: 0
At the Java Developer Day in Sydney, Bryan Cantrill raised the question whether software exists. “Does it worry you that all this does not exist?”. At best software is an arrangement of electrons which cause some events to come about. Its status can only be surmised from its effect on peripherals such as screens, lifts or traffic lights. It merely underlies the existence of other things.
So what does exist in the world we inhabit? Is software different?
Perception is an abstraction from the objects around us. We can only perceive an impression of them as phenomena which are received by our senses as light, sound, and smells and others. Our brains construct our own reality from these phenomena. We have no other access to reality. What we claim to exist is constructed in our intelligence out of a limited range of inputs into our senses. This individual construction of the existing is mediated and modified by social interaction with others and institutions of culture(education, socialisation). Hence we live in a social construct with our own sensors simultaneously picking up and interpreting new signals.
Objects in our world cannot be said to exist without the interpretation systems which render them as objects. Order is projected onto things. Just as the computer programme orders the dots on the screen, the human mind orders the world of everyday perceptual elements. A painted picture, some music, or a book of text requires a human mind to give it meaning. Likewise with a computer programme.
- A programmer writes text:
- which is compiled into software
- which generates organised pixels on a screen
- which are looked at by users
- whose interpretative systems create meaning out of it.
