You don't hear anyone saying we should throw out finite-element analyses and other computational verification methods when designing bridges because bridges can never be perfectly secure. Yet that is exactly the sentiment I often hear on software.
Now think about the state of US infrastructure. Does it inspire confidence for the future?
I don't know about infrastructure in the US. I don't live there. I'm happy with the infrastructure in west Europe though. I wish that much care was put in to the software I use every day.
That’s one of the reasons I think Excel (and tools like Notion) are so popular - the people on the ground can learn to express themselves in the full context of the tools. I think this sort of software is far more important than we give it credit for. (It’s an invisible problem to us, because we can change the software.)
Like all our governance mechanisms have a built-in system of constant change.
While I do agree that making software better/more reliable is a good goal, I believe we would be better off making the system as a whole more robust; the system that includes humans. For every situation where a piece of software has control of something that effects society (individual, group, etc), there should always be a clear and direct means of appealing / pushing back on the decision that was made. Those means should involve a human reviewing the information and making a decision based on that information, not on what the computer said. There's thread after thread of us saying the exact same thing about companies like Google and Facebook; it should apply as a general rule.