Yeah they've been saying it since the 70's: "Everyone needs computer programming. It will be the way we speak to the servants." -John McCarthy, creator of Lis

Yeah they've been saying it since the 70's: "Everyone needs computer programming. It will be the way we speak to the servants." -John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and coiner of the term Artifical Intelligence. But I don't think the age of the claim is in itself a reason to not believe it. The more you know about programming, the more you can do with general purpose devices when they arise, and more importantly, the more devices you can make into general purpose devices. A simple recent example is Kinect. It isn't a general purpose device. It was a gaming doohickey. Thanks to programming, you can turn it into a (more!) general purpose device.