If I asked you to imagine the apotheosis of software, what would you imagine?

Almost without question the vision in your head is an app.

Perhaps DuoLingo.

Maybe Facebook.

I think this is a shame!

Apps are little non-composable monoliths that are only allowed to exist if Apple says they may exist.

Software is so much bigger than that.

Software is alchemy.

It's what allows us to take human agency and extend it beyond ourselves.

Software is a language of possibility.

It allows coordination and cooperation even between creators who have never met, who never even imagined one another.

Software is combinatorial possibility, a fabric of cooperation, emergent leverage for our collective agency as a society.

It's a tragedy that we've locked it inside the box of an app.

AI supercharges everything.

In the future we'll either be locked inside of a box with a god AI…

…or we'll finally escape the box.

People seem to be implicitly assuming the former.

With some urgency we must strive for the latter.

Don't imagine software as it exists.

Imagine software as it could be.

As it should be.