The Software Industrial Revolution

Andy Coenen explains how we’re living through another Industrial Revolution—the Software Industrial Revolution. In the first Industrial Revolution, they revolutionized textile production. In this one, it's software. 

There’s a detail about how people used to have only two pairs of clothes, one for work and one for church. After the Industrial Revolution, textiles were more available at cheaper prices. Now we have textiles for every occasion. In the same way, the second Industrial Revolution will drive the proliferation of software by increasing availability and reducing cost.

I can’t even imagine what that will look like. Does everyone just go around making software for things? If you need a calculator, you just build the software instead of opening an app. When you close it, the code is unloaded from RAM and deleted off the old aluminum alloy platters. Maybe the software never exists on a drive at all, and instead runs completely in RAM? Ephemeral software. Impermanence. Far out, man.

I still don’t know what the future will look like for my career, but the outlook does seem slightly more hopeful.