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Software Is a Superpower

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1–10 of 14 posts

Re: Software Is a Superpower

#5
I disagree with the article, for thousands of years slavery was how you automated tasks at scale, and you could build massive impossible things this way.

Software is the tech equivalent, except the slaves are machines and tiny shell scripts.

Re: Software Is a Superpower

#7
post #5

I disagree with the article, for thousands of years slavery was how you automated tasks at scale, and you could build massive impossible things this way. Software is the tech equivalent, except the slaves are machines and tiny shell scripts.

By definition, machines (at least any built so far) cannot be slaves, so this is not a great equivalency.

At the very least it's a sign of amazing social and technological progress.

Re: Software Is a Superpower

#9
post #4
post #2

The tiny paragraphs are really jarring to read.

+1 on this, paragraphs are meant to group ideas. The way they’re used here, there might as well be just a wall of text with no paragraph delineations at all.

Not every new line must have the same meaning. Do you also look down on James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound?

Re: Software Is a Superpower

#10
post #7
post #5

I disagree with the article, for thousands of years slavery was how you automated tasks at scale, and you could build massive impossible things this way. Software is the tech equivalent, except the slaves are machines and tiny shell scripts.

By definition, machines (at least any built so far) cannot be slaves, so this is not a great equivalency. At the very least it's a sign of amazing social and technological progress.

It really is pretty great. Getting automated out of a job sucks, but it beats being a slave forced to do that same job by a country mile.

It's interesting that as machines have become more powerful, slavery has become less and less profitable---but so has employment!

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