In the last couple of years, there’s been an awful lot of attention paid to a little game called “The Sims.” Even if you’ve never played it (which I actually have not), there’s a good chance you’ve at least heard of it. The basic premise of “The Sims” is that you’re given control of a little simulated person in a little simulated world, and with your help, that little Sim goes about his or her electronic life. Recent additions made to the program now let you go online to play, and your little avatar can interact with thousands of other people who are also sitting in front of their computers, ironically trying to “have a life.” I personally don’t understand the whole thing, because as far as I can tell, the multitude of people logged into this Sim reality are trying to accomplish the same thing that a lot of folks are working on in real life – trying to get laid. I’m not sure what the appeal of this is, because I’m certain I’d have about the same batting average in the game as I do in Real Life™ (sadly, not similar to Ted Williams, but still above the Mendoza line).
Still, think about how interesting it would be to take the concept of “software as humans” and flip that thing around. Yep, humanity regarded as software – an Anthropology / Computer Science double major’s idyllic dream.
Humans and software? Maybe a little too Sci-Fi for your taste, but there are a lot of parallels in place already. Both are susceptible to getting a virus, for example. Both are prone to crash from time to time. Also, programs can be terminated from time to time for performing “illegal operations” (especially in Texas).
In theory, mixing the two could just be another way of tracking age and development; instead of tracking growth based on a fixed calendar (age), you just get a version number. Just like software, each major development or upgrade is marked with a major number – birth is a good place to start, obviously, so in the beginning, we have… Bob 1.0.
So Bob 1.0 is great: he’s got ten fingers and ten toes, he drools happily, and makes little core dumps in his diapers. Bit by bit, he begins to develop some new skills, like talking. Not really a major life-changing development, but it’s hefty all the same. We suddenly have Bob 1.2 on our hands! And we’ve also added locomotion into the mix – crawling gets you Bob 1.3 and not long after that, version 1.35 comes along and is able to all-out walk. All of this will culminate with the dawn of a new era – Kindergarten. Bob 2.0 is in the house and it won’t be long before he discovers that’s he’s now got an “eat paste” command (which will inevitably be removed in a later version due to unpopularity).
 See how this works? While no two humans develop the same way, all the major and minor milestones can be cataloged in roughly the same way. Bob can drive now? Why, he’s at version 2.8. Hey, Bob just hooked up for the first time! Welcome to version 2.869, Bob! When he’s old enough to vote and get the hell out of his parent’s house, we’ve hit major upgrade time – the Bob 3.0 standalone version.
Sadly, one of the best parts about software can’t be carried over to a human life – beta testing. See, when a new version is in development by a programmer, it’s termed as being “beta” until it becomes a final release. In the beta stage, the new code is tested for bugs and other programming conflicts so the final version is as stable as possible. In human terms, it’d be a little like being able to see briefly into the future and know the outcome of a decision. Bob 3.62 is in college – he decides to smoke a joint. Sure, it could have almost no consequences, but wouldn’t be nice to know that he’s going to be the subject of a random drug test a few days later? That’s right, fix the problem before it causes a crash. Save that “recreational drug” feature for a later version when things are a little more stable. Although I suppose that your average human CAN do a limited amount of “testing.” Say you’ve never had sushi before – can’t you just try a single California Roll to see how it sits before scarfing down a whole meal’s worth of them?
At least there’s another useful way of looking at this human / software comparison. It could make relationships a breeze. We know that Bob 3.8 and Karen 3.3 shouldn’t try to get involved with each other because there are known incompatibilities. Now sure - Bob 3.8 would work well with Megan 2.6, but don’t you think her version’s a little low for him? But one day, a more mature Bob 4.336 meets up with Katie 4.13 at the internet café, and they hit it off. It’s not long before they get married and, suddenly, we’re dealing with companion software. Things are great; they settle into their new life, but all of a sudden they’re surprised with the news of Tommy 0.23. At long last, our old friend Bob has become part of a bigger suite – Family Unit 1.0. The cycle will begin all over again, so long as the operating system (Reality 2.2) can hold up to the strain of keeping all this stuff running smoothly.
And you can obviously start to draw other parallels too… platforms become religion, genetic experimentation equates to hacking, and Carrot Top’s AT&T ads are just as annoying as internet pop-ups. Oh, and I’d suppose our doctors would become tech support people… you know, all things considered, maybe the anthropological standards we have now are just fine. I really can’t advocate something that would actually make our health care system worse.
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