Your comment "Like it or not, virtually every aspect of life now is dependent on software" reminded me of Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll". In the story, the r

Your comment "Like it or not, virtually every aspect of life now is dependent on software" reminded me of Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll". In the story, the road technicians were the linchpin to a system that millions of people depended on daily. Some of the technicians decided to go on strike, owning to their beliefs in the "functionalist revolution": > Concerning Function: A Treatise on the Natural Order in Society, the bible of the functionalist movement, was first published in 1930. It claimed to be a scientifically accurate theory of social relations. The author, Paul Decker, disclaimed the "outworn and futile" ideas of democracy and human equality, and substituted a system in which human beings were evaluated "functionally" - that is to say, by the role each filled in the economic sequence. The underlying thesis was that it was right and proper for a man to exercise over his fellows whatever power was inherent in his function, and that any other form of social organization was silly, visionary, and contrary to the "natural order." > The complete interdependence of modern economic life seems to have escaped him entirely. ... > Functionalism did not take hold at once-during the thirties almost everyone, from truckdriver to hatcheck girl, had a scheme for setting the world right in six easy lessons; and a surprising percentage managed to get their schemes published. But it gradually spread. Functionalism was particularly popular among little people everywhere who could persuade themselves that their particular jobs were the indispensable ones, and that, therefore, under the "natural order" they would be top dog. With so many different functions actually indispensable such self-persuasion was easy. The subtitle of the original 1940 publication: "The higher civilization becomes, the more it is dependent on each unit — and the more it is at the mercy of a few!" - https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v25n04_1940-06_SLiV/page/n3/mode/2up?q= https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v25n04_1940-06_SLiV/p...