If you are a Windows user then you might not believe me, but I have found the human factor in software.  The first inkling of this discovery was when someone plainly said to me, "well, you work with people, don’t you?"  I had just said that I thought software development wasn’t human enough.  I don’t really even know what I meant by that.  It was a hard-to-describe feeling, but my friend saw right through it.  He reminded me that I do work with people, and it’s one of the best things about my job.

As soon as I saw one byte of humanity, I started seeing more.  It occurred to me that the purpose of most software is to interface humans with very powerful thinking machines.  The best software for humans is the kind where the interface is complimentary and not adversarial.  When it comes down to it, making machines more human is the end-game for software engineers. Then there is the communicative nature of the internet which has fed the social nature of the web.  When it comes to the web, it’s all about connecting humans–to their media, to the things they want to buy, and more and more, to each other.  Human software is social software.  It creates communities.

If we’re bound for the Age of Spiritual Machines, it seems that human software is the road that will get us there.  Recently my friend’s brother bought him a World of Warcraft character for about $100 on eBay.  My friend and his brother wanted to spend time together, and considering they live in different parts of the country, World of Warcraft was a great venue.  It also gave the brothers a chance to relive their childhood relationship as adults.  The big brother was happy for a new chance to show his little brother the ropes of this virtual world. Now, when my friend shares his online experiences with me, he often talks about the things he and his brother can do and not the things their characters do.  It’s almost like a new version of the Turing test: Can the virtual world fool you into thinking your avatar is you?

It’s impossible to talk about this without mentioning the Nintendo Wii.  The more social "party games" that have long been Nintendo’s focus plus the Wii’s brand new way of playing are an auspicious mix.  Accelerometers and motion sensors have been around for a while, but the real magic of the Wii is in the software.  How does some motion of your hand affect what happens in the game and does it make sense?  Thinking about World of Warcraft and the Wii, it is no surprise that games are leading the way in bringing the human factor into software.

Another development that has had a big impact on me as a software engineer is the popularity of Ruby.  Ruby claims to be the programmer’s programming language.  Like the Wii, it is fun and intuitive to use.  Its flexibility and elegant syntax is, well, very human.  If you agree with the viability of a bottom up approach, then you can argue that writing software in a more human language will lead to more human software.  I think, with the many new web applications written in Ruby on Rails sprouting up lately, Ruby has helped make software more human.

I can’t predict what comes after World of Warcraft, Ruby, and the Wii, but it will inevitably be more natural, more inuitive, and more human.

Posted in Games, Software, Web/Tech by Brian Ballantine | on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 10:44 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.