Can a software developer change the world?

I'm sitting on a flight to Boston, with my seat companion, US Senator John Kerry, next to me. He lucked out - I'm the perfect person to sit next to on a flight as I hate to talk on flights (and he was accosted by nearly everyone in the Salt Lake Airport). Must have spent the weekend in Utah skiing. (You mean you didn't?)

But several rows behind me is Jon Karlen of IDG Ventures with his family. (I offered to change seats with him and babysit. He demurred but give him four hours with his children in a confined space and I'm betting he'll take me up on it. :-) Jon and I talked before we boarded the plane and he was telling me about some of the investments he's considering. One, in particular, is highly interesting to me.

Which is the more important person? Senator Kerry is the obvious response. But is he? We're in the middle of disrupting a staid software industry now, and Jon's investments (at least, one of them) may well prove to be a key in that disruption.

Can software change the world? I was taught by my professor and thesis advisor, Larry Lessig, that code matters. Can code matter more than a senator? I think so. Code changes us, often without our knowing it.

Your thoughts? Does software matter this much?

[scrollinondubs]

Considering that flawed code in the Diebold voting machines last election (whether malicious or unintentional) left them susceptible to attack such that any voter could inject code of their own that would alter the votes tallied and leave no way to trace the tampering... yea i'd say code is every bit as important as the people in public office. Code can not only decide the outcome of an election but it's behind nearly every digital or electronic contraption that the officer uses to exert influence once elected. The automated safety features of cars, life-saving technology in hospitals, etc... code has become a pervasive fabric critical to our daily existence.

sean

[Conneriscool]

ok..... english please???

[botchagalupe]

I enjoyed this post. However, I would say no contest. I don't know anything about Jon Karlen but I do know that most VC's are interested in only one thing and one thing only (money). If I had the choice you had I would have taken the seat with John Kerry. With two tours of duty in Vietnam, 19 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and one of hand full of people in the world that can say they ran for president it's would have been an easy choice for me.

I love software and I do believe software can and does change the world. I also know the world has a lot more problems than software can't solve.

my 2 cents

johnmwillis.com

[john.mark]

the point at which computing infrastructure reached critical mass as a key economic indicator was passed long ago. Yet it seems strange to me that issues related to information access, data formats, the digital divide, online privacy, and IP rights have not generated the mass interest that they warrant. Of course software developers are changing the world - on a daily basis. What seems to be lacking is the public recognition of this change and the consequential willingness to vote with one's hard drive. Perhaps the lag is only due to the perception of the importance of IT, and the masses will one day be more engaged in our technology policy, but I suspect that a great number of people simply don't want to recognize its importance. I wish I knew what would change that because in the interim, we have the DMCA, calls for "stronger" copyright protection, and plotting from the usual suspects to remove the pesky nemesis of reverse engineering.

Perhaps this isn't the direction you were going, but with the exit of Matt Szulik, I find myself wondering what other big-name executive will bring these issues to the forefront. He was the only major IT executive, as far as I can tell, who dared to link the digital divide to pernicious closed data formats.