Thirty years ago, in the first wave of computing, hardware was king.
Thirty years ago it was computer hardware and computing machinery that took over the world.
In the second wave of computing, software is king.
This is where we are now. “Software maketh the machine.”
And as I’ve said previously, “It’s the software, stupid.”
Software will change the world in ways we cannot yet imagine.
Thirty years from now, in the third wave of computing, data will be king.
There will be more value in the data and how we connect all of that data and manipulate the data than we can possibly imagine.
It is data that will change the world so dramatically that by the end of the 20th century there will be entire vistas of algorithms we will make use of that we cannot even contemplate at this time.
Today, in 1987, we have not yet created the software tools that will make the next generation of software tools that will come after that will then let us manipulate these vast sets of data.