Hacker News Reader

I found this to be a compelling counterargument to Blow's alarmism about forgotten knowledge in tech https://www.datagubbe.se/endofciv/

A related point: numerically there are far more low level developers now than there were in past he idealizes. No such knowledge is being forgotten, it is used and innovated upon regularly. It may be in less frequent use, but is still there if needed.

View on HN

Yeah, there is necessarily more specialization because there is vastly more knowledge than ever before. As a fraction of expertise, low level knowledge might be less but low level experts are more numerous than ever before. Rather than forgetting, the real risk might be knowledge production extending beyond our collective capacity to keep up and make sense of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com