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I called it for Obama – nearly 2 years ago
I find it odd that there is so much hullabaloo over a tech site endorsing a political candidate.
Last week I gave a short class on software architecture and why thinking through a problem before turning it into software matters. I referred to two quotes (the first is on the back of my business cards):
“Computer Science is no more about computers, than astronomy is about telescopes” – Edsgar W. Dijkstra
“Software runs civilisation” – Bjarne Stroustrup
I don’t do this job because I like playing with syntax, compilers and interpreters – they’re just tools. I do this because it matters.
There is no engineering discipline, no craft, no art, no philosophy that can have as large an impact on day-to-day life as software development right now.
People will stand for hours in a street to hand over a significant percentage of their income for a phone that can help make their lives easier or more fun. A significant proportion of people working in the West will spend forty hours a week using software tools continuously. A kid in a dorm room can go from having virtually nothing to being on the front cover of news magazines in a few years just because he knows some PHP and has a business head on his shoulders.
This stuff matters.
However, we do not sit in a vacuum. We do not develop the cogs of society to shape it, we respond to its needs. We are part of the societal machine we serve, and we’re here ultimately to make money for ourselves, our investors, our employees just like anybody else. We need to look at the World around us and attempt to understand it. I spend at least 10-12 hours a week reading not just news, but books on philosophy, art and trends within global culture – how could I attempt to be a software entrepreneur and not do that?
So when Tim O’Reilly decides to endorse Barack Obama why should he be condemned for it? You don’t have to read his post, but as somebody who seeks to understand the trends within the software industry, why should he not attempt to have an opinion on the society it sits within and shapes?
Being able to predict trends within society – and responding to them – is critical to what those of us who aspire to be at the front of the industry do. If you’re not prepared to understand the fears, insecurities, hopes, dreams and aspirations of the World around you, what on earth do you think you’re doing in the software industry?
Maybe I’m biased: I like politics. If you like politics, you have to be aware of the US political scene to some extent. To not be would be like being into fast food and ignoring McDonald’s. As a politico, even a British/European politico, you find yourself idling away through American Political speeches (turn your speakers off/down) and when you hear a candidate speak with the same conviction you start to consider whether they are going to do something special.
Back in January 2007 when I was making predictions for the year ahead which I mostly got wrong I added one prediction for 2008/09 in the last paragraph:
“Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States”
This was nearly a year before he announced he intended to run, which when it happened came as a surprise to many. At the time I made that prediction he had just two years in the Senate under his belt. If things go as the polls suggest they will, this might prove to one of the best long-range predictions I’ve ever made. Did I capitalise on it? No. Will it affect me in my daily life? Maybe. Will I be disappointed if McCain wins? A little, but he’s a left-leaning Republican anyway so Europeans aren’t as scared of him as they are his VP candidate.
What is important though, is it means I’m getting better at understanding how politics work, and that must ultimately mean I can get better at understanding how software works.
Those of you think technology and software sits inside a bubble, or that endorsement of one candidate over another is somehow “wrong”, simply don’t get it. You’re not in the same industry as us: you’re destined to only ever be consumers of ideas, never formers of them.
