You can't atrophy if you never grew in the first place. The juniors will be stunted. It's the seniors who will become atrophied.
As for whether it's a mistake, isn't that just the way of things these days? The current world is about extracting as much as you can while you're still here. Look around. Nobody is building for the future. There are a few niche groups that talk about it, but nobody is really doing it. It's just take, take, take.
This just seems more of the same, but we're speeding up. We started by extracting fossil fuels deposited over millions of years, then extracting resources and technology from civilisations deposited over millennia, then from the Victorians deposited only a century or two ago, and now it's software deposited over only mere decades. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, we just hope it's not us. Meanwhile most of the population aren't even thinking about it, and most of the fraction that do think are dreaming that technology is going to save us before it's payback time.
As for whether it's a mistake, isn't that just the way of things these days? The current world is about extracting as much as you can while you're still here. Look around. Nobody is building for the future. There are a few niche groups that talk about it, but nobody is really doing it. It's just take, take, take.
This just seems more of the same, but we're speeding up. We started by extracting fossil fuels deposited over millions of years, then extracting resources and technology from civilisations deposited over millennia, then from the Victorians deposited only a century or two ago, and now it's software deposited over only mere decades. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, we just hope it's not us. Meanwhile most of the population aren't even thinking about it, and most of the fraction that do think are dreaming that technology is going to save us before it's payback time.