But that "use" is incredibly thin. Much-to-most of software product use falls into the "compulsory for work" or "downloaded once, never used again" buckets. The depth and value of those interactions is infinitesimal (or negative) even if the scale is massive. With art, the ratio is reversed. (2/n)

A successful novel might sell 50k copies; a poetry collection, less than that; a beloved zine, a few hundred copies. But people spend time with them, and they spend time with people - sometimes the rest of their lives. By any metric that matters, this is more valuable than 99% of software (3/n)