CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 61

CTO STRAIGHT TALK | ISSUE 3

investment, despite its critical importance
to the future of the economy. The exact
same mistake has been made once
before-manufacturing was considered to
be "dead money" and was ignored for a
long time. We now belatedly realize that
manufacturing is critical and investments
are needed in order to innovate, but it will
take a generation for manufacturing to
recover. If we are wise, we won't make the
same mistake in information technology.
It is fashionable these days to say that
it's all about software, without really
understanding what "software" truly is
and isn't, and ultimately what the success
of software depends on.
The most general way to view software
is that it is a formal-that is, machine
executable-statement of intent to
achieve some result. Once the intent is
captured, the result can be achieved
quickly through computing machinery,
and can be iteratively refined to do
better over time. This is where the power
of software comes from.

The fact is that the power of software
depends on exponential improvements
in the underlying machinery. When
these improvements are not
forthcoming, as is the case now, we are
in uncharted territory.

It is almost a cultural phenomenon
of the industry: the herd gets
excited about a particular area and
moves in that direction, often to
the detriment of another. How do
you see this phenomenon playing
out in the interplay between
performance and agility?
It is indeed a cultural phenomenon.
Wall Street is not excited by
infrastructure because the Street is
focused on short-term profits. Investors
are not excited by infrastructure for
the same reason, and industry is
less excited about it than it used to
be. If this continues, fundamental
developments in this area will move to
geographies where there is an appetite
to invest for the long term.

Note that this general description of
software doesn't tie it to any particular
computer or instruction set, even though
most people today associate software
with one particular instruction set
because it happens to be in common use
today. This is a profound mistake.

Do you think that the growing
interest and investment in the
Internet of Things will make people
pay more attention to hardware?

The second thing to note is the utter
dependence of software on some
computing machinery-software does not
run on air! In fact, it would be fair to say
that if the performance of these machines
had not improved at exponential rates
between 1945 and 2005, there would
have been no computing industry and
probably no software industry.

It's entirely possible, but the IoT space
has suffered from its own share of hype.
There are two fundamental problems
that need to be solved before IoT
fulfills its potential. One is delivering
power to IoT devices over the air, and
the other is providing connectivity to
these devices at the right cost point.

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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

Contents
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover1
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover2
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 1
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Contents
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 3
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 4
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 5
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 6
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 7
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 8
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 9
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 11
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 12
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 65
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover4
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue4
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue3
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue2
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue1
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