I didn’t know how to title this. It’s not about technical work.

Why software? The answer varies with our frame of reference: the level of detail at which we consider the relationship between software and human beings.

A software developer will usually specialize on writing applications at a given scale, ranging from a single person up to billions of people. Usually, the more people using it, the more general the tasks the software supports.

Software is a component of a system for managing information. The information itself is used to manage some physical process. Although it seems like the software technology industry has in many ways forgotten that. Software exists more and more to support itself. It has, in a way, become detached from the world.

Software isn’t unique in this. It follows other information technologies, like writing and language and music. Humans don’t only live in the real world—or more accurately, the data streams coming from the real world. They also live in simulated data streams: imagination. Software has gotten extremely powerful at producing simulations of different kinds. Although it still has a long way to go.

But is that good? Well, it’s fundamental. Information is a simulation. At least, it is a model. We can work to keep the model consistent with the world. Or we can transform it radically. If we simply leave it alone, data gets progressively more out of sync. While the world changes, data stagnates.

Most people participate in the world with the minimum of engagement. We are mostly passive, most of the time. When we are active, it is often by necessity.

We would rather play with symbols. Usually we do this together, by talking (or some mediated form of it). We share what we know, and we argue about who knows best. Even though, usually, we know very little—far less than there is to know, and nowhere near enough to produce any useful insights. Ignorance is the default, and few transcend it.

There is plenty of software to support the default mode. Most social media software is there, not to inform people, but to enable them to argue pointlessly with one another, or to gossip, or to joke, or do other aimless social things. While these activities had purpose in small, close-knit communities, they have no purpose on the Internet except to simulate close connection and meaningful interaction. They are artificial substitutes.

Similarly, computer games are nutrient-free substitutes for real-life challenges.

It’s not necessarily bad that people spend a lot of time in their imaginations. Some people neglect other aspects of their lives. In fact, most of them do. So that is probably bad for them, although they seem oblivious, or in denial. This predates any mechanical technology. The ability to dream and fantasize has always been both a blessing and a curse. Computer-aided imagination simply amplifies the power of dreams and fantasies to seduce.

Pure reality is difficult to endure. We instill meaning into everything.

In any case, lots of software addresses reality. There is software to control machines and manage people. Without software to manage logistics and operate many complex machines, we wouldn’t have the magical world we have now. Although we would probably still have more of the old magical world, nature. Although most people were just as ignorant of nature in medieval times as they are now. As long as we’ve had civilization, most people have been concerned with fulfilling their specialty roles, engaging with people and tools. Nature is a warehouse to plunder.

Software cannot help us to protect wilderness from human depravity, except as part of an arm’s race of understanding. The philosophical battle—between human as dominator and human as partner—is orthogonal to technological progress per sé, except insofar as machinery and energy accelerate the damage of humans seeking dominion. The destroyers benefit asymmetrically. They outnumber the protectors, ninety-nine to one.

I have doubts about technology. At least when mass produced and marketed. I don’t know what to do.