Never forget

We code software. Every day, every hour, an endless stream of code gets written and merged into products. The human-written software codebase is massive. The Space Shuttle runs on 400 thousand lines of code. The Large Hadron Collider uses 50 million lines. And all Google services combined run on 2 billion lines of code.

Software runs technology. Technology has become omnipresent in our lives; from pocket devices to augmented reality and artificial intelligence. The impact that technology is making on human lives is undeniable and inevitable. This fact has its burden: is the technology growing in the right direction?

The answer to that question echoes from the past: it can be found in the thoughts of the first computer engineers and among the ideas of the first technology visionaries. They all promote the very same message: the purpose of technology is not about having everyone interacting online all the time; technology is not a universal remedy (hard) to swallow.

Technology is the challenge for humankind to evolve. It is an opportunity to dramatically increase the collective knowledge, to address the most challenging problems. It is a call to action for public and private sectors to recognize the exponential growth of humankind's challenges, and to provide the vigorous, proactive, strategic pursuit of meaningful evolution.

We, the developers, are makers, creators. We are given the tools and the power to produce the code that will shape the future. We must come up with disruptive ideas that will lead to organisational and societal transformations. Such an attitude should be part of the DNA of any software company that shapes products, services and work. We are here not to code, but to answer the challenges.

Hello world. Never forget to keep evolving.

By Igor Spasić