Everything new is old again

I noticed something weird about the things that interest me.

I’m fascinated by emerging technologies. I’m all about the bleeding edge, more than happy to trade software bugs for early access. Give me the beta!

I had an early smart watch, I was early to the smart home (much to the chagrin of my wife!), I bought into VR with the original HTC Vive, and I’ve been excited about LLMs since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT 3. I own two 3D printers (yes, I’m one of those people)!

But that’s not so strange. The weird part is that I also long to return to the early days of the internet. I love black and white film photography. I DM a weekly D&D group (a game invented in the 1970s), which requires no more technology than a pencil, paper, and your imagination. It’s more than nostalgia, I’m just captivated by…

Well, I suppose I’m interested in technologies that have changed the world. Really altered the course of history. Whether it’s storytelling around a campfire, capturing a moment in time on silver halide, or giant leaps forward in our ability to compute using natural language.

New will always be new. There will always be another new after the previous new. But what made it, what sticks around, what outlasts? What’s durable? What’s the reason that rare thing is still here?

Longevity isn’t a fluke. It’s an opportunity to get on board when you missed it before.

Some innovations are mere novelties and fads, but the technologies I love the most are the ones that stick around.