> Civilisation is a Red Queen; we must keep running just to stand still.
While this is true, it doesn't prevent a hell of a lot of our engineered world from just being retained while the innovations are piled on top. So there is a hell of a lot of close-to-static stuff that matters a lot -- probably more than the innovative works of any given day.
If the old layers were a bit dodgy, their abstractions will leak, foundations will shift and problems will appear in the layers above. And most things are a bit dodgy to start of with, and will not become a firm foundation until they have gone through incremental improvement and maintenance.
While this is true, it doesn't prevent a hell of a lot of our engineered world from just being retained while the innovations are piled on top. So there is a hell of a lot of close-to-static stuff that matters a lot -- probably more than the innovative works of any given day.
If the old layers were a bit dodgy, their abstractions will leak, foundations will shift and problems will appear in the layers above. And most things are a bit dodgy to start of with, and will not become a firm foundation until they have gone through incremental improvement and maintenance.