Clay Johnson: I think it’s time for software developers to really step up and understand that their role in society is actually pretty vital.  Our definition of literacy is rapidly changing, and it’s always changed.  5,000 years ago literacy was a trade secret kept by a bunch of dudes who were like, “Hey, if we don’t teach anybody how to read and write, we can make all the money.”  They were called scribes.  
 
300 years ago the concept of literacy was the ability to sign your name; today literacy means the ability to read a newspaper.  But I think literacy is now changing, and we have a new form of digital literacy, and 30 years from now someone saying “I'm not a computer person” or “I'm not a technology person” will be the equivalent of someone today saying “I don’t know how to read.”  

And developers are really, I think, at the forefront of that.  They’re the super literate, much like the scribes were five, six thousand years  ago. It’s time for them to really, I think, play and participate in the world of media and journalism because they can harness these giant information processing machines that can get us closer to the truth.

Directed / Produced by
Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd