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What happened to cells 541 million years ago is happening to software today.
The trigger for cells was rapid increase in the avaliability of oxygen which allowed more complex, more interconnected and more diverse life in radically larger quantities.
The trigger for software is the rapid increase in the avabilability of intelligence - and it will similarly lead to a radical increase in volume, interconnectedness and complexity of software.
When basic ingredients of organic life-making (sun, oxygen, water, carbon etc.) became abundant, the g…
This essay is telescopic. It can shrink or expand, depending on how much attention you are willing to give. This is the original version (313 words). Show other sizes.
What happened to cells 541 million years ago is happening to software today.
The trigger for cells was rapid increase in the avaliability of oxygen which allowed more complex, more interconnected and more diverse life in radically larger quantities.
The trigger for software is the rapid increase in the avabilability of intelligence - and it will similarly lead to a radical increase in volume, interconnectedness and complexity of software.
When basic ingredients of organic life-making (sun, oxygen, water, carbon etc.) became abundant, the game of life changed. It was no longer just about simple energy production and replication in a hostile environemtn, but much more about finding the right niche against all the others tryind to do the same. It was about adaptability. About goals in context. About intelligence.
Same thing is likely to happen to sofware: in a world where building things is easy, the game of software is going to be about continuously finding the right things to build.
In the short to mid term, this means that software engineers will need to become software architects and designers. People who decide what to build and how to build in a way that will anticipate change, rather than do the grunt work of the building.
In the long term, the architecture itself will also become secondary because building will become so cheap and trivial that you can just build inefficient things and let them die out. So the real job will be that of a software breeder. Or a software gardener. Extending natural selection with artificial one. Guiding software evolution in ways they find purposeful, profitable, interesting or aesthetically pleasing.
If the most important thing for a software breeder is to find the right niche, then most critical effort should be in problem-hunting. That’s why we are are building a platform just for that.
Original published: February 6, 2025
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