Knowledge Glaciers (And the disappearance of institutional knowledge)
summary
Argues that commoditization and rising as-a-Service offerings plus the automation of orchestration are stripping institutional know-how, cites containers’ comeback and cloud consolidation as drivers, and points to the Boeing MCAS failures that killed 346 people as a cautionary example of opaque automation. Documents the historical arc from utility computing to modern stacks, recommends concrete fixes: inner-sourcing docs, blameless post‑mortems turned into tickets, skills nurturing, and cross‑community efforts like the CNCF special interest group for security to preserve transferable knowledge.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:10Blue Ice
- 4:55What are knowledge glaciers
- 5:07Knowledge compression
- 5:52Expected productivity and velocity
- 10:47Consolidation Automation
- 12:42We can destroy lives
- 13:24We need to pay attention
- 14:33Climate change
- 19:14ECommerce
- 21:08Utility Computing
- 22:34The world isnt on fire
- 23:11What is the cost
- 24:14Balancing velocity with knowledge
- 25:47Building on knowledge
- 27:13Recap
- 28:33Chat
- 29:29Summary
- 33:07Institutional Knowledge
- 34:35Lab audits
- 34:59Basic computer science knowledge
- 36:21Another question
- 36:34Where will the talk be posted
- 38:21Shoutout
- 38:53Postmortems
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