: actually, you kinda cheered me up :)