“The dependency hell that modern technology has created for itself will be its major downfall. Complexity is liability, and modern software products and services have become too complex for their own good. After a certain while, things are too complex to maintain and have to be scrapped.”
People realize that the above is true; it’s not a secret or some smart insight, rather it’s the basis of what is technical debt. However, while we all understand it, we still dive deep into complexity and dependency without hesitation. For instance, look at the new hotness: AI companies which are nothing but layers built on top of GPT-3 or some other common AI model. And VCs are funding these new AI companies.
And that’s fine. The primary purpose of technology is to shift the production possibility curve upwards and to the right. Technology should be considered a consumable, instead of a liability or an asset; complexity can and should be built in with the expectation that the tech with which it is build is going to have a tangible deprecation curve.
Careers were built on tending horses, and then working the railroads, and then fixing carburetors, and now on electric charger installations, and with each iteration the complexity of dependent factors, whether it be supply chains or engineering effort or infrastructure, increases significantly. In the end, people are still employed, and the production possibility frontier is shifted upwards and to the right, fulfilling the role of technology in social development.