2026 02 09: old is new

What’s old is new again! I think?

While (sort of — it was boring!) watching the Super Bowl last night, I got a bit depressed by the relentless string of glitzy advertisements showing off all of the hot new ai products. It bums me out to consider that our lives will soon be mostly automated by computers. But will they, actually? Just as we begin to use ai to make our lives easier (in theory), we are also turning back to older products and processes, while shunning the same tech that has become so widespread (people are shooting film again, printing books, bricking their phones…).

I was quickly reminded that Super Bowl commercials are often a taste of what soon to be out of fashion. Just before the dot com bust, dancing babies and pet hand puppets filled the time between the big game. A few years back everything was cryptocurrencies. Of course, the internet has not gone away and neither has crypto, but we humans (or maybe it’s just me?) tend to over-stress about big upcoming changes, when in reality, they take lots of time to process.

In the meantime, the ai bots will work nonstop to digest my human brain thoughts and convert them into data points in their massive computer brain, while I putter around wondering where I put my glasses so I can leave the house and make some photos the old fashioned way, with a digital camera (get it?).