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Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)

DevGAMM · 315.7K views · 2019-07-10 · 1:02:42

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

It is the standard link in HN threads about software decay, lost knowledge and fragile technological civilization.

Recommended by 14 HN people across 12 months · HN mentions 2020–2025

Topics

Software performance & optimizationFuturism & technology and societyGame design
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jonathan blowsoftware decaylost knowledgetechnology regressioncomplexity

What people said

cathalc · 2025-02 · Strong recommendation

"Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" by Jonathan Blow comes to mind - [VIDEO] A fantastic talk.

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iamwil · 2025-10 · Recommendation

Jonathan Blow already warned us six years ago. "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" [VIDEO] There is the Handmade and Better Software contingent that is pushing against this trend. I don't know if they'll succeed, but they at least care about quality in a way that a lot of software engineers aren't incentivized or don't know how to do anymore. [LINK]

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dzonga · 2025-07 · Recommendation

every once in a while everyone should watch Jonathan's Blow: Collapse of Civilization [0] by not reading and going through docs - we cut out our critique ability as we just ingest fully what A.I gives us. by not writing we don't exercise thinking - question our assumptions etc. since what AI writes will mostly be positive not negative. [0]: [VIDEO] and just like that society stops thinking. stops creating. then civilization collapses.

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Sources

Video by DevGAMM, played through YouTube.

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