I just read an Interactions magazine article that was a bit muddled but pointed out,
The Industrial Revolution did not occur when we built steam engines, it occurred when we used steam engines to build steam engines. The true information and computing revolution will not occur until we use software to build software; until we really use executable knowledge to create executable knowledge.
It’s hard to know specifically what this will look like. Will it be more machine-learning based, probabilistic like the human brain? Analogy-centric? Evolutionary? Based on internet-scale knowledge? In any case, I don’t doubt that the essential “meta” argument is true. Without software that can build software, computers will remain pretty dumb.