what I mean is that by focusing on the “what constitutes this functional component of computing” part of the system, it ignores and invalidates the “how does one constitute this functional component of computing” part of the system, and that part is the key.

I’m not talking about digging into it on any technical level to understand the implementation details, I’m talking about the prerequisites, both technological and informational, required to leverage and/or develop with the thing. what’s the combined total biomass of people required to keep this project running? what’s the documentation footprint, and what’s its update cadence compared to that of the thing itself? how has that documentation footprint changed over time?