Software Century

In 1879, Gould & Curry ran Nevada's largest mining operation with 97% efficient Corliss steam engines. Electric motors were crude, unreliable, 60% as powerful. Yet within years, every steam-powered mine was electrified or extinct. The value was never efficiency. It was architecture. Steam required centralization. Massive engines, elaborate belt systems, entire operations built around the power source. Electricity enabled distributed power. Machines where needed. Operations designed around work, not infrastructure. Today's enterprises perfected their steam engines. ERPs, mainframes, custom fortresses of logic achieving local maxima within a dying paradigm. Now they're installing AI chatbots like electric lights in steam factories. They wonder why nothing fundamentally changes. The architecture is wrong. Not the technology. The US auto industry's transformation from installation to collapse to deployment mirrors today's software paradigm shift Software ate the world. Now it's eating you

In 1879, Gould & Curry ran Nevada's largest mining operation with 97% efficient Corliss steam engines. Electric motors were crude, unreliable, 60% as powerful. Yet within years, every steam-powered mine was electrified or extinct. The value was never efficiency. It was architecture. Steam required centralization. Massive engines, elaborate belt systems, entire operations built around the power source. Electricity enabled distributed power. Machines where needed. Operations designed around work, not infrastructure. Today's enterprises perfected their steam engines. ERPs, mainframes, custom fort