The Butlerian Jihad

The real world works according to its own logic, which we understand at least in part. We program computers to simulate this logic that we observe.

As such, instead of interacting with the real world directly, we now interact with software that, supposedly, has a relation to reality.

What is the point of dealing with software as a intermediary between us and reality? The obvious reason is that it extends our human capabilities, for example by furthering our communication reach, providing information and analysis tools to enhance our decision-making, and allowing us to control most other manufacturing processes. Software is the ultimate human technology because it transforms reality more deeply than previous tools.

And the result is apparent. 25% of the world population uses the Internet. Government and multinational software systems affect the lives of at least 90% of the population.

That might be a great achievement, but what price does this technology exact from us?

We can safely assert that a significant portion of human intellectual effort goes into creating, maintaining and enhancing these software systems. And it feels like a compulsion, too: consider the people-powered YouTube, torrents, web sites, e-book archives, etc. The whole open source movement is built on this compulsion of codifying the world and its infinity of interactions.

It is legitimate to ask: What would we be doing instead?

For one, we could be experiencing reality first-hand, rather than through software. The advantage of reality is that it always gives the real answer, without us programming it. When we experience a real event, our mind automatically processes the event at levels that we are not even aware of. So when we create computer software that aims to reflect reality, we are only scratching the surface of what reality is - since we don't know any better. Time spent to understand our minds, ourselves, will yield much better results by showing us truly new capabilities that we did not believe we had, nor maybe even imagined. We should be able to reduce our dependence on tools, and gain new freedoms therefrom.

The Butlerian Jihad is an example of a conflict arising eventually between humans and machines. Frank Herbert's vision is of a far future where humans develop their natural abilities, only after they free themselves from their reliance upon thinking machines.

Appendix

• How many computers are operational in the world? including mobile phones, appliances?
• How many lines of code have been written?
• How many Gflops per second are being executed?
• Note: Wolfram|Alpha isn't much help.