At some point there could be too few projects and so many reasonably skilled programmers that the price would go down, and/or these people who invested months and years of learning would find their skill gradually less marketable. I really liked your idea and was just trying to think of other skills that could be incorporated into this sort of system, so that a variety skills would be developed and a variety of opportunities would available.

The thing is, those projects can develop in parallel and don’t have to be a part of Archimedes. For this specific niche, your idea is very innovative and seems worth looking into.

@JasonY: Hah! Glad you approve, sir! I have indeed seen Gattaca, but it’s been long enough that most of what I remember is “DNA…recombinant…Uma Thurman…eugenics…Uma Thurman…” I may have to go back for another viewing sometime soon.

I wish I had some sunny optimistic, airtight reason that the bleak future you paint won’t happen, but I can’t think of one. Where’s Pollyanna when you need her?

I was, unfortunately, having to play the “diligent scorekeeper” role, so was only minimally available for the “concerned father” job. Fortunately, Kathy was on the spot and taking care of him. The sad end result, however, is that I have no idea if they asked him the questions you have to answer when you get your pumpkin rocked!

Razor sounds hilarious. What great icing on the savory cake that is televised sports.

@JasonY: Yep, it’s an original idea, though a bit of judicious googling appears that others have tried somewhat similar things. I haven’t seen that any of them provided the hooks into a source code management system, though.

Your MIT scenario is exactly the kind of thing that I had in mind! People around the world don’t lack time or intelligence, just good ways to put those resources to us.

I’m not sure offhand where one would take this to get it going; I would guess that grants might be a good approach, but I’ve no experience with such things.

@Steve Ivy: The virus-checking is a great idea! Thanks for that!

I like the unit-testing too — lets the computers do more of the work for us! I also thought that as part of a Phase 2, it might be cool to build tools to make generating acceptance tests easier for non-programmers, so that managers or people with product ideas could specify them without learning a unit-testing framework. That’s considerably more ambitious, though.

You might, in addition, provide hooks in the service so that a user could ask, say McAfee or Symantec to pre-check submitted code for virus-y bits. Just a thought.

I still love it! Get that man an angel investor, quick!

Ha. No, but seriously, I think this is has the potential to be a real breakthrough idea. Is it original? If so, color me impressed.

In light of the fact that MIT has put some of their standard programming classes online for free, there is no limit to where this could go. It is now possible for a poor child in a destitute country to get the equivalent of a fairly good (self-taught) education in programming, and a system like Archimedes (inspired name) could leverage (ouch!) that into a life-changing prospect, while at the same time speeding up the rate of progress. My only concern is that it would devalue the education of those unfortunate folks who have put themselves into usurious debt to attend the MIT classes in meatspace. But hey, the wheels of the future crush the slow, I guess.

Is there anyone who you could talk to about this? I’ll link it from my blog, but I doubt any of my 30 daily readers is in a position to get this rolling.

Great brainstorm, Sean. Glad I knows ya.

Cynical and defeatist? Yup, and I hate that, but when I look at the history of technology- ANY technology- I see that as soon as a tech develops to the point where something horrific can be done, it will be done. And I don’t think the spectre of total human annihilation will prevent some nutcase from doing it just because he can (See: 12 monkeys).

The future does not look bright. In fact only recently the House of Reps have passed legislation that bars the use of DNA to determine health insurance premiums and employment. The legislation has been working its way through Congress for the last thirteen years. It is hoped that the Senate Dems will pass its’ version of the bill before this session of Congress expires.

I think that the only way to retard (but not stop)a more pervasive exploitation of the Human Genome Projects results lays within our our Constitution. More specifically our right to privacy. I think that it is within this arena that we can buy some time to allow our laws catch up to the science.

But until that happens, I lay claim to the following sequence atgttagtta. Can I have my money now?