Software is eating the world

Software is eating the world, is the deliberately provocative title of an essay written by Mark Andressen in 2011, the central thesis is that all technologies eventually become information technologies and at that point rapidly accelerate as new tools can be brought to bear. In short, they become software not hardware with all of the rapid evolution that implies.

This progression can be seen in the world of manufacturing, 3D printing or additive manufacturing is gradually changing multiple industries. If you chart the progress of access to computers from industry only mainframes to iPads, plastic printing sits somewhere at the level of the hobbyists computers of the 1970’s and printing metals is still very much an industry only option with machines costing millions.

A world with access to 3D printing that is accessible as an iPad is a very different place, think pressing a button on a microwave size machine and a toy or a tool drops out minutes later. A sobering idea to any of the parents among us.

This path to commoditisation is also happening in biosciences with CRISPER-CaS9 and mRNA making previously intractable problem solvable. A good example of this is recent development of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, because of the previous development effort to create a drug creation platform the actual vaccine was created in a matter of days, the rest of the time was regulatory and testing.

BioTech is still very much at the mainframe stage of development, what does the world look like when it’s as accessible as an iPad.