Hi Alan!
I've got some assumptions regarding the upcoming big paradigm shift (and I believe it will happen sooner than later):
1. focus on data processing rather than imperative way of thinking (esp. functional programming)
2. abstraction over parallelism and distributed systems
3. interactive collaboration between developers
4. development accessible to a much broader audience, especially to domain experts, without sacrificing power users
In fact the startup I'm working in aims exactly in this direction. We have created a purely functional visual<->textual language Luna ( http://www.luna-lang.org ).
By visual<->textual I mean that you can always switch between code, graph and vice versa.
What do you think about these assumptions?
What if "data" is a really bad idea?
Yes, I think if we could get rid of this notion we can probably move in interesting directions. Another way to look at it: if we take any object with sufficient complexity in the universe, how could it interact with other object of sufficient complexity? If we look at humans, as first order augmentation devices for other humans, it's notable that the difference between levels of complexity of their internal state is much higher than the level of complexity of input at any sufficiently small time frame (whatever measurement you decide to take). Basically, the whole state is encoded internally, by means of successive undifirentiated input. In that sense, for example - neural networks don't work with data as such, the data presupposes an internal structure that is absent in an input from the standpoint of the network itself. It is it's job to covert that to something we can reasonably call "data". Moreover, this knowledge is encoded in it's internal state, essentially being the "interpreter" bundled in. Another angle that I like to think from is this: TRIZ has a concept of an ideal device, something performing it's function with minumum overhead required, best that the function be performed by itself, in absence of any device. If we imagine the computer (in a very generic sence) to be such a device, it stands to reason that ideally it will require minimum, or even no input. Obviously it means that we don't need to encode meaning or interpretation into it through directed formal input. The only way for it to happen is for a computer to have a sufficiently complex internal state, capable of converting directed, or even self acquired input to whatever we can eventually call "data". This logic could possibly be applied to some minimimal object - we could look for a unit capable of performing a specific function on a defined range of inputs, building the meaning from it's internal state. The second task then, would be to find a way to compose those object, provided they have no common internal state, and to build systems in which combination of those states would render a larger possible field of operation. Third interesting question would be: how can we build up the internal state of another object, provided we would want to feed it the input requiring interpretation further down the line, building up from whatever minimum we already have.