If building one’s personal cyberinfrastructure would only be as simple as learning the alphabet. In order to do something, a significant amount of knowledge is required. It is more like learning to read and write in Chinese: You need to know hundreds of symbols before you become literate, and it takes years. Similarly, in order to use the web, you need to learn many details, such as commands and rules, which are very unforgiving: You type a wrong letter and nothing happens.

My point is that the barriers to enter the cyber world are still too high. It would be nice to have computers that are “intelligent servants”: You tell them in your own words what you want and it happens, rather than having to download this and import that.