Shoftim - 2022

Chevre, this week’s parsha is שֹׁפְטִים (Shoftim). The parsha starts out by stating that we should appoint judges and officers in all our cities. Over the years, we’ve seen the computer industry start with centralized machines, think the original mainframes with punch cards that could fit in a room (or 2). This would be like when Moshe was the sole distributor of judgement. Then Moshe brought in the 70 elders to assist. This would be like when the data terminals, still connected with central mainframe could be distributed around a campus. Now we are getting toward the stage where each city would have their judges. This would be like having PCs on each desk connected with a network. I remember in my college days installing networks and PCs on desks to replace the terminals to the centralized computers. Now in the cloud era, these machines may be centralized in a cloud and simultaneously distributed among multiple AZs or regions. Our access to these cloud resources is also growing with the more widespread distribution of fiber to the home (we got ours this week!!) and technologies like 4G and 5G. So now we have a situation where we have the local judges and access to the centralized resources all from our fingertips no matter where we are in the world. We’ve come a long way from 2400 baud modems, 10B2 networks and IP over Carrier Pigeon (RFC 1149). It’s exciting to see how we’ll connect with each other in the next phase. Shabbat Shalom.