To be alive a human individual needs - water and food. To be healthy he needs protection from the natural phenomenons - clothes & shelter. Another factors to health are - hygiene & minimum physical activity.
In purely philosophical aspect this is it. Everything else is non-essential. The thing is, the human individual evolved into society - specializing work, making people practice non-important things because of the automation, optimization of work and effort - makes bringing water & food - occupy relatively small number of people.
But, the essential is somehow connected to the non-essential, because of how homo sapiens learned to organize.
The food may be irrigated with systems that monitor the humidity of the soil. Here comes the software. The food cannot magically appear on the tables of people. It must be transported to the cities - here comes automotive industry. But it is not only auto-factories - the gas stations, the auto-repairmen, the high ways and road builders. What if the car breaks? Currently, the food is not served in a raw, primitive form, so - here comes the packaging industry and the last mile delivery - again ordered in nowadays more with software.
If we include some additional factors of the health into account - will find ourselves in social class battles.
The medical industry is probably second to importance after the most basic needs. If we find ourselves ill, the doctors find the reasons for our sickness and cure as prolonging our lives. The human individual could live for 80-90 even a century and beyond if he could keep himself - healthy and active.
The physical activities that people go into are endless - from heavy work to sex, dances, yoga, chores, home repairs, fitness and so on. In some sense, they are included in the core needs of men. Not exercising will make us ill and will overload the medical system.
Many types of clothes are not so important or essential - like the prom dresses - overpriced because of fashion. But currently - this industry could save lives - by making protective clothes and masks.
The manufacturers of gadgets have shifted to produce transparent face shields so - having the factory lines present and tuning them a little bit - makes them also important in the current situation.
I am living in a country with a health system that does not yet use software in levels I wish - a national medical software system. I've seen in other countries how - with just a scan of a bar code - the doctor, the pharmaceutic, the police or some other authorized individual could see some important information about you. Of course - there are the privacy issues. But for example - in the current pandemic situation - if such a software was present and in work in my country - I wouldn't have to go around institutions for a piece of paper - and potentially exposing myself to viruses - so the next unit could receive critical for the health information - instead of read it instantaneously from an app.
Software in most cases is ephemeral - it does not produce something that can be touched. But many systems save time and energy and human lives - less time for repetitive tasks and more on more humane tasks with more meaning. Education is done online. Messaging and communication is also online. If we didn't have so much idealistic and political, economic battles, fake news - the information about the viruses could have been communicated and measures applied several months ago, instead of after the fish is out on the streets. So - telling other human beings about a danger is essential thing that saves lives so software becomes not so non-important.
If we could go on - we could extend the "essential" to all the society. What is truly important? So deep, so subjective, so much monkey fights that I don't wanna participate in. Everything is important in some sense or another. If we focus on what we could do for the common good - we could get motivated and empowered by our own abilities to help, instead of watch, receive and feel fear.
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