When I reflect on what I think I know about software (what it is, how it is created, how it is industrialized at large scale, how it is evolved, how it is relevant to current civilization, how it will be even more relevant in most likely futures, etc.), I accept that my views are limited by my own professional path and by my own mix of hitherto sociocultural settings. That is, I only see a shallow and narrow piece of professional reality from a small and tight window.
Hence, I am already an outsider to most of the sociocultural professional environments in this field of human though and activity related to software creation and software evolution.
As such outsider, I try to enjoy, in full perplexity, my astonishments on all that I don’t know. Also, as an outsider to most sectors of the field, I also enjoy becoming aware of remarkable differences among some of those sectors. For example, the chasms between academy and non-academy settings. They don’t talk each other very much; furthermore, they are happy in their ignorance of each other and had no desire to learn from each other more.
Those chasms, on thought and action, resemble to me another set of astonishments as an outsider to other fields of human though and activity where there are also kind of similar chasms. For example, the chasm between some sectors of the humanities and some scientific settings. They also don’t talk each other very much; furthermore, they are happy in their ignorance of each other and had no desire to learn from each other more.
If conventional polarizations in human affairs are unbreakable, then there is no point to wait for they start talking each other more than they have done already. Besides, if they actually are two completely different realms of human though and activity, with entirely different goals and agendas, then the levels of divide and cooperation must not be changed.
At this point in history, we may ponder about that ‘third culture’ optimistically suggested, back in 1963, by C.P. Snow. A third culture paying attention to both sides of the chasm to try syntheses from the good of both.
In the field of software creation, we may also think about our own ‘third culture’ that would pay closer attention to what academy and non-academy settings have to offer.
