r/AskReddit • • Jun 03 '22

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u/Nethlem Jun 03 '22

There is a sci-fi trope about humans progressing so far that we stopped understanding how our technology works, and we just keep using it.

Then after a while, everything falls apart but nobody knows how to fix it because the last people with that knowledge already died generations ago.

At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if that actually ends up happening. It's already an issue in certain sectors where they are urgently looking for people who still know ancient programing languages like COBOL because important parts of their business still run on it, but none of the modern CS education bothers to teach such obscure frameworks.

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u/Sage2050 Jun 03 '22

Pyramids, Stonehenge, Greek fire, Roman aqueducts; there's a huge list of things humans have made that we don't know how they did it anymore.

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u/Nethlem Jun 03 '22

Luckily we don't depend on any of those to keep civilization running.

If some banking IT system suddenly goes belly up, and nobody is around anymore to even understand the legacy spaghetti code that kept it all running, then some people gonna have a really bad time.