Nostalgia Loses, Get Over It.

I’m calling out the techno-nostalgics: you people are luddites, counter-productive, and blind to this reality, and the coming-reality.

Get constructive, or get lost.

What is a techno-nostalgic? Here are a few ‘warning’ phrases:

• “the Kindle can’t work, it can never replicate the smell and feel of real books”.
• “The death of the Newspaper is a horrible thing”
• “The Internet is making our generation ADD, and removing wonder”

All these quips have some insight, but does anyone honestly believe we won’t replace paper with something digital? That real-time web-content untrammeled by production and distribution constraints won’t win? That the Internet is an incredible and lasting tool, obvious even during its fuzzy infancy?

I reject that even then techno-nostalgics are this short-sighted.

These and many more 'scary’ new institutions will come to pass as the old ones die for very real reasons.

Here’s the take-away:

Drop the nostalgia, leverage yourself to first identify what we gain and lose with each change, and then get creative in suggesting even the smallest improvements to the new ways.

Or go away.