COVER STORY
Software is the magic carpet to the future
Hardware or software? the child of today's computer age might ask.
His world is divided into two parts: hardware, the machinery that makes up a computer, and software, the programs of instructions that tell computers what to do. And while the hardware is visible and tangible, the child knows that software is the soul of the machine. Without software, a computer is little more than a hunk of plastic and silicon that might as well be used as a doorstop. A computer without software is like a car without gasoline, a camera without film, a stereo without records. This year Americans will spend an estimated $65 billion on computers of all kinds. They will lay down an additional $16.2 billion for the software that makes the machines do their magic.
Until a few years ago, software was used almost exclusively to operate the big, impersonal mainframe computers, which were isolated in air-conditioned rooms behind glass partitions. The software for these giant machines is still in place, keeping track of long-distance telephone calls, calculating interest on bank accounts, and sending out fund-raising letters for presidential candidates. But the rapid spread of personal computers has put software directly into people's hands. In fact, savvy specialists tell computer buyers first to find the software they want to use and only then to buy the machine that runs the software.
Today computer buffs are using software in more innovative ways. In addition to doing such mundane tasks as sorting, cataloguing and calculating, a host of new programs are helping make people's lives easier. Some examples:
The Rev. David Nicholas, pastor of the Spanish River Presbyterian Church in Boca Raton, Fla., writes the outlines of his sermons with the help of a program called Super SCRIPSIT on one of his parish's two Radio Shack computers. Thomas Birr, the church's business administrator, uses two titles from the CompuChurch line, the Gift Program to record donations and the Shepherd's
Program to keep track of the talents and special interests of every member in the church's congregation. Says Birr: "If I need a soccer-league coach, all I have to do is ask the computer to give me a list of all male members between the ages of 18 and 50 with an interest in sports." Amateur Astronomer George Litsios of Closter, N.J., owns a telescope that he keeps pointed toward the heavens from under a skylight in his attic. But these days he spends more time watching a computer screen displaying a TellStar program, made by Scharf Software Systems of Boulder, Colo. With the help of the software, Litsios, 52, created a graphic representation of the heavens just the way they appear from his backyard by simply typing in the time, date and geographic coordinates of his suburban home. Now he can ask the program to identify a heavenly body that he has seen in the sky. Says Litsios: "This has really expanded my field of vision. I saw more in the six weeks after I got TellStar than I had in the six years before that." The Bide-a-Wee animal shelter in New York City is using a program called Choose-a-Pooch, which helps match potential owners with homeless mongels. Devised by Randy Lockwood, 35, an assistant psychology professor at the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York,