Software as a tool

To enable means “to make someone or something skilled, fit or able for a particular thing”.

Tools enable.

Personally, I can’t “drive a nail” without a hammer, although I’ve seen people use their bare fists to do it. The hammer enables me with a capacity my hand doesn’t have (and doesn’t pretend to have :wink:

Same with scissors: although I can cut paper with my fingers, I probably won’t be able to cut a piece of cloth so easily, and besides, the cut will come out better with this tool.

Tools make me more able. Before we were homo sapiens, we were homo habilis; we were capable of making things, and that’s because our brain evolved for producing tools. We’re not the only ones who use tools; many animals have been seen using them. Technology is in nature; it isn’t exclusive to humans.

Just as glasses boost my weak eyes, and speaker systems or microphones boost my voice and my ears, every tool boosts some organ of my body. Tools make us more able.

Someone might say that the computer boosts our brain, makes it more able, but the truth is that hardware is pretty useless; without software it’s good for nothing. “Hardware and Software are the wheels of the same cart”, a president of Sony used to say. The truth is he was wrong, because software is the force that makes this “cart” move.

It’s software that enables me, because software is a tool.

Although a symphony can be used for something (as therapy, as a relaxant or to lift the spirit), it clearly doesn’t have the same kind of functionality as a piece of software, nor the same kind of enabling capabilities. Because software lets you do many concrete things: from designing an airplane, to writing this blog, to calculating my employees’ payroll.

But software is also a tool for boosting the “organ of the mind”, the brain. Software is potential intelligence, and when it runs it turns into kinetic intelligence, but that’s another topic…