The Newness Illusion: Why Everything Was Better 'Back in Our Day'

Three names, actually: 1. Hedonic Adaptation : Brain's inbuilt boredom machine 2. Rosy Retrospection : Your Memory is a Highlight Reel 3. Declinism : The "Kids These Days" Bias

First of all, there's been substantive shifts in the business model of say cinema such that they literally aren't able to make the kind of movies they used to make. Matt Damon talked about this explictly: https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/ozj2ov/matt_dam...

Second I think music is an interesting category. There's a relatively global phenomenon that classic rock from the 60's to the 90's is like peak Americana. I've heard it almost everywhere I travel.

As a child of the 90's, who did feel that newness teenage obsession with alt rock of the early 90's. I can in retrospect tell you that was not the best age for music, not close. I would probably reference like three things. The classical music of the 1600-1900's, the Modern Jazz age of the like 50's to 70's, and the aforementioned classic rock of the 60's to 90's.

They really just don't make it like they used to. There's a reason WBD just sold for like $90 billion.

Finally I will add, I think there's maybe something adjacent to what your talking about which isn't just the subjective feeling of newness, but an objective one. I think, especially if you're something of a nerd, the the era when things are most changing has an emotional quality to it that can't be beat. Do I want to go back to the 80's-90's era of technological development and listen to Tears for Fears on a walkman, or the pre-social media and streaming internet, or playing video games in an arcade? Maybe not with the memory and hedonic adaptation of someone living in 2026. But if I can live in that world without that memory and the subjective experience of not knowing what was coming? Absolutely. And i think that experience would be better in the 80's and 90's then it would be in other eras. I think a non-negligible number of kids these days feel like they missed out on something not living through those eras.

I think some of this applies to your KubeCon analogy too, for sure for some people it’s about when it was new for them, but some people like things at an earlier stage. Some of those people wouldn’t like say - they’re first year at ReInvent if that happened in 2026. It would have to be an early stage conference for a new technology.