Jeff Jarvis has a very good post this morning about shifting cultural mores (and/or memes?) (A programmer's society replaces a lawyer's society). As he drops his son off at programming camp, he postulates that we are shifting from a lawyer-centric society to a programmer-centric society. I would use the term "hacker" myself, but I think he has a very good point.

Lawyers are necessarily a suspicious breed. They live by rules. They think in terms of us vs. them. They think contention. They argue for sport. They always think they can appeal to a higher authority. They aim for victory. They are patient.

All those traits have an impact on American society -- many or most of them not good. The fact that lawyers run government is at the root of many of government's problems: Government has become all about arguing, little about serving.

But now imagine if former programmers start rising to the heights of American business and government and cultural life.

Programmers are logical. They believe in cause and effect. They believe any problem can be solved if you just find the cause. When they do battle, it's with a mistake, not a person. They live in the details. They believe in openness and transparency. They also believe in following rules but the rules of reality -- what a machine can and can't do -- over the rules man made up. They believe in planning. They, too, are patient. What else?

However, will the lawyers let it happen? Case in point: the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (IICA, née INDUCE Act). When innovation has to be vetted by lawyers first, can the hackers' ethos thrive? I'm very worried that it cannot.

UPDATE 0910 PT
Rick Klau has some excellent comments on Jarvis' post (What if lawyers became programmers?).

Want to know more about the INDUCE Act?
Please see LawMeme's well-organized index to everything I've written on the topic: The LawMeme Reader's Guide to Ernie Miller's Guide to the INDUCE Act.