This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
I probably spend similar amounts of time and energy on both. And that is: a lot!
Thinking about the past
I’m nostalgic as anything. I play retro video games (or even reverse-engineer them and vlog about it). I revisit old blog posts on their anniversary, years later. I recreate old interactive advertisements using modern technologies. When I’m not reading about how the Internet used to be, I’m bringing it back to life by reimagining old protocols in modern spaces and sharing the experience with others1.
Thinking about the future
But I’m also keenly-focussed on the future. I apply a hacker mindset to every new toy that comes my way, asking not “what does it do?” but “what can it be made to do?”. I’ve spent over a decade writing about the future of (tele)working, which faces new challenges today unlike any before. I’m much more-cautious than I was in my youth about jumping on every new tech bandwagon2, but I still try to keep abreast and ahead of developments in my field.
But I also necessarily find myself thinking about the future of our world: the future that our children will grow up in. It’s a scary time, but I’m sure you don’t need me to spell that out for you!
Either way: a real mixture of thinking about the past and the future. It’s possible that I neglect the present?
Footnotes
1 By the way: did you know that much of my blog is accessible over finger (finger
@danq.me), Gopher (gopher://danq.me), and Gemini (gemini://danq.me). Grab yourself a copy of Lagrange
or your favourite smolweb browser and see for yourself!
2 Exactly how many new JavaScript frameworks can you learn each week, anyway?