We Are Entering Our Maintenance Era: Why Our Obsession with Innovation Is Causing Software Decay

It was supposed to be a final farewell, penned on a Friday in August 2023 for a weekly Internet of Things (IoT) newsletter that had run its course. Yet, lingering inspiration prompted one final opinion and one overarching mandate about the state of modern technology. The realization struck during a webinar centered on how journalists might leverage generative AI. A panelist openly bemoaned the reality that developers within newsrooms flatly refuse to invest in building AI verification tools. The underlying reason was deceptively simple yet profound: because the challenge of detecting deepfakes is in a state of perpetual evolution, any built tool would require constant, never-ending updates to remain effective.

That sentiment sparked an immediate wave of empathy. For years, the daily grind had involved wrestling with the relentless maintenance required to keep smart homes, smartphones, and myriad digital services functioning properly. This goes far beyond simply applying standard security patches. It encompasses the painstaking labor of swapping out home automation rules the moment a provider alters its application programming interfaces (APIs), or untangling and rebuilding workflows when a vital bridge between Zapier and a digital service abruptly shuts down. It includes the quiet disorientation felt upon stepping into an electric vehicle, only to discover that an overnight over-the-air software update has completely rearranged the dashboard layout. Living with modern technology means living in a continuous state of flux.

Instinctively, most people understand this reality, yet operationally and psychologically, society has yet to adapt to the sheer velocity of ongoing change. Mentally acknowledging that a connected device holds value precisely because its feature set can continuously expand is one thing. Experiencing deep frustration when a user interface suddenly shifts or when a smart oven’s new recipe setting cooks an evening meal entirely differently is an entirely separate challenge. Most individuals are simply not equipped to cope with relentless transformation across every facet of their daily lives. Consequently, the friction that occurs when a car, an appliance, or a communication tool behaves unexpectedly can be jarring and exhausting.

Businesses, meanwhile, have similarly failed to adapt their operational models to this reality. Technology giants like Google offer a textbook illustration of this systemic misalignment. Google’s corporate culture famously rewards employees for conceiving, building, and launching new tools and software. Within such an environment, career advancement depends heavily on invention. This incentivizes a corporate ecosystem that heavily prioritizes innovation over maintenance. For everyday users, however, this approach means that beloved tools and platforms exist in a perpetual state of slow decay, or that when external partners alter their systems, companies fail to react with the necessary agility.

Google is far from alone in placing a premium on novelty while neglecting upkeep. This cultural clash becomes starkly visible within industrial settings, where enterprise information technology (IT) staff frequently accuse operational technology (OT) engineers inside manufacturing plants of fostering a culture of refusal—blocking the integration of new automations and technologies into established processes. Yet, the hesitation rooted in the OT sector is far from arbitrary. Operations engineers possess a decades-long history of building and managing industrial processes that are consistent, reliable, and deeply knowable. Introducing IT systems into these delicate environments injects entropy and an immediate demand for new maintenance protocols—protocols that IT departments can sometimes balk at supporting over the long term.

While the industrial operations side has cultivated a deeply entrenched culture of valuing maintenance and stability, the information technology sector has not. Bridging this cultural divide is precisely what industries must move toward as computing becomes embedded in an ever-growing array of everyday devices, consumer goods, and critical infrastructure. Software decays, and it does so at a remarkably rapid pace.

This inevitable software decay exerts an expanding influence on day-to-day existence, making it imperative to incentivize developers to maintain systems with the same fervor they apply to inventing them. Organizations must allocate dedicated time within workweeks for employees to adjust to shifting user interfaces, altered service agreements, and evolving software environments. Simultaneously, companies must grant workers the space to experiment with emerging tools and technological advances, recognizing that such exploratory adaptation constitutes genuine, productive work.

Much like legal and medical professionals are bound by mandatory continuing education requirements, any profession that regularly intersects with technology—a category that will soon encompass virtually all vocations—requires a parallel ethos. Workplaces must both incentivize and structurally support employees as they navigate continuous adaptation, including the seismic shifts introduced by artificial intelligence.

Meeting this challenge demands a more curious and engaged workforce, but the burden cannot rest entirely on individual employees to muster endless stores of energy and enthusiasm. Maintaining digital services and adapting to shifting software environments carries tangible economic value and must be formally treated as such.

On the consumer front, this economic reality may eventually manifest as long-term subscription models, ensuring that the companies behind everyday products collect the ongoing revenue necessary to fund continuous developer maintenance costs. Alternatively, manufacturers may begin selling products stamped with explicit expiration dates, signaling precisely when corporate support and maintenance will cease.

If society genuinely wishes to imbue everyday products with intelligence, the focus cannot remain exclusively on novel features and relentless innovation. Comprehensive strategies must account for how those products will be sustained over time, and how that ongoing maintenance will be funded. As computing drives software and services deeper into professional workflows and more jobs demand the capacity to absorb constant innovation, businesses must invest heavily in maintaining the skills of their workforce.

Constant innovation in the absence of steady support is fundamentally exhausting. Because contemporary innovation relies so heavily on software, it remains inherently prone to rapid entropy. Acknowledging this means valuing both the people and the temporal resources required to counteract that entropy, while consciously carving out space for workers and consumers alike to absorb the shock of continuous change.