Software is Eating the World

Biological Parallel

The Great Oxygenation Event 2.4 billion years ago: cyanobacteria's 'software' (photosynthesis) spread globally, filled the atmosphere with toxic oxygen, and killed 90% of existing species. But oxygen-breathing organisms then radiated into every niche. Platform technologies don't coexist with incumbents—they make the old environment uninhabitable, then enable explosion of new forms. Eating the world is not metaphor; it's mass extinction followed by adaptive radiation.