We built a Foursquare clone recently and the BOOM guys built an extended version of HDFS and Hadoop (http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/eurosys10-boom.pdf). It works out pretty well. The shift is not really about accessibility either - I've watched people do some pretty advanced data work in fields like physics and biology.
It's more about making computers into personal tools. If you look at the tools the average person uses - email, excel, google etc - they all work really well individually but they are really hard to extend or compose. Each application is a world unto itself and doesn't play with the outside world. What would really help people work is not the ability to build their own applications but the ability to move data around and glue tools together. It's kind of like applying the unix philosophy to office suites.
It's more about making computers into personal tools. If you look at the tools the average person uses - email, excel, google etc - they all work really well individually but they are really hard to extend or compose. Each application is a world unto itself and doesn't play with the outside world. What would really help people work is not the ability to build their own applications but the ability to move data around and glue tools together. It's kind of like applying the unix philosophy to office suites.
Chiusano has a pretty interesting take on this - http://pchiusano.github.io/2013-05-22/future-of-software.htm...