Age of Deceleration
Part 2 of "Are We Creatively Losing It?
This computer is 10 years old
In my last installment, I asked this question: are we creatively losing it? Go read that before reading on.
The most obvious counter to this question is: but technology!
Yes, there is that. For example.
AI, above all, is exploding.
Augmented reality might be about to go mainstream with Apple’s Vision Pro.
Even the widely despised crypto/web3 is vital, has exciting potential, and is currently worth a fortune. The real question is whether it can do anything or not.
Tech remains an innovative and dynamic realm… but it is definitely slowing down too.
Think about this.
It’s 2024. Let’s say you’re using a ten-year-old computer that you bought in 2014.
It’s a bit sluggish, it can’t run the latest operating system, but it does everything you need. It even pretty much looks like the new models. Sure, you want a new computer, but you’re fine.
Now hop in a time machine and set the dial for 2004.
A new iMac in 2004 looked like this.
But you’re not using that. Again, you’re using a ten-year-old computer. It’s 2004 but your computer is from 1994. That’s something like this.
This beast is an ancient relic. It’s a gray box with a huge, heavy monitor. It’s unbearably slow and has no storage space. You store your extra files on, yep, a stack of floppy disks.
You are miserable and desperate for an upgrade. You’re not fine.
Computer hardware was a runaway train in the eighties and nineties. But not anymore.
You can feel this. You can feel each new iPhone or new laptop being a smaller and smaller upgrade. More likely, you’re upgrading because the old thing is broken.
Tech is still briskly advancing and some areas, like AI, are explosive. But it is slowing down. Those of us who experienced the break-neck innovations of the eighties and nineties have witnessed this deceleration.
But the slowdown in tech is minor compared to the slowdown elsewhere in society. Next time up I’ll show you just how slow progress has gotten in the rest of human creativity.