by Peter van Eijk, Jan 1997.
[Back to Software in Reality or Home page]
Software is exploding, and is surrounding us in every step we take. From Compact Discs to televisions to the bills that you get in the mail to the grocery store and the pizza delivery company, everything is getting equipped with more and more software under the hood. Whatever used to be done with pencil and paper or simple hardware is becoming software intensive. Recently I noticed a maintenance person plugging a laptop computer into the room control panel of the air-conditioning system. A few years ago people joked about bread toasters with an Internet address. Now that joke is turning on us, it is actually becoming a reality.
Media watchers talk about these phenomena as the result of becoming digital, (www.media.mit.edu) but to me that is only half the story. It is not just the cramming of everything into digital bits, it is about what you can then do with those bits. Once things become digitized, they can be manipulated much more easily. Your grocery bill used to turn into an amount to pay. It is now becoming the input for a logistic system: you have just bought a box of soap? A new one is about to be ordered automatically from the factory, possibly within minutes. You are also being watched: if you buy a six-pack of beer, what would you be likely to also buy? They know.
The concept being digital is better replaced by the concept being software. I lack a better grammatical variant of this. It is possible to talk about mechanization and digitization, but 'softwarisation' sounds awkward. Maybe it is characteristic of new paradigms to not yet have words to describe them properly.
Software has also become a thinking model, or metaphor. For example, we might see our brain as a computer executing programs (see also neuro linguistic programming), or society as a network of processors. I subscribe to a lot of these ideas, though I remain critical. That is why, in this series of columns, I want to explore the power of the software concept, how it can be a basis for understanding and work.
At the same time I also want to explore the boundaries of this concept. What is fundamentally possible with this stuff and what not? What will remain truly human? People dream of what can be automated, such as smart agents that gently guide us through cyberspace. Is this dream a fata-morgana, or will it be tomorrows staple? My understanding of the software paradigm is such that it even appears capable of explaining that certain things cannot be explained.
In a quest for answers and illumination I have been lining my professional history for 20 years with a study of computer technology, philosophy, and psychology. That is the basis of what I perceive to be a series of columns, each of which explores a new angle of a definition of software.
So, carry on exploring, let me know what you think (by email), and forgive me for my one-sided views. I cannot do otherwise.
[Back to Software in Reality or Home page]