12 years have passed since Marc Andreesson declared software is eating the world. “In the
next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every
individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.”
Way more smart phones have connected; new cars, dryers, stoves, fridges,
speakers, televisions, hot water tanks, and thermostats have Internet today.
Many parts of the world the bandwidth is not fast enough to provide the full power of the Internet at their disposal.
Someone at Google said her team optimized YouTube to decrease load times. When she looked at the average load time, it rose! After more data analysis, she realized
a whole new set of people started using it. They connected with (s)lower bandwidth connections. The new changes made YouTube usable for them. Those people raised the average load time. The were not getting the whole power of the Internet.
Other people still text to access the Internet.
Political machinery has been cutting people off as well.
Some political movers use the power of the Internet to constrain and manipulate others. Consider QAnon and the messaging from there.
The Internet continues to grow; software grows in parallel. Marc Andreesson discussed the content
that has become software (music files, video streams, ebooks, pictures, etc.), shaped by what we traditionally think of as software, written by some programmers in cubicles somewhere. How the content’s presented, can be used, listened to, watched, read.
It’s been 60 years since Marshall McLuhan wrote “the Medium is the Message.”
Software is the medium of the Internet; software is the message of the Internet.