I like the violent revolution idea actually :)

More seriously, that's exactly what will happen if the software technology monster isn't tamed. It is a technology that's about 1000x more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

Software is unique in engineering in that it grows in complexity, reach, scale and impact about 1000x faster than any hardware technology. Forget non-technologists keeping up. Even the smartest professional software people can't keep up. I had an opportunity recently to talk at length over several several late evening conversations with a guy who writes some of the deepest infrastructure software for the Internet, and he seemed genuinely scared. He's hedging his bets. So what do you think that means for the rest of us?

The Kraken has been unleashed and is beyond the control of even those who made it.

The amazing things software does and will do in the future comes at the cost of quality, reliability, safety, containability, security etc. It will make everything it touches incomprehensibly complex, unstable and volatile It will level governments, flatten economies, devastate entire cultures. The Singularitarians worry about what might happen if tech gets smarter than us and becomes a Skynet like intelligence. That's a pretty unlikely scenario in my book. Vastly more likely is the scenario where it remains far dumber than us, but becomes uncontrollably huge and powerful, with everything dependent on it. When it goes down, it will take everything with it. This is far more scary than Skynet. I call it Bugnet.

Remember that old "If cars were like computers" joke?

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal."

Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement "Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"

1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart, and drive on.

3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.

4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought
   "Car95" or "CarNT". But then you would have to buy more seats.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.

6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.

7. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag system would say, "Are you sure?" before going off.

10. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

Some of this sounds like a joke, but is not. Software is fundamentally a far more dangerous force than hardware. I mean look at Stuxnet as a weapon against Iran's nuclear program. Nuclear weapons are scary but manageable. Nuclear weapons in a world that has been eaten by software? Nightmarish. And human-intended effects are actually rather minor. The Y2K panic gave us an idea of what serious softocalypse scenarios look like.

Don't believe me? You're right to be skeptical. Don't take it from a random guy like me. Take it from one of the people who started this whole thing, Alan Kay:

http://tele-task.de/archive/lect...

It is an hour long video, and well worth investing in. Non-tech people should be able to follow it. tl;dr version: Part 1: software is now a bloated monstrosity of brittleness and hidden dangers. Part 2: there is hope for more robust paradigms for software (but don't hold your breath).

And forget non-technologists. Even non computer technologists are seeing their fields swallowed by software. I am a mechanical/aerospace engineer. On paper. Most of the hands-on engineering work I've done has all been programming.

If the professional software types write code that's profoundly messed up, what do you think amateurs like me do? We produce seriously dangerous technical work. Don't believe me? An entire NASA space mission was lost due to a software bug. There was a case of a US Navy warship going dead in the water because of problems with Windows. (I forget the refs for these). I got out of serious hands-on work before I did any real damage.

Should you non-techies re-train yourself as software people? Heck no. Start armed revolutions? Perhaps. Bugnet must be resisted.

You, the non-technical people, are humanity's last best hope. Us technologists are already lost, sucked into the software Matrix. There is no saving us. You can save yourselves.

But you cannot stop this tsunami. You can only brace yourself for an uncertain and deeply messed up future, dominated by the fear of Bugnet collapsing on your heads. It'll be like the Cold War, except that you cannot trust in the ultimate sanity of people with their fingers on the triggers in Russia and the US. Bugnet cannot be stopped. There are no launch codes. It has already launched.

Sure, you could start teaching programming in schools and have today's adults become more computer literate. But that would be re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Remember: even the most talented software engineers in the world really have no clue what the heck they've created. Learn some BASIC or PASCAL or whatever the heck they use as a beginner programming language these days, if you want a cheap false sense of security that you understand what's going on.

You may want to learn a hedge skill that would be valuable in a Bugnet-caused softocalypse (I am being totally serious here). You may want to start evaluating sectors based on vulnerability to such collapses. You may want to deliberately stay a year or two behind the technology curve, even if it means losing competitive advantage in your world. Look for other ways to make it up or defend your markets.

I laugh at the people who go around protesting globalization. If they think that represents a hugely unsettling force for people's lives, they haven't seen anything yet. Globalization was/is/will be just a little ripple in our lives. Software eating the world will be a tsunami.

This is John Connor. If you are listening to this, you are the resistance.

This is a 4-drink answer. Read in that disclosure what you will. I think alcohol makes me more realistic.