I will be posting the papers I write for Champlain courses. I am required to maintain the "academic standards" and thus my language in these kind of posts might be dry and boring. But I have really done research for these. So take them seriously.
The world’s richest man was focused on software from age 17. Not many hardware millionaires paid Bill Gates his dues for the software that he wrote because they couldn’t see it or touch it, but it was software that that increased the applications for computers. It is software that breathes life into the mass of electronics that sits on our desks.
If I were to point out one invention that increased mankind’s productivity the most, I would undoubtedly say that it is software. In the early 1980s, Steve Jobs said that the computer is the bicycle for the mind, meaning that the mind was able to get more work done without resistance when using a computer for the job. It was the ever-prescient Steve Jobs who decided that the masses will lap up a computer if it came with easy to use software. The software applications for the Macintosh were utterly revolutionary for their time, and the users were amazed at what they could do with their Macs. I believe it is safe to say that the Mac introduced the computer to the rest of us.
When I see small kids in high school clicking around in their computers, I see the magical inverted pyramid of software. When a small group of people design the software and distribute it to the market for the others to learn it, you get the inverted pyramid. Since the replication costs for software is negligible, the small group of initiators leaves behind a legacy in the minds of those who use their product. As a budding software engineer, I would like to design software systems in communication and education. I want to design a completely decentralized telecom network that works on peer-to-peer technologies. Also the technology used today in the education field is applied more to the peripheral activities to learning, and not conceptual learning. Right now I am pursuing revolutionary methods to teaching which can accelerate a student’s understanding of the concepts. And that will be my legacy.
There is a reason why software will always be treated as a totally different category in the market. Software needs to made in a completely different way, by a completely different kind of people; it needs to be marketed a different way and people buy and use software in a completely different way. But software gets the job done in a completely different way too.
In this world of human greed and dishonesty, it is only software that is a complete slave to reason. Under no circumstances will a software program will make an exception for king or a billionaire. By producing software which realizes the complete extent of human potential, the mind is allowed to get creative in ways not imagined before. The new world of software tells me that in future software will have no core, no central system. It can go on in the most disastrous of conditions. And with the newly-discovered idea of self-modifying code, software can adapt and evolve with biological similarity.
As a common man on the streets, it is difficult to fathom the cumulative effect of software on our lives. But as a person who is studying the subject in depth, I can say that we are not even at the beginning of the beginning.
Posts
0 comments
Post a Comment