High technology is a social exercise

My favourite piece of wisdom from the permacomputing community is the honest admission that a mere mortal cannot build something on their own as complex as an operating system or browser engine. As such, no single person could ever fully understand them. In a civilizational collapse scenario, these technologies would probably be "lost," as we would collectively lack the capacity to reproduce them. Brief overview of permacomputing (permacomputing.net) At the same time, we live in a world historic moment where a single person can create a fairly elaborate piece of software all on their own; certainly one complicated enough that they wouldn't otherwise be able to produce it without assistance. Whether or not generative AI makes good, well-designed software, it can make a lot of software. And with this there's a defence of vibe coding I've heard a few times: A sole maintainer could never build software this complex. It's too much to ask of a single person. I find this thinking a little…