Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is the standard link in HN threads about software decay, lost knowledge and fragile technological civilization.
What it is
A DevGAMM talk by Jonathan Blow arguing that civilizations can lose technological capability and that software quality is already deteriorating. He discusses how knowledge fails to transfer between generations.
Recommended by 14 HN commenters across 12 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec cathalc · 2025-02 · on “We were wrong about GPUs”
"Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" by Jonathan Blow comes to mind - [this video] A fantastic talk.
Recommends pdkl95 · 2020-11 · on “Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]”
> quality will deteriorate over time Jonathan Blow's talk "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization"[1] makes a good argument that software quality has already suffered significant deterioration. We've just gotten used to software not working. Reboot the computer; refresh the webpage; spend the morning trying to work around the "improvements", regressions, and removed features in the software that forced an update. [1] [this video]
Recommends isolli · 2021-03 · on “The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber”
Tangentially reminds me of this video by Jonathan Blow [0], "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization". The eye-opening moment, for me, was the importance (and neglect) of the inter-generational transfer of knowledge in maintaining technological complexity. [0] [this video]
Recommends anderspitman · 2021-12 · on “Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again”
Anyone who finds this concept interesting to think about and hasn't seen this video may enjoy it: [this video] See also Foundation by Asimov.
Recommends elcapitan · 2022-01 · on “Disillusioned by Tech in 2022”
I'm not even expecting technology to get better anymore, I just wish the quality of software wasn't constantly decreasing. I've turned off automatic updates for most of them, e.g. MacOS, Android Apps, Firefox. Just can't stand the constant messing up of UIs that may have worked or were at least not as bad as the next version with more bloated features. Beautiful talk on that topic by Jonathan Blow, called "Preventing the collapse of civilization": [this video]
Recommends ilrwbwrkhv · 2022-03 · on “What's the problem with old but excellent Mac apps?”
I am reminded of the excellent "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk by Jonathan Blow: [this video]
Recommends sjaak · 2022-04 · on “1.5-Inch Hand-Carved Agate from 1500 B.C. Shows Sub-Millimeter Details (2017)”
After reading this I can't help but think of a talk "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" given by Jonathan Blow (the game dev) about progress and how it's not always increasing like we tend to think. Super interesting if you have the time for it: [this video]
Recommends theonemind · 2022-04 · on “Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?”
[this video] I think Jonathan Blow made a decent argument that we're in a decadent age of software. In a decadent age, the civilization still does and can do the thing, but has started to lose a grip on the fundamentals, so it's on the way out. A decadent age is a kind of end, doesn't necessarily feel like the end, it kind of feels like a stagnant bumbling. How many programmers do you know that can write assembly code? How many layers of abstraction between a web app and the silicon? Processor, OS, probably a byte-code VM, probably a framework... leaking a little bit all of the way. He makes a good point--where's the evidence that we can write good software? It seems possible , but it doesn't app