We’re entering an era of 'epistemic debt' where our most important tech is still running, but not a single living human knows how it works.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Mortality of Distributed Understanding
SSRN · 6325758
The Takeaway
The people who built the world's core financial and industrial code (like COBOL) are retiring or dying, leaving behind 'mortal' understanding for 'immortal' artifacts. The paper warns that AI-generated code is accelerating this collapse, creating a world where we can no longer explain the logic behind our own governance and technology.
From the abstract
Extended cognition theory holds that humans tend to rely on external materials, such as notebooks, calculators, and software, to support their cognitive processes when building things. But humans are mortal, while their creations live longer. So when the people who created and understood a system retire or die, the artifacts persevere, still functional but severed from the human practices that made them intelligible. Engineers call this epistemic debt. The legacy COBOL case study is a good examp