I think Friedman is on the right track with his ideas about (2000 – present) being the third globalization age of individual entrepreneurship but I disagree slightly in how he also calls it the “software age.” I’m not sure this is a proper way of making a global trend into a metaphor for the entire concept of present globalization. We are merely in a software age because it is less expensive to make our code able to do more with what we have, than to make our hardware better. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking something is just physically not possible to enhance past its current evolution, as we have seen in the past with technological advances this is just not entirely true. One day we will move from a silicon based processing system to a graphite system, which will enhance our hardware capabilities greatly, however it is much more cost effective (in the time being) to improve our software. I believe this is a ‘random’, variability depending on market costs, conditions, and customer expectations, cyclic trend and not a term for a globalization movement.
I love messing around with website design, I can have a convo. about anything, and am currently a genetics major at UW Madison.
No, even increasing the power of our hardware will not move us away from code. The reason we use software is because of the necessity of abstraction for solving problems. If you take a digital logic design course, you will quickly come to understand the difficulty of using circuitry to solve even simple problems. It’s much easier to build just the circuitry necessary to do basic bit manipulation and then use code to deal with abstractions. Secondly, even if you increase the power of hardware, it is still necessary to have efficient algorithms. Look into algorithm analysis and consider long run behavior of certain algorithms.
Right, but look at chemistry where even our most powerful super computers cannot even solve or predict molecular orbital theory yet. I think that in many cases like genetics and other areas, the basic circuitry necessary for abstractions is still not even capable. (I should probably take a digital logic design course haha)