The Future of Software

by Derek Leebaert (editor)
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1995

Reviewed by Kevin Murray


The Future of Software is a collection of papers concerned with the trends in programming from a variety of authors, mostly managers of large corporations concerned with information flow. The uneven quality of the writing makes it seem like conference proceedings, but it does offer a glimpse of how men in power would like to present themselves to potential software consumers.

In terms of writing, the introductory chapter by editor Derek Leebaert and the H.G. Wells'-like future trip by D.K. Louis & L.A. Morrow stand out. Many of the others fall into the trap of dressing old ideas in new acronyms. Leebaert uses a number of engaging figures to evoke the mind-change he anticipates in the future phases of the digital revolution. My favourite is: Knowledge is the air and light of civilisation. Transform it and you transform all else. A child born today arrives in the costume drama of his old age, and dies amid the science fiction of his babyhood. The greatest voyage has begun. We will soon enough be out of sight of the land we have lived in for all our recorded history. (p. 14)

This apocalyptic tone is typical of the new breed of management re-engineers, whose big boots are made for walking all over traditional organisations until their chains of commands are flattened out.

D.K. Louis & L.A. Morrow evoke a time machine for examining the different ways decisions might be made in real and virtual environments. Not only are the obvious efficiencies of remote meetings celebrated, but also the collaborative nature of software development, rooted in the rural virtues of `The Prairie School'. The chapter ends with the monologue framed as a computer game, gently easing its heroic victor out into the peaceful streets: His two-year-old toddled by and asked, `Daddy get COMDEX 2005?' `Yup', said John, `finally won, honey.' `Good', she said, `let's take a walk'. And they did. (p. 125) That very much typifies the continuing message of the book, in the future, software gets softer.