Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
computer not as one device but instead as many. Simply by installing
new software, we can allow our computer to serve alternatively as an
email application, video game console, digital photo album, or electronic
diary. It is software that defi nes our relationship to the computer, soft-
ware that gives the computer its meaning. We might not know what kind
of computer we are using or who manufactured it but we generally know
what software we are currently using. Software is the interface between
computer and society.
By allowing the computer to be perpetually reinvented for new pur-
poses, users, and social and economic contexts, software has transformed
what was originally intended primarily as a special-purpose technol-
ogy—essentially a glorifi ed electronic calculator—into a “universal
machine” that encompasses and supersedes all others, the central meta-
phor that informs our most fundamental conceptions of ourselves and
our environment, and the embodiment and enabler of our highest cul-
tural and political aspirations. Historically speaking, it has been software
that defi ned what a computer was and what it could be used for, software
that provided the crucial link between the technology of computing and
its larger socioeconomic environment. And so when people talk about
the larger process of the computerization of modern society, or speak of
the computer revolution transforming the ways in which they work, live,
consume, recreate, and engage in social and personal relationships, they
are really talking about the history of software.
But what exactly is software? Most of us today tend to think of soft-
ware as a consumer good, a product, a prepackaged application. We
purchase (or download) a copy of Microsoft Word, Mozilla Firefox, or
World of Warcraft; install it; and use it. In this sense, software resembles
other, more familiar mass-market manufactured goods: someone, some-
where, produces some computer code, and that computer code in turn
transforms, temporarily, your computer into a word processor, Web
browser, or a gateway into the mythical world of Azeroth. Software, in
this context, is simply the set of instructions or “code” that controls your
computer—plus, perhaps, the physical media on which those instructions
are encoded (a CD or DVD, for example), and possibly the printed
manual that accompanied it.
Historically speaking, however, software was not something that was
purchased off-the-shelf, nor was it a single application or product.
Rather, it was a bundle of systems, services, and support.
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When a fi rm
in the 1950s wanted to computerize its accounting operations, for
example, the software that it had to develop included not only computer
