Yes, I do agree. Specially with the usage of Internet!

People are getting use to deal with software, and once they feel comfortable, the eating process starts.

Statistically speaking, people tend to use software by course of time... on the other hand I'd never given it a thought that my 71 year-old uncle became a Facebook fan which had never worked with a computer.

Today's software, as we all agree is a lot bigger image, we can find it every where on the cars, wearable devices, cellphones, refrigerators...

Moreover Cyber war another new phrase which is quite related to this industry!

So, It is absolutely eating the world right now... but the thing is a lot has left.

Return to facebook please... We're all "developers" here :/

Yes, especially with the rapid growth of IoT, AI, and Machine Learning fields. Ironically, this growth simply could not have happened without great advancements in hardware over the past couple of decades. Yet, the capacity for hardware to scale both up in volume and speed as well as down in size and mobility has been outpacing software's ability to utilize what's available/possible (invent markets). Software will be everywhere even if the risks of building an energy-hungry, interdependent, and security-starved system such as this is not taken into careful consideration. As they say, follow the money.

Check out this graph from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You'll see that in the top table under Fastest Growing Industries "Computer systems design and related services" and to a lesser extent "Software publishers".

Under declining industries you'll find "Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing".

While I don't think I'd make the case that software is everywhere in the foreground of everyone's conscience it would be fair to say that as time goes on it will increasingly retreat into the omnipresent background of our daily routine lives and increasingly be taken for granted.

I think almost everyone on this thread is missing the fact that we're comparing software, which is by all accounts, virtual, to any kind of hardware.

Software is iterable. I can login to any one of my websites, right now, fix a bug, hit save and everyone gets the change.

If I shipped a phone, let's say, in the case of Samsung - and a bug is found. No one get's the new phone with the battery fixed unless they go to a store (or online), buy a new one, wait for it to come in the mail and activate it.

We see software eating the world almost across the board. People are less carrying a xGB hard drive in their laptop bag and instead opting to use a DropBox or iCloud or etc... Because the software (dropbox, icloud) can follow us. You forget your USB hard drive at home and it could mean the world.

You no longer can buy Adobe products, and some (all?) Microsoft products are moving to subscription services. Again, it's easier to update software, send a notification that it's been updated then to ship a new CD / DVD.

Look at the Chromebook - a machine that by all accounts is worthless without an internet connection.

Hardware will continue to become agnostic. Get a new iPhone? Restore the backup from iCloud. Get a new MBP? Restore the backup from iCloud. Get a new Chromebook? Login to Google and everything you had on the old one is now on the new one.

Remember the green, dummy IBM mainframe terminals? That's where hardware is going. Just with a lot more power, they look much better, are much smaller and more feature rich.

You'll still buy a new phone, or a new laptop - but you buy that once. You pay monthly for iCloud or your service of choice and the money is in the Software as a Service, not the hardware.

Another example - look at anything home automation related. You buy a thermostat for $250 - that's a 1 time sale. But if it has software that costs money monthly, and adds an added benefit; that's real, reoccurring profit you (as a company) can most likely expect month over month. So while your profit marking might be $50 on the thermostat, if that same buyer is spending $10 / month on your thermostat service; now they've spent $120 over the year and after you pay your developers... is almost guaranteed to be higher then the hardware's margins.

During industrial revolution, did machines eat the world?

Yes.

Few years later:

"AI is eating a software"

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