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Whenever I walk through a Home Depot, I think "Man, the people that use this stuff are really MAKING things." Inevitably, my next thought is, "And a place like
by padobson 12y ago
Whenever I walk through a Home Depot, I think "Man, the people that use this stuff are really MAKING things." Inevitably, my next thought is, "And a place like Home Depot could never operate without software making it work behind the scenes."
- tedks 12y agoHome Depot existed long before software. It'll exist long after software, too. Remember that we live in a bubble.
- oldmanjay 12y agoThere isn't going to be an "after software" with any sort of meaningful human civilization still around.
- jessaustin 12y agoYeah I suspect "after human civilization" will happen sooner than "after software".
- crpatino 12y agoHow curious! I've always thought it will be the other way around. Your assertion assumes either Doomsday scenario (where humans wipe themselves from the face of Earth, and automated machines keep going for a few more decades until disrepair catches up) or some sort of Singularity that makes humanity itself obsolet (a.k.a. Nerd!Rapture). On the other hand, History teaches that every civilization has their decline and fall. I suspect that software in its current incarnation (electromagnetic encoding of behaviors on a semiconductor based machine) is so tied to our current civilization that it will not survive more than 1 or 2 centuries at the most. But it is easy to imagine future civilizations thousands of years from now that have sophisticated forms of information processing which people alive today would not recognize as "software", even if the principles behind those are the same.
- jessaustin 12y agoI thought I was taking an optimistic view? Software is a tool like fire or the wheel. Barring a "Doomsday" (which I don't envision), our descendants won't give it up, even if they use vats of bacteria or lattices of anti-quarks or something even less recognizable as "hardware". One can imagine them giving up humanity and civilization. Eventually, both of those will seem pointless to anyone who isn't an antiquarian weirdo.
- tedks 12y agoThis is the sort of arrogance that creates and bursts bubbles. I hope you can learn to live sustainably and in harmony with nature and your own soul before it's too late.
- oldmanjay 12y agoyou seem to be conflating observation with arrogance. what, pray tell, makes you believe software will vanish? will there be a civilization post-agriculture or literacy? software is bigger than both.
- tedks 12y agoI met a traveller from an antique land Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- oldmanjay 12y agoI can't help but feel that the operational continuity of Home Depot after the techpocalypse isn't really what you're talking about anymore.
- corin_ 12y agoPurely for the sake of pedantry, Home Depot is actually under 40 years old, so it didn't even exist before software, yet alone after.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoNot a lot of businesses had more than a mechanical calculator in 1975
- corin_ 12y agoI don't have a car but I haven't existed long before cars. Home Depot may have existed without using software, but a company created more recently than unix wasn't around "long before software"
- Shorel 12y agoI don't see software going away anytime soon. It's like expecting writing and/or books to go away three thousand years ago.
- saalweachter 12y agoWhenever I walk through a Home Depot, I think "This building is full of houses."