None of us, back in those days, could have predicted how much these machines would damage our world. We only saw the good.
And there has been lots of good; I can’t live without GPS in the car, and online shopping is often handy. I can communicate with all sorts of people I would not have been able to meet before.
But there have also been a massive number of negative effects, from surveillance to endless lies and social divisions.
Tools are inherently neutral, so they have both good and bad uses; that is their nature. We have these incredibly powerful machines, but what have we done with them? The world is far more chaotic, way less fair, and highly polluted now. We could have used the machines to lift ourselves up, but instead we’ve let a dodgy minority use them to squeeze more money out of us. Stupid.
I’m hoping that we can turn a corner for 2026 and get back to leveraging these machines to make the world a better place. That we ignore those ambitious weasels who only care about monetizing everything and instead start to use software to really solve our rapidly growing set of nasty problems. Sure, it is not profitable, but who cares anymore? Having a lot of money while living on a burning planet isn’t really great. Less money on a happy planet is a big improvement.
The worst problem for the software industry is always trying to rush through the work, only solving redundant, trivial problems. We need to switch focus. Go slow, build up knowledge and sophistication, and ignore those people shouting at us to go faster. Good programming is slow. Slow is good. Take your time, concentrate on getting better code, and pay close attention to all of the little details. Programming is pedantic; we seem to have forgotten this.
The other thing is that we need to be far more careful about what software we write. Just say no to writing sleazy code. Not all code should exist. If they find someone else, that is not your problem, but doing questionable work because someone else might is a sad excuse. As more of us refuse, it will get a lot harder for them to achieve their goals. We can’t stop them, but at least we can slow them down a little.
The final thing to do is to forget about the twisted, messed-up history of software, at least for a moment. Think big, think grand. We have these powerhouse intellectual tools; we should be using them to lift humanity, not just for lame data entry. We need to build up stable, strong complexity that we can leverage to solve larger and larger problems. A rewrite of some crude approach with another crude approach just isn’t leveraging any of the capabilities of software. Rearranging the screens and using different widgets is only going sideways, not up. Software can remember the full context and help us make way better decisions. That is its power; we just need to start building things that truly leverage it.
Given the decreasing state of the world these days, it makes sense that we use this moment to shift focus. If computers got us into this mess, then they can also get us out of it. It’s been clear for quite a while that things are not going very well, but many of the people leveraging that sentiment are only doing so in order to make things worse. It's time we change that.
Tools are inherently neutral, so they have both good and bad uses; that is their nature. We have these incredibly powerful machines, but what have we done with them? The world is far more chaotic, way less fair, and highly polluted now. We could have used the machines to lift ourselves up, but instead we’ve let a dodgy minority use them to squeeze more money out of us. Stupid.
I’m hoping that we can turn a corner for 2026 and get back to leveraging these machines to make the world a better place. That we ignore those ambitious weasels who only care about monetizing everything and instead start to use software to really solve our rapidly growing set of nasty problems. Sure, it is not profitable, but who cares anymore? Having a lot of money while living on a burning planet isn’t really great. Less money on a happy planet is a big improvement.
The worst problem for the software industry is always trying to rush through the work, only solving redundant, trivial problems. We need to switch focus. Go slow, build up knowledge and sophistication, and ignore those people shouting at us to go faster. Good programming is slow. Slow is good. Take your time, concentrate on getting better code, and pay close attention to all of the little details. Programming is pedantic; we seem to have forgotten this.
The other thing is that we need to be far more careful about what software we write. Just say no to writing sleazy code. Not all code should exist. If they find someone else, that is not your problem, but doing questionable work because someone else might is a sad excuse. As more of us refuse, it will get a lot harder for them to achieve their goals. We can’t stop them, but at least we can slow them down a little.
The final thing to do is to forget about the twisted, messed-up history of software, at least for a moment. Think big, think grand. We have these powerhouse intellectual tools; we should be using them to lift humanity, not just for lame data entry. We need to build up stable, strong complexity that we can leverage to solve larger and larger problems. A rewrite of some crude approach with another crude approach just isn’t leveraging any of the capabilities of software. Rearranging the screens and using different widgets is only going sideways, not up. Software can remember the full context and help us make way better decisions. That is its power; we just need to start building things that truly leverage it.
Given the decreasing state of the world these days, it makes sense that we use this moment to shift focus. If computers got us into this mess, then they can also get us out of it. It’s been clear for quite a while that things are not going very well, but many of the people leveraging that sentiment are only doing so in order to make things worse. It's time we change that.
