logoalt Hacker News

rollcat05/15/20252 repliesview on HN

There was a story written by (IRRC?) Stanisław Lem: technology went to absurd level of complexity, yet was so important to daily lives that the species' survival depended on it. The knowledge of how everything worked has been long forgotten; the maintainers would occasionally fix something by applying duct tape or prayers.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We're basically headed in that direction.


Replies

selcuka05/16/2025

Asimov's "The Feeling of Power (1958)" [1] was similar.

[1] https://archive.org/details/1958-02_IF/page/4/mode/2up?view=...

adammarples05/15/2025

This later evolved into the 40k universe