Software is only "technology" as painting once was. Much contemporary software is reminiscent of Medieval mosaics: big representations of highly conservative traditional models and crude depictions of people, built by a legion of anonymous workers, from monotonous fragile pieces. They feel like they were approached as engineering problems.

In Renaissance art, the new non-church wealthy elite still commissioned religious imagery, but they seem to've been after beauty more than direct reinforcement of their authority. This dynamic seems mirrored in the current divide between the products of startups and internal projects of enterprises.