So we complain about politicians passing stupid technology laws, and as soon as a politicians says he wants to learn something about the tech, a prominent programmer tells him "don't bother?"
If you don't know how to code, it probably seems perfectly reasonable to have a computer that you can't program yourself, with everything locked down. If that's the future you want, then sure, tell politicians to leave the coding to the professionals.
If you can code, you start to see the computer as a machine that can do anything you want, instead of just the things some app store makes available to you. That freedom is addictive. You start demanding it.
If you don't know how to code, it probably seems perfectly reasonable to have a computer that you can't program yourself, with everything locked down. If that's the future you want, then sure, tell politicians to leave the coding to the professionals.
If you can code, you start to see the computer as a machine that can do anything you want, instead of just the things some app store makes available to you. That freedom is addictive. You start demanding it.
Cory Doctorow's fears about the end of general computing will come true unless lots of people get addicted to that freedom. http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html