In the good old days, computers had terminals (clunky ASR-33 Teletypes, or compact LA-34s from DEC, or inexpensive ADM-3As, or the geeky VT-52 with a "bell" that sounded like the grinding of a poorly shifted transmission) and the terminals had buttons labelled "break".
The break button was needed for serial communication lines. We've moved beyond them, using high-speed network connections, and the break buttons (and the terminals too) are things of the past.
We've also lost "break" in another meaning: the more common meaning applied to a device or mechanism that fails to function due to a fault or defective component.
Things break less frequently than they did in the past. What called my attention to this phenomenon was the original version of "Casino Royale", the James Bond movie from the late 1960s. In the movie, there is a car chase (obligatory in a James Bond movie) which involves three cars. Our hero is in one, an evil spy is in a second, and the third car is operated via remote control. (Quite advanced for the 1960s!)
The evil spy's car has a built-in two-way radio, and the third car is controlled via radio by the the same evil spy network. The remote control car has a camera, so the remote control operator can see the front view of the car.
Near the end of the car chase, the two-way radio in the spy's car breaks, and the camera in the remote control car breaks. Bad things happen (to the evil spy) because of the failures.
The dialog has little to say about these breakages -- just enough, in fact, to let us know that they are broken. And much less than one would expect in a movie of today.
My theory is that audiences of the late 1960s were accepting of the notion of broken devices. So much so that the moviemakers could provide minimal dialog to explain the events, with the expectation that people would understand the failures and "keep up" with the story.
(The contemporary Star Trek series also had many failures, mostly the transporter.)
In contrast, today's movies rarely show things breaking. Devices and gizmos may be deliberately damaged (usually by sword-wielding ninjas or blaster-toting space mercenaries) but things don't break on their own. And people expect things to not break on their own, either in the movies or in real life.
Which means that people expect things to work, that is, to perform as expected. (Until perhaps, attacked by ninjas or mercenaries.) Not just hardware, but software. People expect their PCs to work, their smartphones to work, and the web to work.
When something doesn't work (that is, it's broken), people become frustrated and angry.
If you want happy customers, you had best make sure that your software doesn't break.
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