Software Development is Something New

I hardly need tell you that software is something new - but the process itself (as a social process) is also something new. Its overall objective, is simply to make better software - something that any field of endeavor ascribes to - but usually does not not accomplish. But in Software, this is accomplished every day - routinely.

I suppose it can do this, because it is so new, few know what it is doing - and do not consider it a threat, because they do not know what it is doing. It operates quietly, in the background - and effects global changes, without anyone noticing it.

People pull out their Phones, and look at them intently, many times every day - not realizing that they have merged with them, and are different beings, as a result.

This, in itself, is nothing new - people have always merged with their technologies. But in the case of Software, the results are unusually far-reaching. I wish I could say it has made them better, but I cannot - I can only say it has made them better in some ways, and worse in other ways. All without there being aware of anything at all.

It will be useful, to back up a few years, to the Fifties - before Television. If you can remember that far back. Television hit people with an effect like that of a nuclear bomb - on their psyches. They were blasted into pieces - and the pieces have never been reassembled. Because people found they liked being that way.

This was the scene when the Computer arrived - a landscape littered with remanents of a previous era. With the people in it, having no idea where they were. This made it easy for it to take over - and make a world better for itself. But not necessarily for the people in it.

We now live in two worlds - the real world, and the virtual world. I get up in the morning, take a poop, and eat breakfast - all in the real world. Then I open my laptop, and start programming - in the virtual world.

Everyone is the same way - they live in two worlds, without being aware of this. And are comfortable with these two personalities - that do not communicate with each other.