The Power Of Software

Software has become the soul of our civilization. Hardware is its heart, but indeed, what is a piece of hardware worth without software? The days of hard wired logic gates are long gone. The only piece of "working hardware" among my collectibles from the past is a Pong game based on the AY-3-8500 chip. Everything else after the Pong needs some kind of software to run.

Software has also become a nightmare of our civilization. Every child knows software has bugs. And we are so used to "turning off and turning on again" when things do not work, that nobody even thinks this is crazy. It is just the world works, period. Some people think it is absolutely unprofessional an even unethical to ship software with bugs (but hey, everybody does that...).
But software bugs are just a part of our life, as software itself is and we are simply learning to live with them. The same way we learn to live with harsh winters and cold rainy summers (who likes them, after all?). The world is not ideal. By the way, recently I have come across a wonderful article (even a book) that explains why software has bugs and why we cannot afford to get rid of them. If you want to now why, then go and read it, or buy the book (Eric will be happy).

But the real power of software, that many of us simply forget, is the upgradeability. Once invested in a particular hardware, we can keep on improving it, making more productive or more fun. Examples? Thousands... everything basically. An iPOD that can play longer on a charge, thanks to a better caching algorithm in the new software release. A PSP, that suddenly can browse the Web when not playing games. A Subaru, that cleverly shifts gears down when you suddenly take the foot from the accelerator (the original version was not that clever). OK, in all abovementioned cases we could finally change the hardware after all. But imagine the spacecraft just passing Jupiter. It was launched long time ago, and represented state-of-the-art at that time. But as years passed on its journey through Space, here on Earth we were making progress in many areas. So why not use an opportunity to upgrade it remotely and empower with the latest algorithms? It happened to the Cassini on July 28th, 2000 and has just happened to the Mars Rovers.

Software. The new life in the old hardware. Funny this is just an opposite of what humans would like to do with themselves. Don't we all want to change our hardware after several years?