programmers are the new designers

John Maeda once said at a lecture that programmers are the new creatives.
He was making the point that to create something in digital media you need to understand and or be able to use code to imagine it. http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/

I would also extend that thought and say that code enables the aesthetic of a new digital language we need to read information. One of my first tastes online of this new language was seeing thinkmap by plumb design in NY back in 1998. http://www.thinkmap.com/

Digg labs seem to be pushing this into functional news readers, by being able to distill vast amounts of news into a graphic form. This language is only possible by the code that enables the manipulation of content. It frees the design process to be something organic in its structure. The designer doesnt need to place image and type but mearly set up some parameters for the code to follow, or not if you like.

"In its analytic and methodic inventory design follows a range of metaphors
and paradigms: of creation, of construction, of information."

Jörg Petruschat
Informations takes command?