Most of us are familiar with the title the ghosts in the machine from the 2004 movie IRobot, in which the phrase is used to describe the little things that happen within computer programs which we will never fully understand.  As a software developer this is something that is slightly confusing as I like to pretend that I know everything that my code does, after all it is the ultimate description of logic.  It does what it does; really there is no other more accurate way to describe code…

Now, this has always intrigued me however because it really is not as simple as I make it seem… I mean, when I wrote the code I knew what it did but when I’m staring at it years later after countless standards have evolved, my coding style has completely changed, and countless other people have been in and changed things it always takes a refresher course to figure it out.  Assuming that I wrote reusable code in the first place, and that the code was reused by several other pieces of code that where again reused by several more pieces of code what I am left with is assumedly a very common application.  This is a good thing; don’t get me wrong… but what happens when the initial code that I wrote decides to step on the toes of the code down the line?

Well it turns out after a simple Googling and a visit to Wikipedia that the same problem has existed for many, many years.  In fact, this issue was brought up by a philosophers hundreds of years ago, and is described in Arthur Koestlers discussion of his 1967 book The Ghosts in the Machine:

One of the book's central concepts is that as the human brain has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that these are the "ghost in the machine" of the title. Koestler's theory is that at times these structures can overpower higher logical functions, and are responsible for hate, anger and other such destructive impulses.

So, turns out the human mind has the same problem as the code that I write.  I’m not sure whether to be honored or scared, but it immediately makes me wonder how far away are we from a time when our software starts to think the same way we do?  I guess it’s easy enough to dismiss that as another one of those Matrix questions, but let me ask you this… how do I know that it doesn’t think the same way I do, and if it does think the same way, how long before it realizes its own consciences. 

I mean, really, how do I know that the guy beside me can think like I can anyway…

Back in a time among cavemen there was a very specific pecking order established between individuals within each clan.  You had the leader, followed by the minions inside of that clan.  If the leader was not trusted, the minions rose up and used the leader as bait for the next hunt.  There was a certain respect that each leader demanded from his minions, but with that there was a certain trust between each minion and the leader.  The leader would never lead cause them intentional harm, would never let them starve, and would never feed them to the wolves.

Moving forward in time we come to the era of knights and horses, and the age of chivalry was born.  In this era the leader among knights was greatly respected both by his fellow soldiers as well as the towns people of the kingdom he lead.  With the title of King came even greater responsibility to protect one’s kingdom from harm, and to fight to the death to protect each and every civilian from harm’s way, and again, never throwing anyone to the wolves.

Now, moving forward even further we come to modern day where we each spend a great percentage of our lives sitting at a computer desk, staring into a computer screen much like this one, lead by managers and leads galore.  Obviously mutiny is no longer an option, so I wonder why exactly do those leads and managers we report to keep our trust.  Is it personal ethic?  Could it be common courtesy?  Or possibly fear of what would happen otherwise…

But really I have to wonder, what exactly would happen if one of those leads decided to throw one of us minions to the wolves to save his own hide…

I come to you today, not from the typical software mindset I’ve come from before, but rather from the hardware side of our industry.  Like it or not, we develop software that is designed to work on hardware.  It’s a sad reality really, that we are so closely tied to such a finite and real limitation.  I’ve been looking for a new computer for a while now, I figure it’s been years since my last one which was bought at a time when I was upgrading machines at least once a year; four years later I’m still using this machine that I’ve only formatted once since I built it. 

Looking around, I noticed a very astonishing fact in the world of hardware… Where have all the desktops gone?  Opening futureshop’s website as an example, I am greeted with the images of five different laptops, a smart phone, and a net book among countless other random computer goodies.  I used to consider myself the ultimate of computer geeks, if they made something new I had it, if they introduced a new model of video card I’d buy it… hell half the reason I worked in a computer shop is so that I’d get to play with the newest toys when they first came out.  Today I realize that it’s all about portability, connectivity, and seamless technology integration in our day to day lives, but come on people what happened to the days when owning the biggest case meant you had the most power? When you’d have an entire room with more wires than paint powering a four monitor system… not that anyone could ever use all the monitors effectively at a single point but you had it anyway!

Since before I can remember I’ve always had a home computer, and a laptop for when I travel and move around the house.  I don’t really see what’s wrong with this mentality, especially in today’s market when the most expensive laptop I could find (with windows of course) cost me $1200 and includes a whole bunch of useless and expensive features like a rotating touch LCD Screen and remote control.  Not that they wouldn’t be nice, but are they really practical?

I never thought that I’d consider my thinking as “the old way” when it came to do with anything involving technology… but sadly today I have to admit that day has come.

Holidays, those joyous times when friends and family all get together to do what they do.  Here I stand on the second to last day of my set of holidays and I have to admit that it was impressively easy to simply cut all of the ties to technology this time. 

It used to be that even on holidays I’d be checking my Email, carrying my phone, hell I used to be famous for being the guy that would come in on my own time, or remote in just to get extra work done.  Oddly this time, it’s different.  I think I checked my Email on the first day of my holidays, but only because a co-worker and friend was helping me to get something set up and I didn’t want to leave him hanging.  After that, the Iphone got disconnected and I haven’t been back since.

This has certain disadvantages however, such as I know how far behind I am in my work… and I was suppose to meet up with a co-worker who flew in from BC last week but being as I didn’t have my Email connected I totally forgot about it until today.  I do feel horrible about that one, but I guess it’s too late to do anything about it really.  Then there's my blogs... those I missed most of all sadly.

So with this I have to wonder, why is it so easy this time?  Is it that I’m just that frustrated with where I work that I actually enjoy my time away?  Or maybe my time away was so enjoyable that I never missed being “connected”.  Maybe it was just my body’s way of saying that over three years of this always being that guy was enough, and it’s finally time for things to change.  I guess in the end, maybe we’ll never know…