To be fair, the reason you wouldn't turn the transistors upside down is that you already know what software is and that this is not related to what software is.

To be fair, the reason you wouldn't turn the transistors upside down is that you already know what software is and that this is not related to what software is. Similarly for the novel, though actually maybe that depends on the kind of insights you're looking for. In particular, turning transistors upside down is a good way to discover that software is fairly orthogonal to hardware orientation, if you didn't already know that. Not that anything prevents someone from claiming otherwise...